Yuriskah already betrayed Model W a long time ago in the chapter when Shademan figured out his true identity. As for the whole virus thing, it's kind of close to something I have planned, but Yuriskah isn't the target. Well, enough babble, here's the next chapter:
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Aile in her X form stands next to the battered body of Girouette as she raises her buster and charges. The surrounding buildings and people all seem to vanish and turn into a dark void as Girouette tries to stand up.
Aile continues charging her buster as everything except for her, Girouette, Serpent, Pandora, and Prometheus is covered in darkness.
"What are you waiting for, chosen one? Isn't it your duty to destroy any Mavericks who are a threat to Innerpeace?" Serpent laughs as Aile looks around, trying to find the direction the voice is coming from.
"Finish him…" Prometheus voice seems to be coming from every direction as Aile starts shaking her buster. Aile uses her left arm to stop her buster from shaking as she charges up the final shot.
"Do it…" Pandora's voice seems to call out as well and Aile looks at Girouette standing to get up. Why am I doing this? Aile's memory seems to become a blur as she tries to remember the events leading up to this moment, but nothing clicks in her head.
"Aile… shoot me…" Girouette seems to be struggling against something as he stands up. Something inside Aile acted on its own as she releases the charged shot at Girouette. NO! The blue and red ball of energy flies at Girouette and completely knocks him, reverting him back to his original form.
"Boss!" Aile runs up to her boss and catches him before he falls to the ground. "Don't die on me!" Aile looks at Girouette's cracked glasses and gasps as she sees his red eyes.
"It's too late for me now… Aile… Escape from here, while you still can…" Girouette fades away and Aile hears footsteps coming from behind her. She turns her head to find Serpent, Pandora, and Prometheus walking on the darkness towards her.
"What's the matter? Wasn't this what you wanted to do when you released the trigger?" Serpent's red hair slowly begins to morph into a silver color and his green coat becomes a black color. Serpent's whole appearance begins to change until he transforms into Yuriskah.
Aile turns the other way to run, but finds herself face to face with Phantom. She turns in every direction, but sees Shademan and the other Robot Masters blocking every other possible exit.
"It's over now, Aile." As soon as the words leave Yuriskah's mouth, her legs begin to feel heavy as she realizes she's falling into the darkness.
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Aile wakes up panting as she looks around the room, reassuring herself that she was out of the nightmare. It's that nightmare again, but it seemed so real this time… Aile notices stirring in the upper bunk and realizes that Vent's already awake.
"Aile, are you up?"
"If you can't sleep under these circumstances, what makes you think I can?" Aile sighs as she remembers her nightmare. This time it was a bit different. All the other times, I woke up when Serpent appeared, but he transformed into Yuriskah. What does this mean? "I had a nightmare..."
"About boss?" Aile's eyes widen when Vent guesses right, and Vent jumps down from his top bunk in time to see her nod. "Yeah, me too, with everything that's going on, I'm sure we'll run into him again soon."
"I just hope that our meeting won't end the same way it did last time." Aile sighs and rubs her eyes as she tries to make out all the objects in the room, but can only see blurs. "Here, just sleep next to me. If we're having nightmares, we can wake each other up."
Aile moves aside and waits for Vent to make some kind of sick remark that would make her regret this, but surprisingly, he just nods and goes straight to sleep beside Aile. He's probably just as tired as I am. Well, I have some sleep to catch up on.
Vent immediately wakes up when the alarm rings. "All Guardians, please report to the Commander's Room. We've discovered some strange energy signatures that need to be investigated right away."
"Well, so much for sleep." Vent sighs as he gets off the bed and Aile follows after. "Come on, we have a job to do."
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Commander's Room
"Alright, we're all here. What's wrong?" Aile looks at Prairie and Ciel as they try to figure out a diagram on a computer.
"We've discovered three areas of strange activity. Two of them are pretty close to each other and the other one is isolated from the other two. We have reason to believe that Yuriskah and Girouette are behind this." Prairie wavers for a bit as she speaks the latter name of the two.
"It seems that they've set up a bomb in this area, for reasons we have not yet figured out. This can be a very serious threat, so X, Harpuia, Leviathan, Fefnir, Pandora, and Prometheus will be assigned to that area." Ciel finishes for Prairie.
"What!? You need all six of us?" Prometheus looks at the map on the monitor. "I don't see why you need that many people just to stop some bomb."
"We have no idea what they plan to do with it, and how much of a threat it actually is. Vent and Aile will be assigned over here," Prairie points at a glowing red dot on the map, "and Zero is assigned there…" Prairie points at a closer dot and notices someone else in the room. "Forte will be going with Zero as well…"
"We've sent groups of Guardians in the three locations already for backup. Good luck to you all." Everyone steps into their assigned trans-servers and the operators in the room begin typing and then they warp out.
"Are you sure it's a good idea to let Forte go?"
"I don't think he would have accepted no as an answer. Besides, I'm sure he'll be okay with Zero."
