((A/N: Sorry it took so long to get this updated. I finally worked on it while at school and got a good amount of work done on it. Done with it on paper.

BurnBlRD: Heh, thanks. I had trouble writing a lot of these chapters.

Chaychan: Thanks for the comment. I had to picture it in my head in several different scenarios until I got it to work.

Mutation Ivori: I got the idea from my friend mr.rubbish to be honest. He had done it in one of his stories. Glad you like it though.

Greyfirestorm: All I gotta do is keep typing it up. :P))

Chapter 8: From Seeing the Rough Wave

Rico couldn't hide her surprise as she saw the large dock that they stepped out on. What was even more surprising was the fact that there was a huge underground channel that stretched from end to end, going even beyond sight. Murky green water lapped at the edge of the dock softly, fluorescent lights shining down overhead with orangish colored light from their fixations on the cavern ceiling. A cargo raft, the kind commonly used to transport military supplies back on Coral, waited in the water at the dock's edge. On the dock itself were stacked sealed boxes of supplies. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Pioneer 1 had built the entire waterway, but just where did it lead to?

"Rico, I've got a really bad feeling about this," Danielle muttered quietly, standing beside her.

Rico nodded in silent agreement, her eyes catching a flicker of movement near the dock's edge. It looked like an Evil Shark, but it was small and undeveloped, lacking the Photon bladed arms. Was this the original form of the creatures? Rico pulled Danielle behind one of the boxes, taking cover and watching the young creature with interest. It curiously poked around the boxes with one of its underdeveloped arms, letting out high-pitched squeaking sounds. Rico just peered over the box at it, catching sight of a slight disturbance in the water. A large centipede-like monster surfaced slowly, a large skull mask with a hole for a single red eye on its face. That one red eye locked onto the young shark with intensity, long tentacles with barbs on the ends waving in the air before one shot down, the barb plunging into the shark's flesh. Rico watched, appalled, as some type of liquid flowed through the translucent tentacle and into the animal's body. The barb pulled out as the monster sunk beneath the waves once more. The shark had fallen to the ground now, writhing In agony and screeching, its flesh rippling, especially that around its arms. Within the span of a few seconds it had become an exact copy of the Evil Sharks that they had fought for so long against throughout the caves, its blue Photon blade arms scraping the floor as it stumbled to its feet. "Danielle…" Rico spoke softly, not even needing to explain what the young teen needed to do.

The teen silently raised her Sniper, resting the bulky weapon on the top of the box as she took careful aim. She squeezed the trigger once, a single blue Photon bullet drilling into the head of the Evil Shark. It toppled over backwards out of sight into the water with a splash, sinking beneath the waves. Rico recorded a message capsule warning about what they had just witnessed and placed it outside of the door to the previous room, rejoining Danielle and scanning the rest of the dock. She didn't see the monster again. After a few seconds she finally rose to her feet, stepping forward.

Danielle gave Rico an incredulous look, her eyes wide. "Rico, what're you doing?"

"Getting on that raft. We need to move on."

"B-But that thing! You saw what it did! It could do the same to us!" Rico looked down at Danielle as she still crouched behind the boxes, holding the Sniper in her hand. There was a terrified look in her eyes now. After seeing what happened to the shark, she was obviously too terrified to go anywhere near the water.

Rico didn't blame Danielle for being afraid. To be honest, she was just a bit uncertain herself. Choosing her words carefully, she tried to sound encouraging and confident. "Danielle, if we want to get to the bottom of this, we'll need to take this risk and go on. If the monster attacks, we should be able to hold it off. We just need to avoid those tentacles."

Danielle eyed the water warily, not moving from her position. Rico held out her hand to Danielle, studying her reaction. She trusted Rico with her life, and it was evident by the fact that she took Rico's hand after only a few seconds of hesitating. Pulling her friend to her feet, the two moved slowly onto the raft, which came to life automatically. It left the dock at a slow pace at first before gradually speeding up. It didn't take long for a loud splash to come from the stern of the raft, Rico spinning around to see the giant creature from before leap out of the water. It was incredibly huge, diving back into the water with a loud splash before coming up along the starboard side of the raft. Rico didn't hesitate, taking out her Red Mechguns, her eyes flickering to the enemy information on her arm unit. It was De Rol Le, an Altered Beast and most likely the source of the mutations within the caves. She snapped the weapons up and pulled their triggers, a hail of yellow Photon bullets slamming into the bone mask the beast wore.

