A/N: Here's an extra long update to make up for such a long hiatus. Enjoy.
Chapter 10: To the Island
Spike and Edward continue to trek through the jungle, in search for Frieza and, Ed hoped, his captured brother, Alphonse.
As they are walking, a Mass Monster suddenly appears and rushes right towards Ed. With only a split second to react, Ed manages to sidestep the attack, grab his assailant by the arm, and flip it over onto its back.
"Hey, I did it!" Ed exclaimed as he realized that he's learned Spike's technique. Ed grins triumphantly as Spike gives him a thumbs up.
Without warning, Ed is shot in the back with a Dark Cannon arrow and flies into the air before hitting the ground in trophy form.
"Ed!" Spike yelled. He turns around to find Frieza with his Dark Cannon laughing evilly.
"One down, one to go," Frieza gloated. He charges the Dark Cannon for another shot, but Spike dodges.
"Sorry, pal, but I won't go down so easy," Spike boasted.
"Ha! You fool! You just did exactly what I wanted you to do," Frieza laughed.
"Huh?" blurted Spike. He looks over to Ed and sees him covered in Masses, the same ones that attacked him before. And because of the way Spike avoided Frieza's shot, he was now too far away to do anything about it in time.
"Shit!" Spike cursed.
Once the Masses were done scanning Ed's mind, they rise up into a cloud and change shape, forming into a clone of Edward.
"Not looking so smug now, are you?" Frieza taunted. "You're surrounded, and you can't fight one of us without getting attacked from behind by the other."
Before Frieza could continue, he is startled by two gunshots from above that narrowly miss him. A small blue zipjet, heavily armed with a variety of weapons, flies right above Frieza before u-turning around. It turns over and the ship's pilot leaps out of the open cockpit, unveiling a violet-haired and green-eyed woman that looked like she was in her early 20s. She was wearing a revealing bright yellow outfit and a red jacket. Her name was Faye Valentine.
"It's about time you showed up," Spike complained. "Busy losing all of your money again?"
"Do you want me to save your ass or not?" Faye snapped back.
"Hey, I'm just sayin'," Spike shrugged.
"Aww, isn't that sweet," Frieza mocked. "Now you and your friend can die together."
Frieza aims his Dark Cannon at the two bounty hunters, but before he could take a shot, Faye sprints straight towards the space tyrant and kicks the weapon right out of his hands. Faye then pulls out a Heckler & Koch MP5 and opens fire on the still airborne Dark Cannon until it explodes.
Frieza looks on in shock. "Impossible! How could a mere human catch me off guard like that?" Frieza shouted in disbelief.
"What can I say? You miscalculated," Faye answered.
"No, YOU miscalculated!" Frieza retorted as he slowly rises to the air. "I'm going to go re-stock my supplies, but I'll be right back. In the meantime, have fun playing with my little pet over there," he added before flying off.
Faye turns around to face the False Ed, but to her and Spike's surprise, they see many more Masses rush in and combine with it until the clone grows to a gigantic size.
Spike quickly taps the stand on Ed's trophy, reviving him.
"Ooh, what happen…AAAAHHHH! How'd he get so big!?" Ed screamed as he sees the huge replica of him.
"The only thing that matters now is that we have to kill it!" Spike replied.
"But, but…he's breaking the Laws of Equivalent Exchange!" Ed exclaimed.
Spike and Faye take several shots at the False Ed, but it's surprisingly agile for its size. It dodges the bullets and smacks them hard into the ground. Ed tries to cut his copy with the blade on his auto-mail arm, but it is simply too fast for him. The False Ed retaliates by smacking the real Ed hard.
As Ed gets up, he suddenly gets an idea. He claps his hands together and slams them into the ground, creating a huge brick wall between the False Ed and the heroes.
"That should hold him for awhile," Ed informed his allies. "But now the problem is how do we attack it from the other side of this wall?"
"Leave that to me," Faye insisted, hitting some buttons on her bracelet.
The False Ed pounds away at the brick wall, but to no avail. It takes a few steps back, preparing to ram through the wall, but then it notices Faye's personal ship, The Red Tail, hovering above it. With a push of a button, the Red Tail rains a shower of bullets on the False Ed, finishing the combo with a rocket launch, destroying the collection of Masses utterly.
"Well, now that that's taken care of…" Faye declared as she begins walking off, "…it's time to get back to the…Hey!" she yelled as Ed grabs her shirt and pulls her back.
"You gotta help me rescue my brother…" Ed pleaded until he notices Faye walking away again.
