Chapter 4 – The Bond between Mother and Child
Zell carried Sam outside and he led the group toward the Temen-Ni-Gru, and the other girls followed closely but not to the point of hovering over him. After reaching the base of the Temen-Ni-Gru, he paused and glanced up at the sky. His bad feeling returned. Then the sky above the giant tower grew darker, to the point of having a tornado come and Zell felt the rain pelt him near the lower eyelid. He felt four new presences, then he decided to sit Sam near the door of the Temen-Ni-Gru, and began to move very slowly afterward.
"Girls, we have company, and I don't think you'll like our next opponents." Zell stated, then the rain began to pour down more furiously.
"What do you mean?" Alex asked, unaware of Zell's senses.
"I feel it too. Four Beings, completely human, are coming this way at amazing speeds." Trish explained, then she pulled out the force edge from behind her.
"No, Trish, you and Mary protect Sam; Clover, Alex and Britney will accompany me to stop these four." Zell instructed, just then his eyes became a bright neon red and he turned and walked back the way he'd led the girls. Britney, Alex and Clover followed reluctantly.
"Meka, Are you sure they're this way? I don't think they're here. It's too vile for them." Stella stated as she and the other three flew low to the ground.
"I'm positive. And besides, why else would Terry send us on this trail?" Meka replied then turned a corner and flew up to the top of a tall building that was a short distance away from the strip club that the spies and demon hunters had just exited.
"Hmm… you do have a point. But I still think that they should not have taken this mission." Gabriella said, slightly at ease of being able to stop her daughter from battling demons, and getting killed, more or less.
"I just hope we can stop them from getting in there. Who knows what things lie within that tower?" Carmen added, then landed beside the other three agents.
"So what do we do now?" Stella asked, trying not to suggest anything irrational.
"If we see them, we are to apprehend them. So we'll be trying to stop our children from getting into the tower, right?" Meka responded then she folded her arms and gazed at the falling rain at the bottom of the Temen-Ni-Gru. And after several seconds she led the parents down to the base of the Temen-Ni-Gru.
"Are they there?" Gabriella asked as she followed Meka to the tower.
"Yes I believe so. Let us make haste I'll have to kill my son if the demons haven't already." Meka said with a twisted satisfaction.
"Why do you want to kill you own child?" Carmen asked.
"He's a monster. He has no reason to live. He is a failure that no one even cared for. Even I was told that he was to be eradicated." Meka explained.
"That's not right. So you gave him a chance right?" Gabriella asked hoping to lighten the mood.
"Yes, but it ended badly. He almost killed me, his own mother! What kind of monster does that?" Meka retorted darkly.
"I hope that we won't have to fight them. It was heartbreaking the last time we did…" Stella added, changing the subject with a tear streaming down her cheek.
"Don't worry, Stella we won't have to resort to that." Carmen said optimistically.
"I truly hope so…" Stella replied softly.
Shortly after, the parents encountered Zell, Alex, Britney, and Clover and didn't believe what they had been viewing. Gabriella was more worried about finding Sam, who wasn't in sight. Carmen stared at Alex with disbelief. And Meka stared at Zell, and he stared back with a clenched fist. And Stella noticed the newfound fire in Clover's eyes.
"A-Alex…? Is that… you?" Carmen asked, tears going down her face.
"Yeah. This is me, mom. This is what I am, although I'd preferred that you wouldn't have seen me so soon…" Alex replied with her face staring intently at the ground.
"Who did this to you?" Carmen asked crying with every word.
"It… was…" Alex began slowly.
"Zell you miscreant! How dare you do such a thing?" Meka blared, causing instant hostility against Zell from Carmen.
"What! You did this to my daughter!" Carmen yelled filled with anger and sadness, afraid of what Alex was becoming so quickly.
"What did you tell them? Why are you even here? Do you crave your own death so soon?" Zell asked as he pulled a golden blade engraved with a sun on the hilt with a crescent moon inside the sun.
"Oh, my! You were right Meka! He is a monster!" Gabriella asked in great shock of what Zell was doing.
"What did you tell them? Answer me!" Zell demanded darkly, his eyes glowing with rage and fury.
"I told them what you really were." Meka smirked evilly.
