Disclaimer: I do NOT own SRMTHFG at all! I only own my oc's Azalea and Ivan, which are the characters I created myself.


Chapter 8: Trust Issues

It was certainly one long interrogation for both her and Chiro. She was getting tired just trying to think up of how she should answer his questions. She could tell that even the robot monkeys were getting bored just listening, but still kept on alert just because they needed to know the girls reasons for being here. Azalea needed to answer carefully because she was already on bad terms with this Hyper Force Team. She needed to worry about Ivan, still being fairly young and all. She let out a big yawn while Chiro asked yet another question.

"So where did you come from again?"

"Earth, and no, I don't know the coordinates to my home planet so you can just skip that question. All I know is that it's in the Milky Way galaxy." From the look on his face he's never heard of that place before, but kept it in mind.

"How did you even come here and why are you working for the Skeleton King? From the other information that you've told me it seems like you have no reason to work for him."

"Because, I was taken here," she replied. "By force. I never wanted to work for him and your right, I don't have any reason to work for him, except…except…" She clenched her left fist and tried really hard to get the words out, but they wouldn't come. Chiro knew that he targeted her weak spot.

"Except for what?" the boy asked.

Another few moments of silence.

"Ahh! Never mind that! I was only ordered to destroy you and that's what I was doing…until the Skeleton King broke his promise." She whispered her last few words and Chiro was going to question her further, but Antauri put a hand on his shoulder.

"Let's not push her any further. She's still recovering after all and it would affect her health to put more stress on her. Within time she'll open up to us." Chiro looked at Antauri and then back at Azalea, before brushing the monkey's hand away and leaving the room. The other monkeys took their leave too, except for Gibson. He was still trying to figure out the next step in having her wounds heal faster, with the advanced technology that they have. He began talking to himself a little and got careless since he didn't know that Azalea could understand him. She suppressed a giggle and he hastily turned around and stared at her. She wiped the smirk off of her face and said nothing. Gibson continued to do his calculations once again and recorded Azalea's condition thus far.

In the main room of the Super Robot Chiro and the monkey team were there, pondering over what to do with her next. They would take her to the space prison outside Shuggazoom, but for a half an hour interrogation they still didn't get the much needed answers to their questions. Maybe Antauri was right, doing things that way wasn't the best thing to do to Azalea.

"So what do we do now?" Sparx asked, breaking the silence. "We captured one of the Skeleton King's best allies. We should take her to the prison."

"We would do that with the run of the mill bad guy," Antauri began. "But she's hiding something important from us and we don't know what that is yet. Even if we do take her to the prison, there's a good chance that she could break out. We don't know how powerful she is."

"She does have a very strong dark presence," said Nova. "Or at least she used to. She hasn't used those Powers of Darkness since she's been here."

"That's because the handcuffs that Gibson put on her wrists were made to suppress that type of power," Chiro explained. "From what Azalea told us so far, she was supposedly forced to work for the Skeleton King in order to destroy me and you guys."

"I really don't think that she's the super evil type or anything," Sparx began. "I mean, sure she's done a number on the Super Robot, kidnapped us and the civilians and stole Otto's tools, but other than her rudeness and aggressive attitude, she wouldn't kill anybody."

"But how do you know she's not capable of killing?" Nova objected.

"Because, remember the time that she broke into the Super Robot without us noticing or the alarms going off? She could've easily killed any one of us in our sleep, but she didn't. And the time where one of the formless released the handcuffs off of me, it was most likely her. Who else would it be?" Sparx did have a point and everybody knew that. It didn't mean that they still weren't suspicious about her either, but had no choice but to agree with the red monkey. Otto jumped up and down enthusiastically.

"How about we can see if she would join us?"

"Are you crazy?!" Nova exclaimed. "We don't even know her!"

"I agree," said Chiro. "I'm not going to let her go around without some kind of restraints." Antauri deeply thought about it.

"Actually…that's not a bad idea Otto."

"What?!" everyone yelled.

"Think about it team, she's had us in a pinch before numerous times and sure she could do some harmful attacks on us, but once Azalea has the opportunity to exterminate us she doesn't. I think we should give her a chance. From now on she's welcomed to stay with us in the Super Robot, without any kind of handcuffs or restraints. If she passes then she could join our team."

"But what if she doesn't?" Sparx asked.

"Then we'll put her in prison." Antauri and the rest of the team turned to their leader for a response. Chiro didn't like the idea of that Azalea joining their team, but if she really was telling the truth then maybe she wasn't so evil after all.

"Fine," he said rudely. "But she's given just one chance."

Just then Gibson came out of the healing chambers and shut the door on his way out. He began giving the team a report on Azalea's condition.

"She's certainly better than before, but might need another two to three days of resting in order for her wounds to completely recover. Azalea's only been here for a few days now."

"What's she doing now?" Chiro asked.

