AN:Sorry for the very long delay but between school, illness, and a massive case of writers block I went through two other drafts for this chapter before finally landing on this one. Oh yeah, and Mandarin is pretty much clueless on the whole situation, hence his behavior towards Nova and the team before. Thanks again to all my reviewers and my beta Art.

Rating:T

Chapter 16
Nil Sine

TIME:11:38 UTC+12
LOCATION: Wellington, New Zealand

"Is this it?"

Hyun Jae looked to her side at the pink-haired girl. Her hair was oddly distracting; maybe it wouldn't be so bad if she'd chosen a more modest shade of pink for her hair colour. It was like Jin May fancied herself some sort of super anime superhero or something like that. She pushed aside her thoughts. "Uh, yeah, this is it."

She looked at the building they had stopped in front of. Although she was mediocre at best at speaking English, she was a proficient enough reader of the language to see that the sign said 'Out to Lunch: Back at 12:30'.

She sighed and took out her phone to check the time. "What's that say?

"Hmm?" Hyun Jae saw that Jin May was pointing at the sign. "It says they'll be back at 12:30 which is...45 minutes from now."

"So, what do we do until then?" Jin May asked.

Hyun Jae plopped down onto a nearby bench. "We wait."

Jin May sat next to Hyun Jae, nervously twiddling her thumbs.

"So how do you know this kid Chiro?"

Jin May looked up, who raised an eyebrow at Jin May's reaction.

"You somehow know the kid who probably kidnapped my friend. Did you really think I wasn't going to ask any questions? And seeing as we have nothing to do for the next 45 minutes, I might as well start. So, how do you know him?"

"Chiro's...a friend." Jin May's face blushed, perfectly matching her hair.

Hyun Jae smirked.

Before she could voice an opinion, Jin May suddenly exclaimed. "And Chiro didn't kidnap Antauri! He couldn't have! Antauri's his teacher!"

"Teacher? In what exactly? Antauri isn't old enough for that."

"What do you mean he isn't old enough?" Jin May shot back. "I - uh - I mean I don't know his exact age, but he's definitely old enough to teach Chiro."

"So what, was Antauri his tutor or something?"

"Well, kind of. I mean, um, Antauri was teaching Chiro how to use the Power Primate and lead the team."

Hyun Jae completely blanched. "Power Primate?! Team?! What in the he-"

"Uh, excuse me." The two conversing females looked up to see a relatively large and imposing bald man standing in front of the bench. "Are you waiting for help?"

"Yes," nodded Hyun Jae. "You own this shop?"

The man laughed slightly, apparently surprised by her accent. "Yeah. Name's Jeff."

TIME:16:40 UTC-4
LOCATION: Denver, USA

The forest was still for a second. But only for a second.

The bushes rustled as a number of beings streaked through it.

"Are you sure they're this way?!" shouted the crimson monkey.

"Yes Sprx!" replied Antauri. "I am positive that they are this way!"

"Yeah, I can feel it really clearly too," Chiro agreed. "And that's usually a bad sign. We have to hurry!"

After a few seconds Otto spoke up. "Do you guys hear that noise?"

Chiro looked over at him. "What noi -" His eyes opened slightly wider as he realized that he could faintly hear a blaring noise in the distance. "I hear it! But what is it?"

"That is not an optimistic sign," responded Antauri. "Those sound like emergency sirens. I just hope they aren't related to our teammate."

Sprx began to run faster. "Knowing our luck they are! We gotta hurry!"

The three others sped up as well, panic in each of them.

Sprx, however, still had the lead and charged straight into a clearing ahead of his teammates.

"Sprx wait!" Antauri cried.

Otto, Chiro, and Antauri all charged through the bushes surrounding the clearing after the red team member.

Otto barged his way out first, followed by Chiro and Antauri less than a second later; only for the three to find a Sprx standing still with his back to him. "Sprx! You can't go running away like tha -" He stopped short when he saw what Sprx was staring at.

In the middle of the clearing was Mandarin, heavily panting and glaring at a girl a few feet away from him. The girl was covered in numerous lacerations and bruises. Her clothes were filthy in torn in many places. She held a shovel which she apparently had been using as a make shift weapon, judging by the cracks in their former teammate's armor.

The two hadn't noticed the three's arrival, and Mandarin began to make a lunge at the girl until Sprx broke the silence, gaining their attention.

"Nova?!"

The two quickly turned towards them, both surprised at first, although Mandarin quickly had a devious smile spread across his face. "Why, hello there team; I was wondering when you would catch up with us."

Nova stared at the four new arrivals to the clearing, gripping her shovel tighter in fear. The kid she wasn't worried about; she barely even noticed him. It was the three others that worried her. Oh god this is bad, they look like robot versions ofit, and looking at them gives me the same headache when I look at him.