"Sorry, kid, but I got a bounty to catch," Faye said.
"Don't do it," Spike warned her.
Ed grabs her again, this time dragging Faye in the opposite direction.
"I told you not to do it," Spike shrugged.
"Hey, let go of me, you shrim…" Spike covers Faye's mouth with his hand before she can finish. "If you want to live, don't call him the 'S' word. Trust me on this one," Spike advised.
The trio continues through the jungle, and not too long afterwards, something catches Ed's eye. On a moving platform, floating above a shallow river is Al chained up and in trophy form. A few Mass Monsters stand guard on the platform.
"Wait, that's him! That's my brother, Al!" Ed exclaimed.
"Your brother is inside that suit of armor?" Faye questioned.
"Well, no. It's a long story," Ed answered before chasing after the platform. Before he can get close to it, however, the platform suddenly speeds up and flies right over a cliff where it then flies towards a floating island in the distance.
"NO!" Ed slams his fist down in frustration. "I was so close, too!"
"Ed," Faye called out.
"What?" Ed asked.
"I'm not talking to YOU!" she spat back.
Ed then finally notices that she's talking into a handheld communication device with a screen and around twelve or so buttons on it. On the small screen was an androgynous teenage girl with red hair and wearing a pair of goggles on her head.
"Hey! It's Faye-Faye!" Radical Edward greeted.
"Tell Jet to bring the ship over here. We need to get a ride," Faye requested.
Not a moment afterwards, a huge brown ship, the Bebop, ascends over the cliff.
"That was fast," Faye blinked.
"Actually, we were already on our way here," said a middle-aged bald man with a beard and a scar on his right eye, whom could also be seen on the communication device screen. "We found your crashed ship in the jungle, Spike. We picked it and got it repaired," Jet Black notified.
"Huh? How did you guys do that in such a short amount of time? Where'd you guys get the wulong to do that?" Spike asked.
"Your ship needed to be fixed for plot reasons," Radical Edward grinned. "Let's just leave it at that."
Back at the research facility, Usagi rounds a corner and looks ahead.
"There it is!" she screamed excitedly as she laid eyes on her brooch locked in a glass case across the room. She runs across the bridge in the room to reach the glass case, with Dark Magician tailing close behind her.
Just as they get across, the bridge suddenly retracts, leaving the two stranded in the room. Two figures, each coming from opposite sides of the room, approach the duo. Both of them looked exactly like darker tint versions of Usagi, except that their clothes differed. These doppelgangers wore red bows on their chests (with a brooch in the center), elbow-length white gloves, crescent moon earrings, and tiaras on their foreheads, amongst other differences.
"Huh? Wha-what's going on here?" Usagi wailed in confusion.
"They must've gotten your DNA from the fingerprints on your brooch and then proceeded to make clones of you," the Dark Magician commented. "Worse still, it looks like they also made copies of your brooch that can emulate its powers and properties.
"How despicable, using my likeness for their nefarious plans! I will not stand for this!" Usagi announced with newfound determination.
"I will engage the enemy to your right. You can take care of the one on your left," Dark Magician suggested.
"Sounds like a plan," Usagi submitted.
The Dark Magician stands his ground as he faces his opponent. The Sailor Moon clone throws her tiara at him, which transforms into a rotating disc in mid-air. The Dark Magician counters with a Dark Magic Attack, but the two projectiles collide in the air and cancel each other out.
"Oh no! Our attacks cancel each other out!" the Duel Monster repeated.
At Usagi's end, she charges forward just as the clone throws a Moon Tiara at her.
"I may seem like a helpless little girl without my powers, but…UMPH!" Usagi trips and falls before she can finish.
The Moon Tiara glides right over Usagi's body, just misses Dark Magician as it passes by him, and keeps going and smacks the other Sailor Moon clone dead-on, destroying her in one attack. The Dark Magician merely shrugs at his amazing luck.
"As I was saying," Usagi continued as she gets up. "I may seem like a helpless little girl without my powers, but there are two minor details that you forgot about."
The Sailor Moon clone raises her eyebrow, perplexed.
"The first minor detail is this. SAILOR BODY ATTACK!!!"
Usagi folds her arms in front of her chest and leaps right at the clone, elbowing her in the face and knocking her down.
"The second minor detail is SAILOR MOON KICK!!!"
Usagi gets a running start and delivers a flying kick right into the clones' chest, knocking the clone unconscious.
"Finally," Usagi breathed as she looks back at her brooch. She opens up the glass case and retrieves her brooch, but this triggers an alarm.
