Chapter 2 - A new friend and enemy

There's nothing better in the world than being able to lay in bed all day long and not having to do a single thing. I just love summer holiday-

"Wakey Wakey!"

Weird. I don't remember my alarm clock sounding like this but whatever I'll just ignore it. Or more likely tried because something grabbed my shoulder and started shaking me.

"Outta bed young lady! Your pancakes are going to be cold by the time you'll get down~"

Now that I think about it that voice sounds pretty familiar. Just where did I...? Oh shit.

I quickly sat up and stared at the last person I expected to see.

"There! That wasn't so hard now was it? The pancakes are still waiting you know~" Ok, just to make sure I wasn't still in la la land I slapped myself rather hard.

"Aw, come on! Is this the greeting I get after not seeing you for almost a year?" I pinched myself since I strangely enough barely felt the slap.

I didn't really listen to the person's rant and almost missed when I was in the room alone once again. And then it just as quickly came back to me. Okay so my best friend's mother is here. That woman is just impossible to forget since she made me call her 'aunt' by drilling it into my head for a whole week. I actually like her upbeat personality which she shares with Xyria but if you put the two of them in the same room... let's just say that it's bad for your health and sanity. Anyway I'll do something about it later. Now I have to think about that 'dream' I had. If it was a dream at all that is.

Meanwhile, in a galaxy not so far away... Or not. Just near Mars

"What do you mean they got away?!" The silence that inhabited the almost always silent spaceship was suddenly not so silent anymore. Not that I need to tell you the reason.

Anyway, the shouting was coming from a very large room which was filled with over 100 aliens who were facing their now angry leader. The creepy part was that they all looked the same except for one thing. They wore a white cloak while the leader had a black one.

"One week... I only leave for one stupid week and this happens!? You useless imbeciles!" All of them visibly winced and few of them hid under the table and only came out when the leader seemed to finally calm down enough to talk without shouting. Much.

"Alright. Let's just pretend this never happened. However... " At the word 'however' every one of them started shaking in fear and some even started to cling to one another.

"... I'll deal with this personally and as for you-" They were now trying their best to not pee themselves... And ultimately failed. "-I've got just something that such a pathetic excuse of a clone will be perfect for! Muhahahahaha-cough-cough-dammit, not again!" The clones went still and sweatdropped.

And so after about 3 hours of screams of agony and insane laughter, the ship finally headed to Earth. If only he knew that it was the worst idea he could ever get.

Back on Earth with our 3 not so normal heroines

It was real.

It was definitely fucking real.

For one, I don't remember my hair being so long (only god knows how I didn't manage to step on it yet). And for two when I experimentally tried to summon the armor, it appeared instantly in a red flash and behold- here I now stood in my bathroom looking at my reflection in the mirror. It was real and I was really kidnapped by an alien. Oh my god. I would have probably continued panicking if Xyria didn't knock on the door.

"Gaelle? Mom said that you still weren't coming so we came to check on you. Are you okay?" Was she being serious? Didn't she notice anything?

"Of course I'm not okay!" I said and after quickly unlocking the door, pulled them both inside and locked the door again.

When they saw me they stared... and stared some more before a look of realization appeared on their faces. In a blue and green flash, they now had their armors on top and looked a lot like me when I first found out.

Which just gave me a good idea and something I wanted to try. So to put it simply I slapped them with the same force I did just a while ago in my room. Which was in my opinion a lot.

It worked and they snapped out of it instantly.

Xyria seemed ready to say something while her hand almost touched her completely unscratched cheek but absurdly stopped. She turned to me then to Reva and then back to me again while slowly saying.

"Okay, so that wasn't a dream and I just did not feel that slap at all. Anything else I should know about?" We only looked at each other and after dismissing our armors went to eat our breakfast like nothing happened. This was just too much for us to take right now.

Later that day

It may sound unbelievable, but we were missing for a week. That's also why is aunt here. After finishing our breakfast she started asking us all kinds of questions which we answered without a problem until it came to "And why weren't you answering me when I kept calling you all week? You had us all worried sick!" By us she meant our parents and the only good excuse we could give her was that we somehow managed to damage our phones. She didn't seem like she was going to buy it, but left it be after a while and changed the topic. Bless her for being so understanding.

