AN: I've had this in my back pocket for awhile now, as you'll probably be able to tell when reading it, but with this gap between arcs I figured I might as well finally get this out. Hope you enjoy.
"Alright crew, listen up." Temple said to his motley band of people he had lined up before him, that being; Bucky, Loco, and Mariko who can now walk on her own and had her own cloths thanks to the three's help. "Command is sending a special someone down here to help us with the reds."
"Oh! Are we getting Zelleelleesky?!" Loco exclaims.
"Zelensky?" Bucky corrects.
"Guys, he died hundreds of years ago, we're getting a freelancer." Temple says with mild irritation.
"Yay! We're getting a freelancer!" Mariko exclaims.
"What? Those mercenary guys?" Bucky questions.
"Yeah, just don't do anything completely fucking stupid when they get here." Temple says. "I know thats asking a lot."
"You what?!" The freelancer, Carolina exclaimed.
"We dug a hole in the ground and then we put the flag in it. And then, we covered the hole." Temple explains. "That last part was my idea."
"And I am the one who dug the hole!" Mariko happily exclaims.
"What possessed you to do something so stupid?" Carolina questions with barely contained anger.
"Whats the big deal? We done good." Bucky explains.
"We need both flags to win the game you moron." Carolina tells him. "Where is it? Where did you burry it?"
"Oh, we have no idea." Temple nonchalantly tells her.
"What?" Carolina exclaims.
"Thats why we made a map." Bucky brings up.
"Where's the map?" Carolina asks.
"Oh, we have no idea." Temple says.
"You lost the map?" Carolina questions.
"Uh... m-more like someone forgot w-where they um, put it." Mariko guiltily says while pushing her two index fingers together.
"Its okay! Mariko and I made a new flag! This ones even better!" Loco exclaims. He and the others look to a stick with blue underwear screwed through it and haphazardly tapped on.
"That was a fun art pro- projockt." Mariko smiles.
"Speaking of forgetting, I don't ever remember calling command for a Freelancer." Temple speaks up.
"Stow it. We're going loud in five." Carolina says.
"What do you think she means by loud?" Bucky mutters.
"Yay. More fun times!" Mariko assumes.
"No. You're staying here." Carolina tells her.
"I can't join in?" Mariko asks.
"No. It's to dangerous for a child." Carolina says. "This whole place is to dangerous for a child, but it's this teams problem. Now the rest of you, get ready."
Mariko sat inside the base, completely alone, as The freelancer woman took Bucky, Loco and her papa to have fun someplace. Hopefully they would be back soon.
She did her exercises to strengthen her legs, checked Loco's room to see if anything had exploded, and stole a few cookies from the jar. She had done all she could think of to do and now there was nothing.
"I see why papa and Bucky keep saying this place is boring." She says to herself. Suddenly, someone in black armour came rushing in and took the flag she and Loco made.
"Bucky?" She questions, wondering if the teleported made his armour black again.
"Stay out of this, kid." The person said in a deep, filtered voice. Carolina then comes rushing in.
"End of the line." She says, the two begin to fight with the scary black one using the flag as a weapon. Mariko sat on the sidelines and watched the fight, debating with herself if she should just kill the black armoured person who seemed to be stealing from them. It came to a point where Carolina grabbed an orange person out of no where and used him as a shield. Mariko made a mental note of that. Temple then leapt onto Carolina, attempting to restrain her from doing any more harm towards the orange soldier, but Carolina threw him off and grabbed her pistol, aiming it at the black soldier.
"Off my flag, bitch!" Carolina vehemently curses before firing, only for the bullet to ricochet off of the black soldier helmet. The soldier then turned around.
"If you want it so bad, take it." They said in their filtered voice. They then threw the flag at Carolina as though it were a spear, to which Carolina redirected it away from her and onto the orange person, impaling them. Mariko enjoyed the sight, but Temple seemed to think otherwise.
"NO!" He screamed. He rushed over to the orange soldier. "Medic! I need a help over here!"
"This isn't about you." Carolina says, shoving him away. Mariko as angered by this. Temple seemed to care for the orange person for some reason, and it seemed like Carolina was disrespecting him and her papa.
With a look of anger, Mariko sent a vector toward Carolina's neck and sliced her head off.
"Don't do that to papa and the orange person!" Mariko screamed at the corpse.
"No..." the black figure said. They cared? Weren't the two fighting each other earlier? The back figure charges to attack the Diclonius, but seeing as the figure was partially responsible for her papa's sadness, Mariko hurled all her vectors at then two, slicing them into thousands of pieces. Robot pieces.
At that moment, Bucky, Loco, and the Reds came in.
"Oh, the other Freelancer person was a robot." Bucky says.
