Chapter 3

By the time Stella and Zach caught up with the Laleh and the team, they had already made it to the entrance of the robot, Laleh using the time to continue to gush over the team. "…I mean I'm just the hugest fan, you don't even know. I've drawn so much art of you guys and stuff and… Like, I've dreamed about something like this happening but I never actually thought it would happen! I mean, meeting one of you would've been cool enough but just… you know?!"

The team looked like they did in fact, not know, and Chiro seemed relieved when he glanced over and saw that the two of them had arrived. "Hey you two, about time you caught up."

Zach nodded politely while Stella stared down at her feet, muttering to herself, "What the hell is stuck to my shoe…"

Gibson smiled awkwardly, "Laleh here has just been… politely telling us about how much she admires the team…" Which she had been proving by recounting various tidbits about the team in disturbing detail.

Sprx was more direct than Gibson, "Are you guys sure you're not from a planet near Shuggazoom? Because she knows an awful lot about us. Heck, most Shuggazoomians don't know half the stuff she does." He frowns, "It's kinda creepy."

"It's not my fault they don't appreciate you guys as much as they should!" Laleh exclaimed

"Clearly not what he was talking about…" Nova muttered, although not very quietly. Laleh didn't seem to notice either way.

"So, uh… this is the robot? Or the entrance to it, I guess." Stella said as she stared at the large metal door before them, changing the subject. It seemed out of place, everything else around them being rock of some kind that suddenly ended at the door.

"Yup!" Otto answered.

Zach glanced around, an uncomfortable look on his face, "So… are we gonna go inside then?" He wouldn't say it out loud, but this place was kinda making him feel anxious.

Sprx looked at the three suspiciously, but before he could voice his feelings, Otto had signaled the door to open. "Open sesame!" He exclaimed as he stepped inside.

The rest of the team plus their three guests followed after him, although the three did so cautiously. Laleh out of a sort of sacred reverence for what she was stepping into, whereas Zach and Stella were merely unsure about the whole thing.

Antauri looked back at the three as they entered into the robot proper, "Follow us." He instructed them as they continued walking.

"Yeah, and try not to touch anything." Nova added, not really sure if they could do any damage, but better safe than sorry.

In a few minutes, they had reached their destination, the central room, Laleh recognized it instantly and gasped as she looked about. "Wowwwww…"

Chiro smiled awkwardly at the stunned girl, "Uh, yeah, thanks I guess." He wasn't quite sure what was going on with these three, her in particular, but that was why they were there, he supposed. "So… you guys do realize how suspicious it is that you just, ended up here, right?"

"What do you mean?" Zach asked, himself taking in the surroundings a bit, still not entirely grounded yet, this all felt like a surreal dream.

Sprx rolled his eyes, "He means that you three just popped out of a portal, made by the Skeleton King; and we're not sure if you're good guys or not."

Stella glared at the red monkey a bit, "Excuse me, but I don't even know what the hell you're talking about. All I know is that me and Zach-"

"Zach and I." Gibson interrupted, causing everyone in the room to momentarily stare at him, the blue monkey shrinking into his seat a bit, "That is to say uh… that is the grammatically correct way of saying it."

"Zach and I were in her house," She jabbed a finger at Laleh, before pointing at Zach "because genius here forgot to charge his phone, and suddenly we're here. And what kind of dumb name is 'Skeleton King'?"

"Hold on." Nova stopped her, "How can you not know who the Skeleton King even is, but Ms. Fan over here knows way too much about us?"

Laleh seemed to shrug indifferently, "Well she probably didn't watch the-"

Before she could finish her sentence, a sudden blaring alarm went off, causing the entire team to suddenly take combative stances and the other three to become tense. "What is that?!" Yelped Stella.

"The Formless alarm." Gibson said as he rushed to a monitor, the rest of the team on guard. "We installed it after a few incidents on the robot. Suffice to say, it goes off when a formless is detected in the ship."

"Did one of them follow us on board?" Otto asked.

Antauri shook his head, "Doubtful, one of us would have noticed, the door was only open for a few moments and we were all there."

While the others stayed on guard, watching the entrances to the room, Sprx was instead slowly approaching the three recent arrivals.

"Sprx, what are you doing?" Chiro asked in a commanding tone, this was not the time to be messing around, the formless might sneak up on them and attack; if it was just them they'd be fine, but if it was one of the three new kids it attacked…

But Sprx kept staring at the three, "What if it's them?" He suddenly said.

