Okay, the whole "replacing someone's name with 4 ?'s" thing didn't go too well, so I'll be doing something else instead. I'll just go back to describing them and not worrying about censoring their names in any ways.

And sorry it took so long to get this chapter up. I had it all ready to go on Tuesday, but my computer was being stupid and wouldn't upload it for some reason.

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Everyone was scampering about inside the giant warship. They were all in panic about the thought that they could possibly be overtaken by their enemy and possibly be shown absolutely no mercy at all.

With the entire vessel turning chaotic, Lloyd and Colette were becoming very tense, not knowing what they were supposed to do. Should they help these guys out and destroy their enemy? Normally, Lloyd would jump at the opportunity to take down anyone who was threatening anybody else, but this time, the enemy was his own world.

Still unsure of what it was they should be doing, Lloyd turned back to Kayne, who also looked like he was feeling pretty nervous about the situation.

"What do we do?" Colette asked in her whiny voice.

"We need to defend ourselves," Kayne calmly replied, not looking at either of them.

"How!" Lloyd yelled.

"I don't know," Kayne admitted. Then his eyes lit up and he looked down at the two teenagers in front of him. "Wait, you said you were some of the people who reunited this world, right?"

"Yeah," Lloyd agreed.

"I want you to help us scare off those enemies!" Kayne pleaded, his facial expression showing just how serious he was about what he was saying.

"What!"

"I want you to find your way onto their boat and take down anybody who gets in your way, but especially Stromm!" Kayne commanded.

"But…" Colette started.

"No buts!" Kayne insisted loudly. "We're going to die out here unless we do something! If you're truly the people who reunited this world, then you must have strength!"

"Lloyd!" Colette whined, "Please! We have to help them! If we don't, then Stromm will overtake them and their entire world will be destroyed! Think of all the innocent lives that will be lost!"

"All right…" Lloyd said, his voice breaking up in the same way once he agreed to destroy Mithos's Cruxis Crystal. "Come on, Colette! Let's teach Stromm a thing or two!"

Kayne smiled and nodded his head, pleased with the decision Lloyd and Colette made. He looked towards the doorway out of the ship and non-verbally instructed them to head out in that direction.

The two ran outside to the boat's deck and saw Stromm's massive, stronger-looking gray boat a short distance (for warships about to engage in combat, anyway) away.

Lloyd and Colette stood on the deck and forgot all about not being able to sprout their angel wings until they actually tried. Somehow, the multicolored wings managed to sprout out of their backs like nothing was wrong.

"Huh?" Lloyd asked. "What's going on?"

"Our wings…they work again?" Colette rhetorically asked.

"I guess so," Lloyd said. "But how come they're working now but not when we're on the island?"

"I don't know…"

"Well, it doesn't matter right now," Lloyd concluded. "Right now, we've got to stop Stromm before he kills all these guys and destroys that world!"

Colette agreed, and the two of them started soaring into the air and flew on to Stromm's ship, leaving all of the men completely awe-struck and even nervous about it. After all, they had never seen angels before, so they could have seemed like very powerful beings to them.

Both of them landed hard and solidly on the ship's metal floors and drew their weapons. The men in Stromm's fleet seemed to be very physically trained. Their outfits were green and had several straps at seemingly random spots on their uniform. Their weapons seemed to be fairly simple: spiked balls for long ranged attacks and a simple dagger for close-combat.

"Take…this!" Lloyd yelled. He took his ice coffin blade and stabbed it right into the chest of one of Stromm's men, knocking him to the ground.

Colette took her chakrams and sent them spinning towards two of their enemies, knocking them both to the ground. Lloyd stuck one of his material blades through both soldiers after they were on the ground and no longer a threat.

"Ha!" Lloyd yelled. "These guys aren't so tough!"

Lloyd and Colette continued to make their way through the enemy soldiers, basically knocking one off after another while barely having any close calls.

After plowing through wave after wave of soldiers trying to take them down, the two found their way inside. There were more guards waiting to battle them, but nothing they couldn't handle.

Soon after Lloyd and Colette had managed to take down anyone who stood in their way with incredible ease, they both began feeling very cocky, but Colette wanted to be really careful about how many people they were hurting.

After a while, they heard an exasperated groan. They turned around, and a man in an expensive looking military outfit was standing there. He had perfectly white pants without a single stain of anything on them and his shoes were black as the night. His shirt covered his entire upper body except for his hands, which were instead covered by very sturdy looking dark-yellow gauntlets.

His shirt was a sky-blue color that had gold plates on the shoulder blades and a column of yellow buttons. His belt was black and a hate a gold buckle, similar to the color of the badge in the center of his military hat.

"Are you the ones who killed all my men!" demanded the person.

"And if we are?" Lloyd asked, trying his best to get on the man's bad side and to make him angry.