She drove back home at 4 PM after making sure for the last time that we were completely fine. She would have stayed longer, but she has been very busy lately because of some problems at work. And since we were alone once again we decided to go to the park. Yep, exactly the same one where that stupid comet almost hit me.

It was dark by the time we started to slowly head back home. We only stopped at the lake to feed the ducks since Xyria took some bread with her. She always does.

We were chatting while throwing small pieces of bread into the water when suddenly all of us got a really bad feeling which was only confirmed when all the animals in the park started acting strangely. Squirrels jumped down from the trees and started running far away, the birds were making panicking sounds while trying to get as far as possible and even the ducks we were feeding just a while ago were now joining the others. Something was definitely not right.

Then a very shiny glowing blue portal appeared out of nowhere and after sucking in like everything in the radius of 10 meters threw something out.

I'm sure that I will keep asking myself why we just decided to look at what it threw out like nothing happened.

As it turned out it wasn't a thing, but rather someone. And a young female by that ridiculously long brown hair and red and blue dress. For some reason she looked very familiar, I just couldn't remember from where. Just what is it with me forgetting things so much lately?

"Poor thing..." Said Xyria when we saw the state the girl was in. There were scratches and cuts all over her body with some serious burns.

"We need to help her." Both girls visibly jumped, but nodded and helped me pick her up to not cause her more pain.

We had no problem sneaking her to our house since no one was out this late in our part of the city.

So now we had her lying on one of the couches in the living room while we sat opposite her.

We were just staring at her for a few minutes until Xyria said something that has been nagging us since we saw her.

"Is it just me or does she actually look like Iris from Megaman X4?" Damn it, she's right. How could I forget a character from my favorite game?

"Well, if she's a reploid then it means the only thing we can try is to repair her... somehow." "We have no idea how to but it won't hurt to try right G?" Just to not be confused they either call me Gaelle or G shortly.

"Okie Dokie! Let's take her 'there' then-"

Reva didn't get a chance to finish since a phone rang. Which was weird considering that no one ever calls besides our families.

"I'll get it!"

With Xyria busy it was up to us to pick her up and carry her to 'that' place. It wasn't like she's heavy or anything but she just looked so fragile like even the slightest of touch could break her. I can only hope that we will be able to help her at all...

One week later...

As it turned out after scanning her for any inner damage we discovered that her body was far beyond repair, but her consciousness and memories were completely fine which left us with two choices. One was to try and make a perfect replica of her old body or... try and make her a new stronger one based on our design.

Yep, you heard me right. It was a total coincidence since Xyria thought it would be funny to try and scan herself. The poor girl was completely miserable after she saw the results not that we were any better. So after three days of our little depression we finally managed to get ourselves together and started working on making Iris a new body again.

It was almost strange getting used to being a... whatever we are supposed to be. Just the feeling of knowing what to do without you doing it before or sending messages by just thinking about it was enough to keep us busy all day and night. We don't need to sleep, eat or breathe either, but we still can. Our energy is always full for an unknown reason too.

Besides that, we also have a lot of combat abilities adapted to our weapons which was a sword for me, spear for Xyria and double wielding short blades for Reva. The only thing for my gun is a targeting system that can lock up on a target and allow me to hunt him down regardless of a distance or anything put between us. Or so it seems.

And then there are the elements. Xyria has water or ice and lightning while Reva has wind and nature. It was amusing to see Xyria manipulating water around her and freeze it after she liked the shape. It didn't even melt yet. Reva is able to control to some extent wind and can lift objects as long as they aren't very heavy and with just a simple wave of her hand, all the flowers in the room bloomed and looked like we bought them just yesterday.

As for me, I have chaos and harmony which I still don't know how to use for simple things. Well, I do, but I only got negative results so far. I can't bring myself to use harmony and the chaos always damaged or even destroyed something so I pretty much gave up.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. After working for more than 4 days without a break, we were almost finished. Xyria was only finishing a dress.

"There we go!" Said Xyria as she cheerfully came to the room while holding the new dress and beret. The dress looked almost exactly like the old one and only had more of a humanoid appearance to fit her.

"Perfect! Reva is starting the transmission of data and if everything goes smoothly she will be awake by tomorrow morning."

So after dressing her up we decided to sleep until morning since none of us felt like waiting.

"Starting now the transmission."

When the morning came...