"Zero gets in the most trouble among all of them…"
"We can only hope that Zero can get the two of them out of this one in one piece…"
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"The readings are coming from this cave." X leads the group into the entrance to a dark cave and they all turn on their infrared vision. "Any of you see anything yet?"
"Over there!" Leviathan points to an area and all of them zoom in to find a device latched onto the floor. Everyone rushes to it to find it to be some kind of bomb.
"I still can't believe all of us have to take care of this one little bomb. I'll just destroy this thing right now!" Prometheus gets out his scythe and prepares to swing at the grey machine.
"Don't do anything rash." Prometheus lowers his scythe when he hears Pandora's voice and Harpuia steps up.
"I'll analyze this bomb and then see how we can safely disable it." Harpuia puts his hands on the bomb and starts to examine it for a few moments. "That's strange…"
"What?"
"The bomb hasn't been activated yet. It's nuclear powered, and if activated, it can take down everything in a three mile radius. It should be safe to just destroy it right here."
"In that case, let's go back to Plan A." Prometheus gets out his scythe again but it leaves his hand as the ground begins to shake and there's a beeping sound from the bomb.
"What's happening? An earthquake?" X turns to the exit to see rocks falling down and block their only exit. X's armor becomes a white color as he dives for the only opening.
"Not so fast." A purple blast makes contact with X's chest, knocking him to the ground as he sees Yuriskah on the other end.
"I'd love to make sure all of you are dead, but I have other things to take care of. Bye bye." Yuriskah waves at them as more rocks fall down, blocking off the exit.
"I'll just blast our way out of here!" Fefnir raises his twin buster and a red blast starts to form as he aims it at the barricades.
"Don't!" Fefnir stops charging when Harpuia yells. "The bombs been activated during that rockslide. If we try anything like that, we'll set it off and then die." Everyone stops for a moment as they listen to the rhythmic beeping sound.
"What do we suggest we do?" Prometheus looks at Harpuia with a look of annoyance. "If we stay, we're stuck, and if we get out, we die."
"We need to slowly remove the rocks one at a time without causing a commotion." Harpuia looks around. "Wait, there's something else in this room!"
Small containers that were hiding between the rocks have become visible since the rockslide and they break just as Harpuia finishes talking, releasing a violet gas in the room.
"This is… toxic gas… we can't stay here for long." Harpuia manages to speak between coughs, but doesn't think anyone managed to hear him through all the coughs.
"Prairie… are you… there?" X tries to get a connection across but fails. "I can't get a signal through in here."
The coughing stops as everyone gets used to the gas a bit, but they're now struggling to move. "This is just beautiful! If we take too much time getting out, then we die of gas. If we try to break out right away, we die of an explosion." Prometheus drops his scythe as he clutches his chest.
All our systems are slowly beginning to fail. Yuriskah used the bomb to lure us here the whole time! Harpuia drops his twin sabers and goes up to the sealed exit and slowly begins to dig a way out.
"We'll never get out like that!" Fefnir looks at Harpuia taking one rock at a time. "It's going to take forever, and time's not something we have right now."
"I'm not going to wait around any longer to test if that's true." Leviathan and X help Harpuia and later Fefnir decides to join in as well.
"As much as I hate working with all of you, I hate dying in a cave like this with all of you even more." Prometheus and Pandora begin to help as well as they attempt to break out of the cave.
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Amusement Park
"This is where our parents died during the Maverick raid." Vent looks around at the familiar surroundings. "This place has been closed down ever since."
"This is the spot where we first met…" Aile looks down on the area devoid of any plantlife. "It sure has changed over the years."
"Vent, Aile, the energy reading is coming from the house north of your current position." Prairie voice speaks to the two chosen ones through their communicators.
"Alright, we're going in." Both Vent and Aile cautiously open the door and step inside to a dark room.
"Where are we? I can't see anything… Ouch!" Aile hears the sound of someone falling down as she makes out the outline of Vent.
"Is anything wrong?"
"No, I just bumped into something hard." Aile watches the outline of Vent touch a strange object. "It feels really smooth, but I can't quite tell what it is in the dark."
"Alright, let's keep going." While walking around in darkness, the two chosen ones bumped into many objects like the first one. "What the heck are these things and why are there so many of them!?"
"It's so hard to move properly like this." As soon as the words leave Vent's mouth, the light turns on, momentarily blinding the two chosen ones. When they open their eyes, they see Girouette with his armor and visor in every direction.
"What technique is this!?" Vent grabs onto Model Z and X. "Rock-on!" Vent transforms but Aile stays in her human form.
"Boss, we don't want to fight you." Aile looks around and realizes where she is. "Vent, this is one of those houses of mirrors, we need to find out where he really is." Aile whispers to her partner.
"Fighting one person is a lot easier than fighting two people anyways." Vent follows Girouette's voice and swings his blade at the source he thinks the direction is coming from. When the blade hits, the mirror shatters into pieces and Vent gets knocked back by the real Girouette's Z-Saber.
It's no use. We have almost no way of knowing where Girouette really is. For once, I wish they didn't make such huge technological advancements. If I really have to fight Boss, then I guess I have no other choice. "Rock-on!"
