Oh, lord it's beenFOREVER. Chances are I've lost every reader I've ever had (Atleast of this story.) Though alerts and favorites remain to be seen.. Anyway, I thought it was about time I put some more effort into these stories again. And, just a note, my writing styles have changed a bit, and I'm planning on a new time-frame time passage for this one.
Chaotic World
Revelation
Rebel Base – Training Room – 4:19 AM
BOOM
A cloud of dust and sparks spilled from the doorway to the training room, and small tufts of cotton floated through the air.
BOOM
There was another, preceded by a flash of blue.
BOOM
Following the cloud part of the doorway toppled in upon itself.
BOOM
This was Mandy the Merciless pounded her worm-like tale upon the ground, and slithering into the training room, goop covering the floor.
"Pain! Do you want to bring the whole base on over our heads?" The Lord of Pretty, Pink Ponies turned and raised an eyebrow under his visor. He hadn't treated any of his wounds from the battle, and red-black blood still poured from beneath his visor, a crack spread along the glass.
"Go find Basil so he can treat your wounds." Lord Pain slinked off solemnly, and Mandy slithered over to a panel where a computer was plugged into the wall. She tapped a key and a video feed fired up, and Billy appeared on the screen. "Yes, missus!" he said goofily, and Mandy scoffed. "Come down to the training room and clean up Lord Pain's crap."
Billy spun on his chair as his antennae beeped and he spun off the chair and into a wall off-screen. There was a fuzzy "I'm okay!" and the feed cut off. Mandy sighed and slithered back up the steps, and around a few corridors, and past a tedious security door into Irwin's laboratory.
"So, any progress?"
Irwin looked up, and so did an irritated Grim. "There'll be progress when you get me off this table, mon! I'm the Grim Reaper!" Mandy almost smiled in amusement, but, ofcourse, she didn't. "Sorry, Grim, tests to run, after all these years, you really don't mind being gold?" Grim shrugged as best he could with a laser pointed at his rib-cage. "Well, it makes me look pretty." Mandy didn't say anything, that just made it way too easy for her. Then, suddenly, Irwin looked up. "Mandy, come look at this!"
Mandy slithered forward, putting her eye to the telescope again, it was the same substance as before. Shifting, changing, morphing, over and over into a million different things, and yet it stayed the same. "Yes, I've seen it, Irwin. Do you know what it is?" Irwin smirked. "What are you smiling at?" She felt a growl rumbling in her throat.
"Well, that wasn't Grim, how about that for a start?" Mandy looked at him quizzically. "Huh?" She slid the slide out from under the microsope and looked at the label, it said, in tiny, bold letters:
Slide 0126:
Apple of Discord; Skin
Fragile
Mandy's eyes widened. "What? But how?" Then she narrowed them again. "Blast!" grim sat up. "What's up?" He leaned sideways, flexing his tendons. "Congratulations, Grim. You're made from Chaos." Grim blinked. "Eh?"
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"So, you have no memory of anything at all?" Grim shook his head. Basil stroked his beard, spinning backwards in his chair and clacking on the keyboard. The druid then walked over to a shelf pulled out a small herb, which he swallowed. "For my arthritis." He muttered as he waddled back over.
"Well, you're made of pure Discordia, as Irwin likes to call it. Its sort of like an organic metal. If that makes since, its like a metal but not a metal. Its something that Eris' father, Zeus, used in his famous lightning bolts." Grim frowned. "Not a very fun guy." Basil chuckled. "Anyway, it's like the essence of chaos, and disrupts or changes everything around it, and can manipulate environments, and its super malleable, so its shape can be changed at will.
"Needless to say, its also what Zeus made into his daughter's Apple of Discord." Grim blinked. "So, I'm a giant apple?" Basil tried to look amused. "Err, yeah, I suppose." Many rolled her eyes, Grim seemed to be for real, his lame sense of humor had certainly returned.
"So, can I go?"
"Well, yes. But we will have to study you, Grim." That sounded odd, considering he was a walking skeleton in the first place, as far as anybody else knew, they painted him with faux gold paint. "Now, though, we actually have something that having you around may give us an advantage with."
Grim swung his legs over the table, and looked at Mandy. "You remember Nergal and Nergal Jr., I assume?" Grim frowned. "How could I forget, he turned us into his 'friends.'" Mandy paused. "Well, they have since taken refuge in the center of the Earth since Eris took over the surface, we have been planning to take a trip down there lately. We were going to send Lord Pain, but, you shall be far more useful with your portal-making abilities." Grim laughed. "Perhaps you didn't notice, mon, but I'm down one scythe." Mandy nodded. "Yes, but at this point, I honestly do not believe that that will be a problem anymore."