The man reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked like tiny silver balls. "You've just made the biggest mistake of your life, messing with me!" yelled the high-ranked military officer. Saying this, he threw the silver pellets at Lloyd and Colette with a surprising amount of speed, and the two ducked out of the way, just in time.

And it was a good thing Lloyd and Colette had those reflexes, because when the silver balls hit the wall behind them, the balls exploded and created small fireballs.

Colette let out a surprised scream of fear as she saw what those weapons were capable of doing, but Lloyd stayed more calm.

"So…that's your way," Lloyd said. "Psi Tempest!"

Lloyd sprung himself into the air with both of his swords in an attack position. He started performing somersaults in the air with his swords striking the man as he landed.

"Gah!" yelled the officer in considerable pain. He turned around and looked at Lloyd, who was on his feet and ready to strike again.

"Get ready for THIS!" he yelled, looking like he was about to rip someone's head off. He put up his gauntlets and started giving Lloyd quick and painful blows to the head with them.

"Pretty good…" Lloyd managed to choke out as he kept getting pummeled.

The officer was about to deliver one last blow until he got hit in the back of the neck with something. He screamed in pain and clutched the back of his neck with his right hand where he felt it. He turned around and saw Colette catch one of her chakrams.

"How could you!" Colette scolded, basically asking how that military official could possibly have the nerve to hurt Lloyd the way he did.

The man grumbled, then took out a handful of explosive pellets from a pocket in his white pants and got ready to throw them until Lloyd ran up and kicked him from behind. The man fell forward and flat on the floor.

Lloyd took this quick opportunity to attack the man while he was down. He backed away, then screamed "RISING FALCON!"

Lloyd shot up into the air like a rocket and then pointed himself downwards towards his enemy in a diagonal slant. Both of his material blades were pointed at the person as he lay on the ground, ready to finish him off.

But just as Lloyd's flamberge and ice coffin blades were about to strike him, the soldier rolled out of the way and shot himself up. He obviously had some training as a martial artist.

Now the man was back on his feet and was in a sparring position, looking as angry as ever. But just as he was about to take a swing at Lloyd's skull, a grunt in the man's fleet entered through the door.

"General Stromm!" yelled the apparently newly-recruited soldier, "we've found something up ahead. It looks kind of big."

"Wait…you're Stromm?" Lloyd asked.

Stromm grunted. He looked at Lloyd and Colette and gave them a "this-isn't-finished" look, and immediately ran out the door to see what the soldiers were staring at.

Lloyd and Colette were going to run out after Stromm, but they what looked like over fifty soldiers standing there at once, waiting for them after they came out. There was no way the two could take on all fifty soldiers at once.

"Erg…all right, let's get out of here," Lloyd said to Colette when he realized just how outnumbered they were.

"Hah!" sneered one of the random soldiers in the crowd. "You ain't going nowhere, kid!"

"Oh yeah?" Lloyd asked. He gave Colette a quick nod of the head, signaling it was time for them to escape. Both of them sprouted their angelic wings, leaving the troops looking at them in disbelief.

Lloyd and Colette turned away and started flying back to Kayne's ship for safety. When both of them landed on the ship's deck, they took a few deep breaths as they regained their strength after that brief encounter.

"What happened?" asked Kayne, running out onto the ship's deck to greet them. "Are you guys okay?"

"We're fine," Lloyd answered. "We just fought Stromm. Man, can he put up a fight!"

"Is he dead? Did you beat him?" Kayne asked hopefully.

"No, sorry," Lloyd said, looking deflated. Kayne also looked fairly disappointed at this news.

"He seemed like a really good fighter," Colette said, putting her input in.

"Yeah. For a 40-year old, he certainly knows a thing or two about keeping his opponent on his feet," Kayne informed.

"Whoa, he's forty?" Lloyd asked, surprised.

"Yeah," Kayne replied. "But he's a great fighter because of his experience. Ever since he was named a General for leading his entire fleet to victory in a battle a long time ago, he's become very confident in himself. I think that confidence has shown through and allowed him to win quite a few battles."

"I wouldn't be surprised," Lloyd said.

"He's one of the highest-ranked men in his army's history," Kayne continued saying, "So I wouldn't take it as any surprise if he was stronger than you anticipated. Still, I don't think you guys will have any trouble defeating him."

"Wait, what do you mean?" Lloyd asked.

"You're the heroes of this world, aren't you? You and Colette? If anyone can take on Stromm and stop him from destroying our world, it's you two."

Colette and Lloyd suddenly looked like they had become very uneasy with what was being asked of them. This entire war was not something that they wanted to get caught up in, but they didn't want to just leave Kayne hanging and risk having his entire world destroyed.

"So, what do you say?" Kayne asked hopefully. "Will you two help us defeat Stromm and save our world?"

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I know I update usually once every other day, so sorry that this took a couple days longer. But, I've been really busy over the past few days, plus I work during the summer so that's going to eat up a lot of my time. Sorry if my updates are a bit slower than normal, guys.