"I gave her some drugs. She's going to be sleeping for quite a while now."

"That reminds me," Nova began. "What did you find on that sword that Azalea was carrying around with?" Gibson thought about it for a minute before answering,

"I did do some research on it before Azalea aroused from her sleep before. What I found about it was astounding. This sinister sword…well…has a mind of its own. It won't allow anyone to wield it except for Azalea." The team was taken aback by what he said. This was strange, even for Gibson to admit this. That sword that the Skeleton King gave Azalea defied the very essence of logic and science itself. Maybe that's why he gave it to her in the first place because maybe that sword wouldn't allow even the Skeleton King to use it.

"No way," said Sparx. "That sounds a bit farfetched."

"Even for me it does," said Gibson. "But that sword is very dangerous. When I tried touching it the sword gave me a terrible shot of its dark energy. I've sealed it up tight within an electric force-field. It assure you all that it won't be able to get out so easily. As for the rest of you what are you planning to do with Azalea once she's healed?"

"We're going to have her join the team!" Otto blurted out.

"What?"

"Well, not all at once," Antauri said. "We don't think that Azalea's as evil as we think. At least that's what we know so far. Like Chiro said from what she's told us so far she was forced to work for the Skeleton King. At the same time we don't know if she's really telling the truth or not."

"So in another words," Chiro added. "We're going to have her stay with us for a while without any kind of restraints on her. If she doesn't betray us, then we'll believe her and she can stay or join us." Gibson allowed all of the information sink into that big head of his for a moment before saying,

"Yeah, it's a good idea." The six of them then agreed to do the plan and test Azalea once she wakes up. Of course, she won't tell her that they're testing her, but might end up getting suspicious when they suddenly take the restraints off of her.

The next morning when Azalea woke up she sensed that something was off. She awakened to feel herself lying on a bed. An actual bed. The fresh sheets felt so good to her; it's been forever since she's slept on a bed. Two months to be exact. Azalea breathed in a sigh of relief and snuggled into the bed more, before realizing that she didn't have the handcuffs on her anymore. Much to her suspicions she hastily sat up from the bed and stayed on her guard. She looked around the room. She was the only one in it. Azalea thought that they must've had some kind of cameras or digital recording devices on the room or something. She said to herself,

"Damn, what's this stupid Hyper Force Team planning now?" She knew that they were probably watching her from a camera somewhere, but that was alright with her. Actually, Azalea hoped that they heard those words she spoke. She manically laughed thinking about it. She saw that on top of the bed was a fresh pair of clothes; similar to the ones that she had on before they were covered in tears and blood. Azalea picked up the clothes and inspected them to see that it was black loose fitting trousers with a violet fitted tank top; the straps in the back of it crisscrossed. She got up from the bed and searched the bedroom for any cameras anywhere, but didn't find or see any. She thought about it for a moment.

"Hmm…that's weird. They leave me in a room with no restraints on whatsoever and with no cameras. Hmm…" An idea sparked in her head. A rather disturbing one. Azalea was tempted to do something really bad to them and possibly to escape, but shook her head. "No Azalea! You shouldn't do anything until you know what's going on. For now I'll stay with them, but…" She felt uncomfortable to finish her sentence. She still wanted to get out of here as fast as possible to find her brother that was lost somewhere in that galaxy. Azalea couldn't bear to live with herself if Ivan died because of her. She passed over the thought and decided to stay with the Super Robot…whatever team in the meantime. She still couldn't remember their full team name. Azalea changed into the clothes they provided her with and went over to the bedroom door. She turned the door knob to see that it was left unlocked. She lowered her voice into a whisper.

"Okay there's definitely something wrong here." She opened it and went out to the main room of the Super Robot.

When she did she saw that the rest of the team was there too. Right when she walked into the room she heard the robot monkeys greeting her. She waved and said hi to them awkwardly and saw that Chiro was working on some kind of machine. She went over to him and asked what he was doing.

"Oh, this? It's a translation device so that you'll be able to understand the monkeys." He made a few more adjustments to the small machine and plugged it in. "There we go." Now that the translation device was on Azalea felt like she could speak freely with the monkeys now, natural to understand them. She noticed that Gibson had a cup of coffee in his hand and it sure smelled good. Back at home she used to drink a lot of coffee. Exactly three shots of expresso each day so that one day she could drive like those Italians in Italy. Azalea didn't know whether or not they drank coffee in the show, since she hardly watched it, but she turned to him, wide eyed.

"I didn't know that robot monkeys could drink coffee."

"Sure we do," he replied, taking another sip. "I like drinking mine black." She rolled her eyes.

"So does my dad. I like mine with extra milk and four heaping spoonful's of sugar." Gibson gagged at the thought of it. She could've sworn that he almost dropped his coffee.