I was woken up by my internal clock and after putting on some casual clothes waited for my friends.

As we waited for the elevator to take us to our underground lab Reva started yawning. It was almost unnerving that we still had normal human habits and, to be honest, I don't think any of us would even notice any difference if it wasn't for Xyria's random idea.

Enough of that. I'm almost sure that most of you must be asking why in the world do we have an underground laboratory in our house for. To tell you the truth, we have no idea either. It was just already there when we bought the house. It was also fully equipped with materials, tools, scanners, etc. The guy selling it looked like he just wanted to get away from here as soon as possible so it was way too under the actual price. Not that we're going to complain about it since it's going to be very useful in the future.

We stepped out of the elevator and started walking through the long corridors with doors heading to either a computer room, briefing room, etc. which made it look more like an underground HQ than laboratory.

Suddenly we froze.

As quiet as it may be there was an unmistakable sound of soft almost nervous footsteps. We looked at each other and with a nod tried to approach Iris without scaring her more than she already is.

There she stood with her back facing us as we rounded the last corner and to say that she was scared would be an understatement. She was shaking and her legs looked like they were going to give out at any moment.

"H-hello? Is anyone here?" Now I'm starting to regret leaving her here by herself for god knows how long.

I turned to Xyria and without having to say anything she carefully approached the frightened girl.

She was about 10 feet away from her when she stepped on something. Fan-fucking-tastic.

With a startled yelp Iris turned to Xyria. She was shaking like a leaf with fear clearly evident in her eyes and it only got worse when she noticed us in the back.

"Please don't be afraid. We're only trying to help you." Xyria tried with completely honest expression and let her body relax to show she meant no harm.

After we followed her example Iris finally seemed to calm down a little, but still looked to be a bit wary as she took a few hesitant steps towards Xyria.

She now stood in front of Xyria with a slightly nervous if not a shy expression which was soon replaced by surprise as Xyria smiled widely.

"I'm Xyria and those two behind me are my friends Gaelle and Reva. It's nice to meet you. How are you feeling? Does anything hurt?" Iris seemed confused by Xyria's friendliness, but after a while she shook her head and smiled.

"I'm Iris and I feel perfectly fine but something is... different." We all felt relieved after hearing that. Now came the part with explaining to her about her new body.

"I promise to answer all of your questions, but first, let's go somewhere more comfortable, okay?" Iris stared at us for a moment before nodding and flowing us to the elevator to take us back to the living area. She was looking at everything around her with fascination and I couldn't help but chuckle at that and made a mental note to give her a tour once the explaining is over.

Not so long after that we sat in the living room and waited patiently for Iris to get comfortable.

When she did, she looked back at us and asked a question all of us were expecting.

"I have a lot of things on my mind, but would you please tell me first of all how did I get here?"

One week later

"Come on G if you won't hurry up the girls will go without us!" I heard Iris say as I finished dressing.

"I'll be right there!"

Today we're planning on showing Iris around the city after getting to know her for a whole week. At first it was difficult, but after a day or two, she started talking to us normally. Surprisingly to us, she took the news about her new body just fine and even thanked us for going through all the trouble to help her. I'm also sure I'm not the only one to be happy about having a new friend among us. It's true that we were just fine with the three of us, but having someone like Iris around somehow improved our mood about the whole not being a human anymore. In fact, it seemed that none of us really cared about that by now. When we told Iris this part she quickly apologized and told us to not force ourselves to talk about it. I guess we must have looked rather uncomfortable during that.

After walking for an hour sixteen minutes and ten seconds (darn my internal clock) we reached the center of the city and let Iris choose where to go. People were staring at us-well more like me and Iris because of our really long hair, but otherwise didn't seem to notice any difference from any other human being in the mall which was a good thing and also meant that we did a rather decent job on creating Iris.

She was wearing a white sundress with blue flowers on it and matching ballerina flats which Xyria lent her since they were closest in height with Xyria being only an inch or two taller. Mine was too big and Reva's too small.

Iris was either obvious or just ignoring the people around us and dragged us to the nearest cafe. One of the things we learned about her first is that she quickly found liking for human food. Especially cakes.

It was almost 3 PM by the time Iris had enough and after paying we simply chatted while finishing our drinks.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing happened and it was making me nervous. It was just too calm-

"Oh my god it's a giant octopus! Everyone run!" Some random dude on the street yelled and along with just about every person who heard him we turned to look where he was pointing.