"Gabby, go closer to the tower and see if you see your daughter." Meka instructed, on that note Gabriella rushed past Alex and Zell to the location of where Trish and Mary were.
Brittney gave a look of satisfaction, as she was about to see Zell's true colors. She was about to see him do something that she wouldn't forget, and get him fired and away from her friends for good. Carmen approached Alex slowly and Stella glared at Clover and demanded that she abandon the mission.
"Clover, dear, please stop this. Return home where you belong." Stella said, each word growing closer to a yell.
"No, mom I won't abandon my friends!" Clover yelled.
"Don't talk to your mother that way, young lady!" Stella barked back.
"I can take care of myself. You don't have anything to worry about. Trust me." Clover yelled; lower this time to try to get Stella to listen, only to avail.
"Then show me." Stella stated and got into a fighting stance, "Get ready."
"B-but mom…" Clover began to go into a whine near the end of her sentence.
"C'mon home, dear. I don't want to do this..." Carmen said quietly to her daughter.
"N-no. I can't. the world's counting on us. We can't just let this sit idle and eventually destroy our world. Only we can do this, mom. I'm sorry but I can't go." Alex said back, tears coming down her face at what she thought were to come.
"We'll take you girls' places and kill the boy that did this to you." Carmen stated and approached her daughter with caution.
During that time, Gabriella had encountered Trish and Mary, who were guarding Sam.
"Who're you?" Trish asked abruptly.
"I'm Samantha's mother. May I see her?" Gabriella asked with much uneasiness growing in her.
Trish shot Mary a quick look, and Mary nodded, then Trish finally replied. "Yeah, I don't see why not."
Gabriella nodded and walked slowly toward Sam's limp body and crouched down next to her and moved her hair from her face, only to see a leopard face underneath, and then she let out a loud cry of terror.
"That… that's not my daughter, that's a demon!" Gabriella cried out and stepped back toward Trish and Mary.
"Oh, brother. Why does she have to say things like that?" Trish sighed.
"What'd you do with her!" Gabriella pulled out a vial of freezing perfume.
"Now calm down. That IS your daughter! Why'd you think she's with them?" Trish asked pointing to Alex, Clover and Zell.
"Then, its true… she should've gone with her father…" Gabriella sighed then Sam, in her beast form, stood up and approached her mother.
"Get back you monster!" Gabriella called out then readied the Freezing perfume.
"…No…" Mary thought, and without a thought she fired a shot and knocked the bottle from Gabriella's hand. Then Gabriella let out a loud scream.
The scream echoed in Alex and Zell's ears, and then Meka laughed and lunged at Zell with a laser lipstick and fired it several times. Zell deflected the beams leaned to the right and cut Meka across the arm, rendering her left useless. Carmen shook Alex, to try and get her to go, to no avail, and then Carmen took several steps away from her daughter. Clover charged at Stella first and jumped over her head and kicked her in the back. Stella stumbled and caught a barrage of kicks to various areas on her body by her daughter. Alex pushed her mother back and looked grim, and tears were coming down her face.
"Then if you won't come, then I guess that you've become a monster… only craving violence." Carmen stated solemnly.
"I'm not a monster!" Alex cried.
"Yes you are, you are no longer the daughter that I raised. I'll have to follow my orders to take you in." Carmen retorted then blasted Alex with the laser lipstick.
Alex skidded back several feet then she charged at Carmen and punched her in the stomach and upward into the air. Carmen triggered her jetpack to regain her balance and flew downward toward Alex, and the two collided and began to exchange blows in the air. Zell and his mother were still on the ground battling and Zell made effective use of his speed and rapidly kicked her several times until she hovered above Zell's head, then he launched Meka higher into the air and she used the momentum of her fall to conduct an axe kick and collided with Zell's head, plummeting him into the ground. Zell struggled to raise himself and was grabbed by the neck in a fierce chokehold by Meka, who pounded Zell into a wall. Several punches connected and she leaned back to charge a power punch with her right arm but when she threw the punch, Zell held out his golden blade. Zell's blade pierced her right fist and tore through her arm then he ripped the blade out the side of her arm tearing her arm in two. Zell hopped back in a quick backwards flip and darted forward with fair speed and carved the blade into the ground and then raised the blade from the earth in an upward slash, ripping a portion of Meka's shoulder away. Meka was hurled into the air again except she spun forward and the speed of the axe kick hurled Zell into the ground, but he caught his balance and used that force to rocket toward Meka and he tore her body in two high in the sky, then detonated a fiery attack that disintegrated Meka's body. The force of the burning attack caused Zell to crash into the ground hard, and he was several feet in the concrete, out cold. Alex and her mother rushed each other repeatedly and clashed many times. Alex, using Dante's power, force her mother to lose her balance and began to fall to the ground with breakneck speed. Alex, felt slight regret for knocking her mother out so she activated her jetpack backpack and flew after Carmen and attempted to save her. Several yards were between Alex and her mother, and Carmen's unconscious bodies was falling fast, only 200 feet until she would hits the ground and leave a bloody mess all over the cement. Alex felt bad for the events prior and wanted to make it up somehow, so she flew as fast as she could, and used the accelerator earring and sped up more, and barely caught her mother and veered upward with great effort and flew her mom back down to the base of the Temen-Ni-Gru.