It took Grim a moment to understand, and he still didn't quite believe it or get it, but he began to get her meaning.
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"So, Grim, remember, we can turn it off whenever we want. That doesn't mean that we will, but we can. All of their lasers are set on the lowest setting, they shouldn't do much, so do not worry about it." Grim didn't feel quite as confident as the blinker lights switched on and the holographic projectors went into play. They projected several barrels and blockades to hide behind or shoot behind, along with random jets of flame from pipes on the east and west walls.
At the opposite end of the room, three doors slid up and several robots wheeled out in General Skarr's Army's uniforms. One locked on to Grim and fired lasers from its glowing, red eyes. Grim screamed like a girl and ducked behind a barrel, and shortly after, flame flew over his head.
Above, Mandy, Billy-Bot, and Jeff were in the Control Room. Jeff's furry arms stretched across the buttons and controls, expertly guiding the robots and monitoring the holograms and the flames. Grim's voice crackled over a small intercom from the speakers in the training room: "So, how exactly are these holo-thingies keeping me safe?" Mandy sighed. "Something Irwin designed into them, solid-particles or something or other."
She ignored the rest of his questions as a barrel top splintered into dust above Grim's head below. "Oh, mon." He stood up and laser fire whizzed past his skull, and the flame jet fired at him, but amazingly, it curved around his skull harmlessly, leaving a perplexed Grim as one of the robo-soldiers sent a laser through his eye socket. Above, Mandy leaned toward the plexi-glass as the fire engulfed Grim without harming him in any way. "Interesting.."
Grim looked around him and blinked as he rubbed his eye socket. "Eh?" But he ran to the left as more laser fire flew around him. He ducked behind a row of barrels as more fire shot out from the pipe behind him, swirling over his head harmlessly. He peeked over the barrels and leaped over them, a couple of lasers blowing up the barrel at the end of the row behind him.
Grim rose above the next row, which consisted of overturned wheelbarrows and shovels, with barbwire wrapped around it. Fire blew from the pipe on the right side of the chamber. Then, it was like one, smooth thought, it was as if he could barely control and his body was moving itself. His hand swept forward and one of the robots exploded into spirals of gold slime that froze in the air as graceful curves and loops and hooks. Grim blinked, it was as if he had been in a daze. "Wow."
And it was like he couldn't control it, he did it over and over, golden-colored columns bursting from the walls and constricting the robots until they exploded and sent pieces spinning over his head. He made golden spikes pierce the robots from the inside, or melt into a golden ooze that solidified on the floor.
And finally, Grim found himself on the last row, and there was a grating sound as Jeff let out another wave of robots. "Mandy!" He yelled, but she ignored him, and encouraged Jeff to continue the exercise.
Grim's vision blurred, and it was like an instinct, he brought his arms forward from the back in a downwards arch, and the floor melted and exploded into another wave of metallic gold. The golden tide engulfed the robo-soldiers in one fell swoop, muffled explosions coming from beneath. As the wave solidified in a curve above the ground, parts of it melted and collapsed from the combined heat of the explosions and the flaming pipes.
Above, Mandy, satisfied, gave Jeff permission to power down the exercise. "Aye, aye, Mandy!" Jeff said happily, and he stretched out a spindly leg and pulled a switch, powering down the pipes and the holograms. She turned to Billy, who was gazing in stupid awe with his tongue hanging out, his antenna beeping softly. "Get some cleaning bots and see if you can break down the gold."
Billy saluted, his tongue still hanging out, and ran hurriedly out of the room. Mandy followed, but at the bottom of the stairs, she turned to the training room door, Grim was sitting against the south wall of the training room. "So, how did that feel?" Grim looked at her, his eye sockets wide. "Pretty good. I don't know.." Mandy laughed derisively. "I've seen you do that a hundred times, take out a thousand men, and take out a city of a million. You are a walking superweapon, Grim."
Grim sighed sadly, "I liked being the walking undead." He looked up at Mandy. "So, the whole thing really has changed, then?" Mandy nodded, staring at Grim with emotionless, red eyes. "Mon.."
"A far cry from a limbo game.."
I do kind of apologize for making this a ridiculously serious story for a Billy and Mandy fic, I'm trying to put some of the Grim-style humor in there, but I don't know how good I am at it. But I hope you've enjoyed it so far.