She looked between the small group and it, and noticed that they seemed intensely focused on each other. He's distracted!

Although itbegan to turn around to defend itself, Nova was too fast. She swung the shovel down, hard, slamming it to the ground; all while she screamed in rage. She kept on hitting him, as hard as she could. After the third hit, however, itsuddenly thrusted up with the claw...It still has James' blood on it...to try and hurt her, but she was able to move in time, instead the claw slamming shut around the shovel's handle, snapping it in two.

Nova stumbled backwards, realizing that she was now holding a wooden stick. No! No, no, no! I'm not going to die here!

"NOVA!"

One of the robot things, the red one, had jumped between her and it. "Don't touch her!"

She looked about and noticed the three others had surrounded them, and that somehow the three robots turned their hands into weapons. Are that kid's hands glowing?!

"AH!" She grabbed her head as it throbbed in pain. It feels like someone's bashing my head in with a sledgehammer!

The pain was so intense that it was a struggle to stay conscious, and she barely noticed when someone grabbed her shoulder.

"Nova, are you okay?!"

She looked up and saw that it was the red one again. She pushed him off and tried to crawl away.

"Leave me alone you..." She couldn't finish her sentence. The pain in her head was too intense, it felt like she was going to pass out.

So she did.

Mandarin leapt through the undergrowth, swinging under and over branches in his way. When Nova passed out, the team was distracted enough for him to escape easily enough.

He crashed through a bush, and grimaced at the pain it caused when the spiky twigs brushed against his various injuries caused by a certain former teammate and her shovel.

Damn her! I should have killed her when I had the chance. She must still have some of the power primate left in her; it's the only way a human could have harmed me.

This, of course, only led him back to a realization that angered him even more. I can't beat them by myself.

If there was one thing that Mandarin lacked above all else, it was humility, but even he knew that there were limits to what was possible. Without any form of backup, he estimated that he might be able to take on three at once, but four was too many.

Valina wasn't coming for him either; he had supposed that she would eventually come groveling to him for help. But without the team on her trail, she probably didn't need any help.

The Formless were out of the question too. On his own he only had the capability to summon and control about one at a time, not exactly an army.

He sighed, resting on a tree limb. Think Mandarin! You were able to turn those five pathetic monkeys into a team capable of defeating master. You are NOT going to be defeated like this.

As he thought, he slowly began to hear something. What is that infernal blaring?

He quickly made his way to the edge of the trees and saw the source of the noise. It was coming from that building he had found Nova in. It was surrounded by various vehicles that resembled the emergency response teams in Shuggazoom that would clean up in the aftermath of a fight.

He smirked at the fact that he sent the humans scrambling like this. I think I'll go see the aftermath of my little scuffle.

He quickly dashed across the street without being seen and climbed up into the trees next to the building. He slowly made his way over to the window where he had broken in, remaining in the trees and out of sight. Near the window were two humans in black-blue outfits spreading out what looked like a long yellow ribbon as some sort of make shift barrier.

One of the two, the taller of the two, began talking. "So when is the CSI team supposed to get here?"

"About an hour from now I think." The shorter one responded, finishing up with the ribbon and turning towards the window. "Poor kid, his family's gonna be devastated."

The taller one shook his head. "Did you see his arm? What kinda sick fuck does that?"

A crackling noise suddenly came from the shorter human's hip followed by some muffled words that Mandarin couldn't hear. The human grabbed what Mandarin guessed was some sort of clunky communicator and began talking into it. "Copy, this is Officer Mallea, over."

A garbled voice, inaudible to Mandarin, came from the communicator for the next few seconds before the human spoke into it again. "Copy, we're on our way, over."

The human sighed and looked over at the other one, "Come on, Alvarez needs help setting up a perimeter around the school."

The two quickly left and soon turned around the corner of the building.

At this point Mandarin dropped down and jumped into the window to witness the carnage. What he saw shocked him momentarily.

You see, although Mandarin would be the first to admit that almost nothing would please him more than to destroy every human in existence (second to perhaps enslaving them), he had never actually killed one. Not from a lack of trying mind you, it's just that Chiro wasn't exactly an easy target.

Mandarin smirked. I shouldn't be surprised, without the Power Primate humans are pathetically weak creatures.

He looked down at the human's corpse, and noted that it was already beginning to pale. Why did Nova care about you so much? Now that he thought about it, Nova had gone absolutely berserk when he had killed this human. Were they friends perhaps?

Not that it would surprise me, that child has completely corrupted the team beyond any hope.He remarked to himself.

Suddenly, Mandarin had an idea on how to defeat the team, in particular Nova.

He summoned up some of the black ooze that he had used to make the formless as he leered at the boy's dead body. "You child, are going to help me."