Clover's bout didn't last long, her mother decided to pull out of the fight against her. Stella acknowledged her daughter's skills and determination to stay with her friends, and let her go.
"You've gotten better since we last fought, Clover. I have to say that I'm proud of you. I've raised a fine woman. Complete you mission and stick with your friends. It looks like they will need you more than I do anyway." Stella stated proudly with a few scuffs on her face and body, and walked toward Zell who was in a crater nearby and pointed to him in the hole.
Clover approached the hole with caution and looked inside it, and saw Zell laying there, his eyes completely closed, and he was squirming a little and was trying to remove the glove on the right hand and was having great difficulty. Clover quickly identified what he was doing and hopped in to yank the glove off. Almost immediately Zell's body morphed into that of a grey wolf and red smoke was emitted from his body, healing himself. Clover and Stella stared in awe of the sight and Britney frozen in shock of the three fights she just witnessed, stumbled toward Clover and Stella.
"H-how…? What just went down? What's he doing?" Britney stammered and she nearly fell over.
"Ugh… that was kinda odd…! What happened to Sam?" Zell asked, reverting to his human form, and realizing what had just happened and rushing toward the tower to where Sam was supposed to be. Alex, Clover, Stella and Britney followed shortly afterward and were surprised at what they had seen.
Sam was in beast form, the form of a cheetah(I've changed it), and her mother lay on the floor, cover in blood and her suit torn to shreds.
"Zell, we've followed your orders, now what do we do?" Mary asked, holding a gun to the beastly version of Sam.
"I never expected her to transform so soon." Zell gasped and found an extra pair of the gloves that he wore, that were a way to control the 'Z-gene'.
"What'd you just say?" Britney exclaimed.
"…yeah, this is the other reason I've been on this mission…" Zell explained then walked slowly toward Sam.
"So… you… you knew?" Clover asked with an unexplainable anger in her voice.
"Yeah, but it was top secret. Jerry noticed it one day when he was updating your medical records. It is the same anomaly that I possess." Zell stated then walked behind Sam and knocked her out of her beast form and she collapsed.
"What'd you just do!" Alex, Clover and Britney exclaimed.
"Relax, she's not dead. I just had to subdue her beast form." Zell explained and put the gloves on Sam's hands. Sam's hands felt smooth and Zell felt uneasy about what he'd just done. He felt guilty for doing that, but it had to be done.
Trish and Mary were silent for the time being, as they rounded up Carmen's and Gabriella's unconscious bodies. Zell stepped toward the two women and placed his index and middle fingers on each one of their foreheads and a blue energy was emitted from the two fingers. Zell then pulled out four vials of a red liquid and poured one vial into each of the mothers' mouths and Sam's mouth as well. The red vials were a medical concoction that Zell whipped up in case of things like this. The liquid had properties of healing as well as speeding up the process for the drinker's body. Zell had modified the memories of the spies' parents, so that after this mission there would be no problems within households.
"There, now they shouldn't be surprised at you and Sam's new abilities. So now we can continue to the tower."
That's good. So now I won't have to hear my mom call me that horrible word again…" Alex sighed and put the Rebellion on her back and plopped down from exhaustion.
"Alex, here. Drink this. You'll feel better" Zell spoke as he sat next to the exhausted spy and gave her the last red vial he possessed at the moment.