And indeed, about 2 miles and 35 meters from us was a giant floating octopus-wait is that a floating platform with the alien I killed two weeks ago on top of it? But that can't be possible... right?

Unfortunately, it was him and when he was close enough for the normal people to see him a giant screen appeared in the air and we now had to look at his ugly face again.

"Greetings Earthlings! My name is Drunt the ruler of the universe and I've come here to claim what is rightfully mine. Do not worry, I'm not planning on conquering Earth as of yet so if you stay calm and cooperate with me there will be no use of violence. If you will choose to defy me, however..." Just as he said that the octopus shot a red beam of energy to the forest where we got lost. There was a loud explosion and after the dust cleared all we could see there was a fire that was spreading quickly.

And at that moment, all the people around us screamed in panic started running away as fast as they could.

"... I will do this! So will you help me find those little girls or not?" For some reason, I felt really annoyed even after seeing what that stupid octopus can do.

"Very well then I was looking for a new planet to spread my empire anyway-"

"Stop it right here!"

Still sitting in the cafe we curiously looked at the person who just shouted. It was a tall man wearing a military uniform and hat. Just by his posture, one could tell he was a high ranked officer.

"Well well well what do we here? What do you think a mortal like you could possibly do to me?" The man must be either deaf or completely stupid because he continued shouting like he didn't hear the alien at all.

"Surrender yourself and come without resisting or we will have no choice but to do it by force!" I raised an eyebrow at that. Was he for real? I mean the alien has clearly a technology that can surpass anything on Earth without any problem.

We didn't really listen to the rest of their bickering until the alien said something that made my blood run cold.

"I've just about had enough of this! Your insolence shall not go unpunished... ALONG WITH THIS WHOLE CITY!" I don't exactly know what happened next but one moment I was just sitting there with the girls and the next I had my armor on and kicked the octopus hard just before it had a chance to fire.

Because of my kick it now had a large bent on its left side and the beam flew off to the sky. I landed gracefully on the roof of the nearest skyscraper and it wasn't long before Xyria and Reva joined me. As for the alien - Drunt was it? - he looked too shocked to do or say anything but as quickly as it came he suddenly became furious and without looking at us screeched.

"You dare to oppose me?! My own creations?! Come with me now or feel my wrath!" We couldn't help but cover our ears and wince. One thing is for sure, if we don't stop this thing, then the humanity will be in danger and I highly doubt that our military can deal with it. Which leaves it to no one but us.

Since talking would take too much time in this case we communicated with each other by sending messages.

'What are we going to do?' - Xi

'Should we try to defeat it?' - Rho

'Girls we need a plan and that will require teamwork. Any ideas?' - Gamma

'We need to keep that thing from shooting the city or even better to destroy it before it gets a chance to fire.' - Xi

'I-I think I have a plan.' - Rho

We looked at Reva-now Rho who was very nervous, but told us the plan nevertheless.

'Rho you're a genius! Alright, let's do this!' - Xi

We nodded at each other and without warning summoned our weapons and started our plan.

I jumped as quickly as I could at the octopus who has by now recovered from my kick.

It looked at me and tried to hit me, but I managed to grab onto one of the tentacles and sliced the others with my saber.

The octopus screeched in pain and with a newfound rage regenerated the damaged tentacles and tried to get rid of me.

Surprisingly luck was on my side today and I managed to avoid all of them while destroying them again.

However, I didn't get a chance to celebrate since the octopus began charging another energy beam.

Suddenly I noticed a blue and green flash in the corner of my eye and grinned. Our plan was working and the octopus was too focused on me to avoid what was coming next.

Just before the strong beams of energy made contact with the octopus I quickly jumped off, fully charged my buster gun and fired.

The result was just wonderful.

The octopus had holes and burn all over its body and looked unable to regenerate due to Xi's attack which almost froze the whole thing.

With a last few futile attempts, it let out a last screech and exploded.

'We did it!' - Xi

'That wasn't so hard after all.' - Rho

'Girls I don't mean to say I'm not happy, but I don't think this is the worst thing we will have to fight.' - Gamma

This stopped their cheering and we looked at Drunt again who seemed to be barely keeping himself from cursing out the galaxy. He was impossibly red in anger and there seemed to be coming steam out of his... ears.