Nova snapped her head to look at the red monkey, confused by his statement, "Wait what?"

Sprx continued as he kept his eyes on the three, "What if they're formless clones?" He accused, "It'd make sense, after all, what better way to infiltrate the robot, then as people we're supposed to rescue? It'd explain why they're acting so weird."

Stella looked extremely offended, to say the least, "Excuse me! I don't even know what the hell a formless is. I'm sure as hell not one of them!"

Zach nodded and held his hands out, trying to keep Sprx at a distance as the red monkey kept staring, "Yeah, let's not do anything stupid."

However, Laleh apparently thought this was an ideal time to interject with a different opinion, "I know! You can just do tests on us and stuff! I know I'm not a formless, but I just met these two, so maybe they are! That way we can prove it."

Both Stella and Zach looked over at Laleh, stunned. "Are you a complete idiot?" Stella asked, which in retrospect, she realized was a redundant question.

Before anyone else could support or object to Laleh's plan, Gibson spoke up. "There's actually no need for that... I've pinpointed the source."

Everyone stopped and looked over at the blue simian, who started speaking again, very cautiously. "Sprx. You're… partially correct." Sprx's eyes went back to the three and he readied himself, while the three looked shocked, "It's… the girl on the left, the blonde one, the signal is coming from her."

Laleh gasped, staring at Stella, "Oh my god!" She yelped and quickly backed away.

Stella herself froze, mouth agape as the monkey team all looked right at her, in varying states of wariness and disbelief.

"Gibson, are you positive?" Antauri asked, not wanting to attack an innocent girl. After all, ever since the incident with Chiro, he believed he had gotten fairly good at subconsciously differentiating formless from normal creatures, even when disguised. None of the three newcomers had that air about them.

"The scanner is accurate within a 99% range, and less than a meter of positioning." He said quite firmly, confident in his device.

Otto wasn't as confident, "But that means there's a chance it's wrong. I don't want to hurt her if we're wrong."

Stella spoke up at this point, "Um, excuse me! Has anyone bothered to ask me!? I'm not a formless or whatever the fuck you call them. I don't even know what those are!" She was quite obviously angry, but at the same time got the sense she shouldn't outright lash out at the monkeys. She knew real world monkeys were already really strong for their size, she didn't want to know what five cybernetically enhanced ones could do.

Zach meanwhile, who had remained largely silent the whole time, and who hadn't moved from his spot, pointed at the blonde girl's feet. "Stella… what's on your shoe?"

"What?" Stella looked at him, supremely confused as to why he would ask that question. "Zach, now's not the time to-"

"No there's something on it!" Zach shook his head and jabbed his finger again, Stella glancing down at her right tan clog, noticing a slight black smear towards the very bottom. "J-Just, take it off."

Stella was a bit confused but nodded, having a slight sense as to what might be going on. She kicked off her shoe, the bottom of it now turned up to display a large black blob on the underside, "Ew. Is that what I stepped in?"

Gibson turned back to his console for a moment, before nodding. "The signal moved in accordance with her uh… shoe. That is indeed the source." He turned back, seemingly embarrassed, "Um, sorry about that young lady."

Stella looked a little steamed, but was mostly still staring at the oily black glob. "So this is a formless…?"

Chiro sighed in relief and signaled the rest of the team to lower their guards, chuckling a bit, "Well Gibson, I guess your machine was sort of right. I think it needs some work though."

Sprx backed off, looking a bit sheepish as well, before Nova came over to give him a little pat on the back. "Relax Sprx, we were all suspicious of them."

"Hey!" Laleh responded, seemingly offended, which led to a good portion of the room rolling their eyes.

Zach walked up next to Stella, also looking at the formless residue, "So uh… what do you guys do with this stuff anywa-"

Before Zach could finish what he was saying, the black splotch suddenly came to life and leapt off the shoe, straight onto the young man's arm. "WHAT THE SHIT?!" He yelled as he stumbled backwards, trying desperately to tear it off, but able to find no purchase as he grabbed at it.

The room erupted into noise as the monkey team suddenly scrambled towards Zach, Stella and Laleh watching on in respective horror and curiosity. "Get it off of me!" He yelled once more as the team surrounded him.

"Stand still!" Chiro said as he reached out with a hand glowing with the power primate, hoping to quickly grab and fry the thing.