De Rol Le dove beneath the waves, vanishing beneath their murky depths. Rico took slow and even breaths as she looked at the water, Danielle kneeling down to steady her aim as she held the Sniper. "Danielle, be careful." When she didn't reply, Rico glanced over at her. Danielle was already aiming at the water when De Rol Le suddenly leapt up and latched onto the raft with two powerful mandibles just beneath its mask. The added weight titled the raft, and Rico very nearly lost her balance. She held down the triggers to her Red Mechguns, once more aiming for its mask. Even though the rest of its body was out of the water, all of it was covered in light purple armor.

Rico gritted her teeth, the raft tilting so much that they could no longer stand up straight on it. Rico quickly swapped her weapons for her Red Saber, plunging it into the floor of the raft to hold herself in place while Danielle slid down and landed with her feet on the bone of De Rol Le's mask. Pretty soon Rico wouldn't be able to stay on the raft herself, and the two of them would be plunged into the water, easy prey for the beast…

Alarms on the raft were beginning to go off, the engine sputtering before shutting down. A smooth, mechanical, female voice stated that the load was too heavy on one side and that the engine was being shut down until the load was balanced back.

Rico saw Danielle firing at something beneath her feet, shards of bone flying into the air. De Rol Le's tentacles waved over its head, and Rico instantly knew what It was about to do. "Watch out!" she warned.

Danielle looked up at her, firing one more shot that splattered green blood back on her slightly. One of the tentacles shot down, brushing against Danielle's side and slamming into the deck of the raft. Danielle gasped in surprise, wind milling her arms in an effort to keep herself balanced. As the tentacle pulled out and brushed against her again, Danielle lost her footing and fell sideways into the water. Rico bared her teeth, bracing her feet against the raft as she pulled out the saber and dropped down, narrowly avoiding another tentacle strike. Aiming right for where Danielle had managed to shoot through the mask, she plunged her Red Saber into the dark red flesh beneath. The Photon blade tore easily through the small opening in the armor, searing through flesh and muscle.

De Rol Le roared in pain, releasing its powerful hold on the raft and sinking back into the water. The other side of the raft fell back into the water with such a jolt that Rico nearly lost her balance and fell to the floor of the raft. She looked around frantically for Danielle now, trying to find the teen before the raft started back up. She had fallen into the water, but Rico didn't see her just now. If she was still in the water when the raft started up…

"Danielle! Where are you?" she shouted, her voice echoing off the tunnel's walls. A slight splashing noise came from the stern of the raft, and Rico instinctively readied her weapon even as she realized that the splashing wasn't nearly as loud as that of De Rol Le's. That was when she saw Danielle swimming as fast as she could towards the raft. Behind her, De Rol Le slowly rose from the water, hunting its helpless prey. In seconds it would get her, and there was nothing Rico could do to help her. "Watch out behind you!" Rico warned, even though she knew it was too late.

--

Danielle felt a burning pain in her arms and legs as she swam, gasping for air and trying not to swallow any of the disgusting-looking water that she swam in. As soon as she had fallen into the water she had stored the Autogun, incredibly thankful that the arm unit still worked even in water. She could almost feel De Rol Le behind her, bearing down on her quickly. A shadow loomed over her, and Danielle looked back to see the beast rising out of the water. It would come down and crush her, either drowning her or leaving her as an easy target to be mutated into some deformed monster…

Dive!!

Danielle dove down into the murky water, getting tossed about in the strong current as De Rol Le crashed into the water. She struggled to get her bearings straight and swim for the surface, but she was so disoriented she couldn't tell which way was up. Her lungs burned, yearning for oxygen. As soon as her head broke through the surface, Danielle gasped heavily and clawed at the air, attempting to grab onto the metal raft. Danielle felt powerful hands grab her arms and pull her out of the water, and she squinted her eyes to see a very relieved Rico. "How did you manage to survive? I thought it crushed you!"

"I… I dove…" she managed to gasp between breaths. The raft shuddered slightly as the engine came to life, once more continuing its trip down the underground channel. "Is it… gone?"

Rico frowned, pulling Danielle up to her feet. "I don't think so. I hurt it, but not as much as I had hoped to."

Danielle tried to calm her racing heart, adrenaline pumping through her body as she tried to recover from swimming so hard in such a short amount of time when she wasn't used to it. She could hear a sound down the tunnel that was fast approaching them, the sound like something huge crawling on the ceiling. Immediately, Danielle took out her Sniper and aimed up at the rock ceiling, peering through the scope and spotting De Rol Le crawling very quickly across the ceiling in their direction. "Watch out!" she shouted as rocks cascaded down from the ceiling and into the water, beginning to fall on the raft. Danielle dove out of the way as one of the rocks nearly slammed into her head, another just barely missing her right hand before they rolled off into the water.