"Then you'd mind as well not be drinking coffee at all. You should learn to taste the natural flavor of the coffee a bit more." Chiro was speechless when Azalea and Gibson were actually having a conversation together. The other team members were startled as well. All their eyes were focused on her. She shrugged her shoulders.

"What? The device is on…isn't it?"

"Umm…but…I didn't even turn it on yet." Right when Chiro said those words she felt like cursing every word in the book, but she didn't. She got totally burned from him! At first she didn't say anything, but then her blank expression grew into embarrassment as she felt their eyes pierce through her.

Crap! She thought in her head. I was had!

"Do you think you could be as kind as to explain this to us?" Antauri asked. She swayed uncomfortably back and forth, a big guilty grin spread across her face.

"Sure, but…can I have some coffee first?" Gibson showed her where the coffee pot in the room was and said she could put anything she wants in it. She poured herself a cup and the blue monkey had a disgusted look as she poured half of the sugar bowl into her cup. Azalea stirred it up and took a sip of it; satisfied she thought it was about time to give them an answer.

"Uh, yeah, about that…I'm pretty sure the reason why I could understand you guys without a device is probably because the Skeleton King planted a brain chip in my head…somewhere."

"What?!" the team exclaimed. They were certainly shocked once she said that. Chiro was more enraged then anything. He crossed his arms and his tone was sharp.

"Well that's just great. Tracking our every movements and spying on us now are you? What other secrets are you hiding from us?" As Azalea took another sip of her coffee she felt something in her head snap. She thought it was about time to pour out everything that she knew so far. At this time she was tired of being accused every five seconds from Chiro. Her yells quickly turned into screams of rage.

"Well excuse me, but it's not like I wanted a chip in my head! When I was first captured and brought to this stupid galaxy that bag of bones did it to me before I could even object! I had no idea where I was and everything that I knew was all left behind! If I didn't work for that damn Skeleton King, then…my brother would've been killed! So just get off my case will ya!" With that she took her coffee and marched out of the vicinity and into the bedroom she was in before. From behind the door they could hear loud sobs coming from her. Everybody was dead silent after that. They didn't know what else to say.

"Hey Chiro?" Otto asked.

"You don't need to rub it in Otto."

"Look Chiro," Antauri began. "We were all doubtful about Azalea for obvious reasons, but her speaking this seriously…I think she's telling the truth."

"Yeah," Chiro agreed. "If she was lying I guess she wouldn't be crying." He thought about what she said about having a brother. How nice it must've been to have a sibling who you could get along with, spend time playing video games together with and talking to one another. He was a bit envious of her.

Later on that afternoon Azalea was sitting on the floor, with her back to the side of the bed and her knees to her chest. She glanced over at the empty coffee cup next to her and wished that she had more coffee or could try one of them holographic snow cones she always saw children eating. She loved anything sugary and sweat, but her mom never allowed her to eat that many sweats because she said that it would "cause cancer", which was true, but still couldn't help herself at times. She always thought that talking down to cancer would help make it go away.

It wasn't long before she heard a knock at the door. She jumped a little and had a feeling that she knew who it was. Azalea's heart raced thinking about what he might say about her little outburst. She told him to come in. Chiro opened the door and walked into the room. He took in a deep breath and before he could say anything, she put the palm of her head in front of his face.

"Stop! I know what you're going to say! This happens in movies all the time. Just cut the fluff crap already! Besides, I'm the one who needs to say sorry more than you anyway and to the others as well. So I'll start with you…I'm sorry Chiro. I'm also sorry that I used up half your guy's sugar bowl for one stinking cup of coffee." Chiro paused and smiled, lightly nodding his head.

"Yeah, it's alright. We can always get more sugar. And I…well…didn't know you were trying to protect your brother by…trying to work for the Skeleton King." It was awkward for him to admit that, being it a very…interesting way to save someone she cared about; she completely understood. Azalea had a few tears of happiness trickling down her cheeks, before hastily wiping them away and regaining her composure. She laughed and waved her hand like it was nothing.

"Eh, none taken. Please forgive me of my rudeness, but I'm always like this. Please don't take offense. With some of the things I say, it's a bad mistake to take me seriously."

"Okay, I'll keep that in mind Azalea. I was just wondering if maybe we could all start over again. We were on bad terms before." She put her hand up in the air.

"Sure. I also promise from the bottom of my heart that I'll never attack you again." This was her way of saying to him that she's serious about what he just said. He accepted it and said that it was alright. She stood up dramatically and put her fist up in the air. "NOW! Let's go to the arcade! I'm looking forward to using my wicked gaming skills on beating every high score out there!" Chiro didn't know that a girl his age was into games that much. He thought that maybe this was what she meant by "it's a mistake to take some of the things she says seriously". He wouldn't think that she would escape from them while playing games. He shrugged and figured, why not?

"Alright, let's go. I need to find an excuse to get away from Gibson's next boring science lecture again anyway."