Before he could accomplish this however, the glob, seemingly sensing what was approaching, leapt off of Zach and quickly squirmed along the floor, trying to escape. "After it!" Chiro ordered, and the team gave chase, weapons out so they could get rid of the potential threat.

It proved quite adept at dodging despite having no visible means of sensing threats, a shot from both Chiro and Otto missing. The team was quickly gaining on it, so it jumped up onto the wall, and began to squirm up, the team seeing that it was making its way towards a ventilation shaft.

"Don't let it get away!" Chiro himself took another shot at it, only just missing. The blob quickly made its way up to the shaft, nearing the edge of it. Just as it began to squirm its way against the slots in the grate, a well-placed shot from Gibson saw it splatter to bits that seemed to quickly evaporate.

"Nice shot brainstrain." Sprx remarked, as they did a quick once over to make sure that there was nothing left of the glob. Once they were sure it was gone, they looked back to see a frazzled group of teens. "You kids okay?" The red monkey asked.

Stella's eyes were still open wide as she took in what had just happened, not quite having expected the monkeys to be armed with… whatever those weapons were. But more importantly, "What the hell was that thing?"

"A formless… I think. I'm fine by the way." Zach winced as he inspected his arm, not seeing anything wrong with it per say, but it sure seemed to sting, sort of like it had been pulling at his skin.

"That was so cool…" Laleh whispered as she crept back towards the group, amazed to see her idols in action, even for a moment.

Otto grinned, "I think they're alright."

"No we're not!" Stella suddenly exclaimed, having snapped out of her daze, "You assholes were going to kill me!"

Gibson winced, but shook his head, "N-No, we were going to do no such thing. Sprx was just being overly anxious, we would've detained you and-"

"Bullshit." The blonde plainly said, staring at him angrily. "He was going to use those freaky magnet things of his on me!"

Sprx and Gibson both looked uncomfortable, the red monkey more so. They couldn't think of much to say in response.

"Stella, correct?" She looked over to see the silver monkey speaking up now, "You… have every right to be angry at us, I will admit that we panicked slightly and if not for your friend's observation, we may have indeed hurt you, I think we all owe you an apology." Antauri looked to the rest of the team, who nodded with varying degrees of guilt.

Stella sighed, "…fine." She said, begrudgingly accepting said apology.

Laleh personally thought Stella should be more forgiving, but whatever. She looked around at the team, smiling a little still, "So now what?"

Gibson was tempted to say that they should perform some tests on the three, to determine that they were alright following the trip through that teleporter. But something told him that Stella, at the very least, would object.

Nova was instead the one to speak up. "Well, seeing as we don't know where their home is, and we have to go back anyway, why don't we just give them a free trip to Shuggazoom?"

Zach was the first to respond to that, "Wait what?"

This was immediately followed by a loud "YES!" By Laleh, "This day just keeps getting better!" Seriously, she had met the monkey team, was on their robot, and was going to visit Shuggazoom, all in the space of a couple of hours. Truly her life was blessed.

"No, we have to go home. I mean…" The full weight of the situation finally seemed to be catching up to Stella as she trailed off. "I mean…"

Zach stared at the floor as he too began to realize what was going on; they were probably in another dimension, or universe, or whatever you wanted to call it, with no way home.

"Uh, are you two okay?" Chiro asked the two teens, their sudden drop in mood somewhat alarming.

Stella looked at Chiro, obviously uncomfortable, "Can that teleporter thing be reused to get us home?"

Chiro glanced over at Gibson for an answer, the blue monkey shrugging slightly, "It… might be, but frankly, it would be too dangerous. Anything that Skeleton King built should no-"

Suddenly, an alarm, different to the one before, went off and the entire robot began to shake. "What's happening?!" Stella exclaimed as she grabbed a chair to steady herself.

Otto looked at another monitor, and gasped, "Uh oh, that base we're attached to is kinda falling apart."

"What do you mean?" Sprx asked as he tried not to fall down.

"That asteroid wasn't stable in gravitational terms. The generator that kept it together must have shut down." Gibson quickly explained.

"Get to your stations team!" Chiro ordered, and the six rushed off to the transport tubes, leaving the three newcomers to try their best to not fall down as the shaking increased.

In a matter of seconds, the robot had detached from the disintegrating base and was rapidly speeding away, from both it, and any hope of the teleporter bringing Laleh, Zach and Stella back home.