"Genius! Even these freelancers recognize the superiority of robots!" Surge exclaims. "Wonder if I can upload that programming to Lorenzo."
As Temple gets up, his helmet comes loose and falls of, exposing his face to the little Diclonius girl.
See this, Mariko was shocked. When she looked at his face, her supposed papa's face, it seemed so alien to her. She knew all in that moment that this man was not her papa.
"You're not my papa." She voices these thoughts aloud.
"I never was, I just went along with what you were saying because... well... I was to lazy to put in the effort to convince you otherwise." Temple explains. "You seemed like the kinda kid who takes a hell of a lot of convincing before changing their mind about something."
"You lied to me!" Mariko screams at him.
"Okay Mariko, I know you're upset. And I can explain what-" Temple never finished as his head flew from his body. Mariko eyes the others with a creepy smile.
"Holy fuck!" Bucky screamed
"What the hay did she do!?" Surge exclaims. Mariko begins slowly stalking towards them, prompting all of them to run out of the base as the Diclonius girl went after them like a horror movie monster.
"What do we do Sarge!" Gene exclaims.
"We lure her back to base to catch her in a trap!" Surge orders.
"And then do what? She's just a kid!" Bucky exclaims.
"A kid that tore apart our freelancer and beheaded two of your guys." Gene exclaims. The blues tank was then thrown landing on and crushing Loco.
"But Mariko... I thought we were friends... hrrk! Blurgh." Loco lets our before dying.
Mariko giggles at this. "Now this is fun."
"Okay, I see your point." Bucky concedes.
"I hope this doesn't go on our permanent records or something." Cronut says before the group of survivors make a beeline for red base. "What now, sir?" Cronut questions when they reach the base.
"Spread out into a semicircle and fire at her from all directions!" Surge orders.
"Wait, why didn't we just shoot her to begin with then?" Bucky questions.
"Just get into position blue-tard." Surge growls. Bucky and Cronut ready themselves on either sides of the base while Surge and Gene stand atop it.
"She's coming!" Gene exclaims, noticing Mariko is closer.
"No shit, open fire!" Surge orders. The others heed his command and open up the hell fire, all of which just seems to bounce off Mariko.
"What! She's bullet proof! Wish we knew that." Bucky exclaims.
"Anything else your not telling me, blue." Surge growls down at Bucky.
"I don't know anything more, honest!" Bucky pleads.
"Thing is, I don't quite believe you." Surge aims his shotgun down to Bucky. A DMR rifle comes out of no where and impales Bucky through his neck, knocking him down and eventually killing him. "Okay, O believe you, now." Surge says as Bucky suffocates in his own blood.
"Aaaaaaahhhhhhhh." He and Gene here Cronut before parts of his dismembered body fly up onto the base.
"Ah! What do we do Sarge!" Gene exclaims in extreme worry.
"Don't worry Gene. We just have to-" Surge never finished as Gene was picked up by an invisible force and flung into the wall of the canyon, several of his bones cracking could be heard when he made impact.
"I think it's time for a tactical retreat." Surge says. He tries to run off the base, but he falls on himself from a great pain in his foot. Looking down, he finds the reason is because he doesn't have a foot.
"Mercy." Surge begs as Mariko lifts herself onto the base.
"I wanna keep his going as long as possible. After all, you're the only one left, right?" She says. Surge isn't able to respond as Mariko severs his other foot, inciting a howl of pain from the red soldier. Mariko giggles like child as she educates Surge about a new meaning of pain as she slowly rips him appart like tearing off the wings of an insect. "Aw, it's all over now." She says with disappointment after Surge dies. She then hears a plonk and looks over to see a brown soldier has fallen from seemingly the heavens in front of red base. Mariko smiles hungrily at the newcomer. "Yay! The fun doesn't stop!"
Lorenzo quickly got to his feet.
"Accidenti, che caduta." He then looks on to see Cronut's mutilated corpse. "Il giorno tanto atteso è finalmente arrivato? Che io sia libero per sempre da questi idioti?" He then spies the blues little girl float down from the red base while starring at him with a creepy smile. "Vedo. Un personaggio da film dell'orrore." Lorenzo sighs. He then picks something up on his advanced internal Bluetooth. "Cos'è questo?" he connects to the device as Mariko slowly stalks towards him.
"This is going to be fun." She says as she gets closer.
"Avvertimento! Minaccia rilevata." Lorenzo raises his file ready to shoot Mariko. However, the device connects to his blue tooth and he decides to activate it. Mariko then explodes in a large fireball of destruction, pushing Lorenzo back and leaving behind nothing but a smouldering crater.
Lorenzo recovers and looks around at the destruction.
"Miglior giorno della mia vita." he says.