"Thank you Zell. But what is this?" Alex asked then took a drink from the vial.
"It's a potion that accelerates the body in order to repair damage and wounds. It works with the body's healing processes to make the things repair faster than normal." Zell explained.
"Okay, you have some explaining to do NOW!" Britney yelled furiously at Zell and grabbed him by his collar and stood him up.
"Yeah, yeah. I know. I'll explain it all as soon as Sam wakes up." Zell sighed and snapped Britney's wrists away from his neck.
"OW!" Britney cried out in pain, and hopped back a few feet away from Zell.
Zell walked past Britney and shot her a look of immense hate and then he opened a gate to a new dimension and walked Stella through it, and he carried both Gabriella and Carmen through the realm. The realm led Stella to her own home so that was where Zell left Carmen and Gabriella as well.
"When they wake up, tell them that you all were going to a movie to get a break from all of the chaos." Zell instructed to Stella the went through the realm and ended up back with the spies and the hunters shortly afterward.
"S-so Zell, you mind explaining what's going on here?" Clover asked nervously.
"There's no way to avoid it now…" Zell sighed and sat down on the grey ground outside the Temen-Ni-Gru.
"Zell, please explain why you're here with us. I'm really concerned about this." Sam yawned and rubbed her eyes.
"We all are Sammy." Clover added.
Zell let out yet another sigh then stated " I've been sent to make sure Alex completes this mission, and to see how Sam's body is doing. Although, it seems that she is doing much better now that I gave her my gloves."
"And why did your mother call you a monster?" Britney asked sounding more vile by the moment.
"It's obvious that she hates me… that and I have a genetic anomaly." Zell replied becoming ashamed of himself.
"And what is the anomaly?" Clover asked, although she already knew what it was.
"I can morph into a wolf, and back into my human state at will. My body has accelerated healing and enhanced strength, intellect and speed also." Zell explained solemnly, afraid of what the girls may say.
"So you are a werewolf?" Britney asked dumbfounded.
"No. I'm a normal human but I can shift into the form of a wolf. It doesn't happen on full moons, but it becomes stronger on full moons." Zell replied sounding slightly annoyed.
"That's cool! So you're like a beastman?" Alex said with excitement.
"I guess you could call it that…" Zell sighed again.
"And you mean to tell me that I have that same genetic problem, too?" Sam asked nervously.
"Yeah. I hope you aren't too mad at me." Zell replied with his head down from massive shame sweeping over him.
"Well, I'm not mad at you." Sam said, then she went to sit next to Zell and placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Thanks, Sam. This means a lot to me. I'd always thought that I'd be doomed to be alone forever." Zell stated softly and placed his hand over Sam's.
"No problem. At least you want to help me with the anomaly. Most people would yell and freak out and try to kill me, right?" Sam said softly in Zell's ear and the girls began to tease Sam again.
"Zell and Sam sitting in a tree…" Clover, Alex, and Britney sang loudly, this time Zell blushed and Sam did too.
"G-guys, cut that out!" Sam whined and tried to cover her face.
"C'mon, give it a rest." Zell said as he turned and faced the ground.
"We can't help it if you two can't keep it together." Clover giggled then burst into laughter.
"Yeah, it's too cute!" Alex said then joined Clover in laughing ridiculously.
"…Let's go girls. We still have to get into the tower. No time to dilly-dally." Zell sighed and stood up and led the girls toward the tower.
"Wait a sec… Shouldn't we split up into teams?" Trish asked, snapping the girls out of their uproarious laughter.
"Hmm… Yeah, you're right Trish. We'll do this: Sam, Mary and myself; Trish, you go with Alex; Britney you go with Clover." Zell instructed with little thought.
"Why do you get two teammates!" Clover whined.
"Because, I have to monitor Sam and ensure her safety. And I must be around, as I'm the only one who can deal with the anomaly within her." Zell almost growled at Clover.
"Okay, okay. No need to be so mean…"Clover sighed then went alongside Britney.
The group paired up and broke into their smaller groups and started toward the Temen-Ni-Gru and each person wondered what new things await them inside of the Devil's Tower. When the gates were pushed open the team was greeted by a giant demonic dog with three heads, and all of them drew their weapons and prepared for the fight to come.