Danielle was about to ask Rico if she was okay when she heard the sound of mechguns firing above the splashing of rocks. De Rol Le now dropped from the ceiling ahead of the raft, swimming in front of it. It still didn't seem fatigued, their attacks barely doing anything to it. "Rico, I don't think we can keep this up! We're barely hurting it!"

Rico shot a backwards glance at Danielle as she got to one knee and readied her Sniper. Taking aim, she fired at De Rol Le as it began to come up on the starboard side, trying to aim where its chitin armor was weakest. It jumped slightly out of the water, purple spheres of energy shooting out from its flank in a wave at them. Danielle brought up her arm unit, the Flame Barrier coming alive to block the energy, flaring up as the spheres slammed into it. Danielle glanced sideways at Rico, who now held her huge Red Sword. De Rol Le leapt over the raft to the port side, and in this instant, Rico shot up the heavy blade in an overhead swing that sliced deep into the belly of the beast. Green blood splattered the deck as it landed in the water, screeching somewhat in pain.

Danielle remained in her kneeling position as she fired at De Rol Le, shouting over the sound of her shots. "You have a plan yet, Rico?"

"Yeah, I do. Next time it jumps on the raft, just hold on and let me handle it." Danielle raised an eyebrow somewhat but didn't protest, knowing that the hunter was way better at this than she would ever hope to be. Still firing, she braced herself as De Rol Le fell back slightly before leaping onto the raft and clamping onto it. She stepped back and watched Rico rush forward, swinging her Red Sword and slicing deep into its neck. De Rol Le pulled away now with a screech of pain that hurt Danielle's ears before it sunk beneath the waves and vanished from sight.

Danielle looked around, noticing that they were heading for a large set of open gates, the light beyond it tinted orange. The raft passed through the gates and began to slow down as it approached a dock. It didn't seem that De Rol Le had followed them through the gates, but as soon as the raft stopped at the dock, Rico leapt up onto it and helped Danielle up. "That was way too close," Rico murmured, looking down at Danielle. "Did it get you at all?"

Danielle hadn't even thought about this, having been too distracted trying not to become food for that monster. "I don't think it did. I don't remember it hitting me," she spoke as Rico checked for any injuries, Danielle standing there in soaking wet clothes.

"It didn't. We're pretty lucky for that, too." She glanced back to eye the water warily before turning and approaching the only door on the dock. It didn't open as they approached, a military keypad near it. She pressed a few keys on it, but the thing was pretty much scrambled at the moment. "Locked again. Can you get this one open?"

Danielle had finally caught her breath now, joining her at the keyboard. Her entire body was weary from the battle, and she moved somewhat sluggishly. "Yeah, I think so…" She once more went over everything she knew about hacking into locking programs, trying not to rush too fast and make any stupid mistakes. Eventually the door hissed open, revealing a long corridor brightly lit by lights. Danielle knew almost immediately that this technology belonged to Pioneer 1. "Wow… They made all of this, but why?"

Rico shook her head, looking just as confused as Danielle felt. "I have no idea. First the caves and now this place?"

As she proceeded forward, Danielle cautiously followed behind. For some reason, this seemed familiar, almost like she had been here before. A hint of fear crept through her, making her heart race painfully fast once more.

Why am I so scared? There's nothing to be afraid of here, not to mention I've never even seen this place before. And besides, even if something did attack, Rico and I can take care of it. So what am I so afraid of?

"Danielle? You okay? You zoned out for a minute."

Danielle glanced around rapidly in slight confusion before she noticed Rico looking back at her with a slight hint of concern in her dark red eyes. "Oh, yeah, sorry. I'm okay. I guess I just got lost in thought." She stared forward once more, trying to push that creeping fear out of her mind. Maybe she would get the answers for those questions that nagged at the back of her mind later. For now, they had more important things to do.

They had gotten about halfway down the corridor when Rico held out a hand to stop her with a slight frown on her face. Before Danielle could as what was wrong, Rico silenced her and motioned on ahead. There was a slight mechanical whirring, a humming sound, then the clanking of metal. It was almost like something was walking towards them, something clad in metal.

"Seems like we've already got some company." Rico wielded her Red Saber once more, lifting it up with its tip facing towards the sounds.

Danielle withdrew the Autogun from its storage, taking a deep breath. She was physically exhausted right now, but they couldn't stop. No matter where they went, they would always be hunted by their enemies.

Hunted… and being driven deeper and deeper.