Aile grabs onto her Model X as she helps Vent up. "Which direction did he go?"
"I lost him again." The two of them move on as they try to look for signs of Girouette. A small step is heard and the two chosen ones immediately freeze, looking around the room. Where is he?
The two of them look around only to find reflections of themselves without seeing a sign of Girouette. "He's close, I can tell." Vent grips onto his ZX-Saber tighter and Aile begins charging her buster.
"Over there!" Aile notices one of the reflections of Vent being cut and she fires her charged X-Buster, but it's met by a green wave. The wave cuts straight through the blue energy shot and pierces Aile.
"Aile!" Vent dashes at Girouette, but something seemed to change about the red clad chosen one as Vent runs straight into a mirror. A green saber wave pierces Vent from behind, knocking the chosen one down.
He's stronger than last time… Girouette starts moving closer to Vent as Vent tries to stand back up. "You two haven't gotten any better since the last time I saw you. This isn't even fun."
"Use me, I can easily defeat him." Aile hears a voice in her mind, the same one she heard the night when she was found outside of the base.
Who are you?
"I'm Model O. If you want to save you're boyfriend, then you have no other choice then to use my power." Aile reaches into her pocket and pulls out Model O.
How'd that get in there? I watched Vent when he used this biometal… Can I really risk going insane like he did?
"You want your boyfriend to live, don't you? If you don't act quickly, then he'll be killed."
No, I can't resort to using this! I'll destroy both Girouette and Vent. Aile tosses Model O onto the ground and charges up her buster as Girouette grabs onto Vent's ZX-Saber.
"How would you like it if I killed you with your own weapon?" Girouette raises both beam sabers as he prepares to attack Vent.
"STOP!" Aile launches a huge blue and red charged shot at Girouette, engulfing his whole body and knocking the red warrior down.
"Rock-on!" Vent grabs onto Model F and quickly transforms as the ZX Saber disappears from Girouette's hand. "Thanks, I owe you one."
"Rock-on!" Aile transforms into her HX form as she begins scanning for Girouette. "Over there!"
Vent grabs his two busters and fires in the direction Aile is pointing at, destroying his own reflection. Girouette runs away from the barrage of attacks and hides again. "Where is he now, Aile?"
"I'm searching…" Aile starts turning her head to look around the whole room. I can't find him in any direction… Wait, what was that!? "Vent, above you!"
Girouette dives down at Vent with the Z-Saber, knocking the chosen one down before slamming his blade on the ground, sending light rays to burst out in every direction. Aile can only hear the cracking sound of mirrors as she gets knocked back by Girouette's attack.
"Seeing as how the mirrors couldn't hide me anymore, I'm free to use that attack." Girouette grabs onto the weakened Vent and throws him at Aile while launching another wave. The two chosen ones revert back to their human forms as the attack hits them.
He's getting closer and we both have no more power left… Girouette stands above them as he points the Z-Saber downwards. "DIE!"
Aile screams as she watches the glowing green blade closing in on the two of them. Girouette hesitates for a moment before dropping his blade. "Vent… Aile… please finish me… right now!"
Girouette screams in pain and then grabs his Z-Saber again. "Sorry about that, now where was I?"
"You have no other choice." Model O begins to glow next to Aile as she realizes her consciousness is slowly leaving as dark red armor begins to slowly form on her body.
"What is this!? This biometal wasn't in our database!" Girouette backs away as Aile growls in a strange voice. "You shouldn't even be standing right now! How is this possible!?"
"Aile…" Vent opens his green eyes and stares at the purple saber that she's clutching. "Oh no, she used Model O."
"Just stay down for now, chosen one. I'll take care of you after I take care of him." Vent's eyes widen in fright as he recognizes the voice. This isn't Aile anymore. This is the same voice that spoke to me when I first used Model O. We're really in trouble now.
"So what? You think a voice change and a darker shade of red on your armor and a change in the color of your weapon scares me!?" Girouette clutches his Z-Saber as he lunges at the newly transformed Aile, but she blocks the attack easily with the OX-Saber.
"You're nothing compared to me!" Aile flicks her wrist upwards, sending the Z-Saber spinning in the air. Aile's left hand begins to glow as she slams it into the ground, sending small energy hits scattering in every direction, hitting both Vent and Girouette.
"The real battle has just begun!" Girouette catches his Z-Saber as it lands and does a somersault to prevent being smacked into the ground.
"I don't know what kind of trick this is, but it won't make a difference!" Girouette clutches onto his Z-Saber as he looks at Aile with an insane look in her eyes. Vent tries to move his legs, but it doesn't seem to be responding. This battle will go out of control, I have to find some way to stop it as quickly as possible.
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I think my word count per chapter has changed sometime in the last few chapters, but I guess that's a good thing.
The whole cave thing and mirror thing is a bit cliche, but I didn't really have a good idea of what else to do. Can any of you guys see ideas I've taken from animes and other sources? Remember to Read and Review!