"You-! I will be back and this time, I won't have any mercy on you! I WILL BE BACK!" And with that, he teleported away. Probably to his ship.

We stared blankly at the spot where he was just a second ago while thinking the same thing. Was he fucking serious? And why do I have a feeling that we're forgetting something?

"Hey you three! I don't care that you just destroyed that thing you will come with us this instant!" Oh, right, that annoying guy who had a shouting contest with Drunt.

"I think it's time for us to go!" Reva did have a point there.

"Yeah, we would like to talk longer and all but we're kind of busy right now so see ya later!"

After saying it, we quickly jumped down and ran to the cafe where was Iris waiting.

"I think I saw them heading this way!" One of the soldiers shouted.

"We need to get out of here now. We don't want to get captured or fight humans."

"Good thing I worked on a little project this last week then." We looked at Reva curiously and she only smiled.

"Don't freak out and stay still in 3... 2... 1!" And at that exact moment a strange feeling came over me. It wasn't uncomfortable just a bit weird.

When it was over Iris was the first one to react.

"That was amazing! I always wondered what it felt like to be teleported back at home-" She absurdly stopped and we resisted the urge to wince. It was clear that she missed her world and strangely enough, it only motivated us more to help her get back as soon as possible.

"Iris..." I started and she looked at me with sadness clear in her eyes.

I walked over to her and held her slightly smaller hands in mine while looking directly into her eyes.

"I promise that we will help you get home as much as we can but in the meantime, try to bear with us just for a bit longer okay?" She seemed shocked by this and without warning hugged me.

I felt the discs in my eyes narrow and she only tightened her grip.

"Don't say things like that! It's true that I miss them, but that doesn't mean I don't like being here with you!" I was shocked and before I could open my mouth to reply she cut me off and continued.

"You did something that many would never dare to do. You helped me, a complete stranger without a second thought. Also you're the best friends one could ever ask for. Until I met you I didn't have any real friends who I can rely on to help me with my problems so please don't feel bad because of me. I'm sorry for all the trouble I caused you..."

I stood still for a moment not knowing what to say, but after a while smiled and finally hugged back.

We stayed like that for a few minutes.

"Um Iris?"

"Yeah?"

"I don't mean to say I'm uncomfortable or anything but could you please let me go?" What quite didn't register in my state of mild shock was that her head was... direcly pressed to my chest. I cursed my height at that moment.

She grinned in an adorable way and only tightened her grip.

"But I'm just about comfy heeeere..."

"But IIIrriiis-" I suddenly heard giggling and paled. On our right about 5 meters away were Xyria and Reva doing their best to not laugh.

I groaned and tried to cover my face in my hands to hide my blush. No doubt they took some snaps for later use.

Today really sucked.

-Bonus-

Back to school!

School was going to begin in three days, which means that our girls had to start preparing for the new year.

That by itself included picking up the new uniforms (no one really knows why they change them every year), textbooks, mentally preparing for the insanity, annoying classmates, perverted male students and overly crazy principal.

"Can you see the light?!"

... somehow it wasn't happening.

"No."

Reva and Xyria curiously observed the display before them.

Apparently Iris got bored and decided to bug her favourite red haired friend who was just about to eat her favourite strawberry cake.

"Oh, okay."

"What was that about anyway?" Gaelle said while setting the cake to the small table next to the couch.

"Nothing really, but I just wanted to ask you something."

"Go ahead."

"You said that you will have to go back to school soon right?" Somehow it seemed that Gaelle knew exactly where this was going.

"That's right." Iris then got into something which could be dubbed as 'typical shy anime pose' with her head low and index fingers touching.

"Therefore, I would like to know if... CanIgotoschoolwithyousoIwon'tfeellonelybymyselfathome?" This earned her two amused and one wonder-stuck stare. They looked at each other and at Iris.

"Well, I don't see why not if you really want to. Just make sure to not reveal the fact you're not human." As soon as Gaelle finished, she was being hugged by Iris with her face stuck in her chest. She was not amused.

"Thank you thank you thank you so much!" And with that she ran upstairs probably back to her room.

Gaelle sighed and reached for her cake... which she just couldn't find.

Her head quickly turned to the now empty table and with barely keeping herself from going on a rampage shouted.

"IRIS!"