"MOON PRISM POWER!!!"
An army of Zaku rush in through the doorway, crossing the now restored bridge to stop the intruders.
"MOON TIARA MAGIC!!!"
The machines all get hit by the tiara, blowing up spectacularly and sending metal parts flying everywhere. Emerging from the smoke isn't Usagi Tsukino, but her superheroine identity, the Sailor Senshi Sailor Moon.
"And THAT'S how it's done! Because I am the REAL Sailor Moon, Champion of Justice, and in the name of the moon, I will punish you!" Sailor Moon invoked.
"…Punish who, exactly?" the Dark Magician asked, looking around at all the scrap metal.
"Oh. No one, I guess," Sailor Moon laughed embarrassingly.
Sailor Moon struts out of the room with the Dark Magician walking alongside of her.
"So where to next, milady?" the Dark Magician asked.
"We're going to find whoever's responsible for all of this, and I'm going to give him a piece of my mind," Sailor Moon proclaimed. "And I have a feeling that he's somewhere on this island."
Sailor Moon and Dark Magician traverse through the rest of the facility, looking for an exit. They soon find themselves in a large empty room. After a few more steps…
WHAM!!!
Sailor Moon is swiftly snatched into the air by a Red-Eyes Black Dragon. The Red-Eyes flies high up and slams Sailor Moon hard into a wall. To make matters worse, the Red-Eyes then grinds her across the wall, putting her in so much excruciating pain that she couldn't help but scream out. Just when things were looking grim for the Sailor Senshi, a Dark Magic Attack hits the dragon, knocking him clean out of the air and causing him to let go. Sailor Moon, somehow, manages to land semi-gracefully although she falls to one knee in immense pain.
"What!? My Attack Points should be higher than his Defense Points, so why isn't he destroyed?" the Dark Magician pondered.
"I think a better question is 'WHAT'S A WILD RED-EYES BLACK DRAGON DOING IN HERE!?!'" Sailor Moon cried.
The Red-Eyes, being none too pleased at being attacked, fires an Inferno Fire Blast from his mouth. Sailor Moon and Dark Magician jump back and evade the blast. Enraged, the Red-Eyes starts firing rapid shots at the two. Although very taxing, the duo manages to avoid all the fireballs until they get cornered in a wall. Gleefully, the Red-Eyes starts charging up his next attack, preparing to do them in.
"Not today, dragon! THOUSAND KNIVES!!!" Dark Magician called forth.
Barrages of knives appear all around the Red-Eyes and stab him from all sides. The Red-Eyes Black Dragon roars out in agony.
"MOON SCEPTER ELIMINATION!!!" Sailor Moon called out.
Sailor Moon points her Moon Scepter at the dragon and shoots him with a crescent shaped projectile. The Red-Eyes Black Dragon collapses and falls into the abyss below.
"Moon Dusted!" Sailor Moon finished.
The two warriors stroll through an opening door on the far side of the room and emerge in bright sunlight. They were now outside the research facility and standing atop of a high hill, overlooking much of the island.
"By the way, thanks for saving my bacon back there, Dark Magician. I thought I was a goner," said Sailor Moon.
The Dark Magician shakes his head. "No, we are even now."
As Sailor Moon surveys her surroundings, she notices two Zaku wheeling a Shadow Realm Bomb out of the entrance of a nearby building.
"That must be where they are producing the Shadow Realm Bombs," Dark Magician reasoned.
"Then it's time we shut their operation down!" Sailor Moon asserted.
Elsewhere on the floating island, hundreds of small, black and fuzzy creatures with spherical bodies and stick-like arms and legs attack a dormant Zaku en masse. Unfortunately for them, this Zaku, unlike the rest which are super-deformed, is the actual size of a mobile suit, so their attacks simply have no effect. The Zaku wakes up at the annoyance and spins around, knocking the critters off of him and causing some of them to dissolve in the process.
The Zaku looks down and sees before him a ten-year-old girl with brown hair and a shoulder-length ponytail and wearing a white and green shirt, red shorts, and yellow shoes.
The girl looks up at the monstrosity and screams loudly. "I'M DREAMING! I'M DREAMING!" Chihiro Ogino shrieked.
A mouse with a fly resting on his head taps Chihiro on the foot. When she turns to him, he points to an incoming object coming from behind them.
The object in question is a slick white racecar with an 'M' written on the hood driving at top speed. The car's driver is a guy wearing a white helmet, a blue shirt with a 'G' on it, a red bandanna around his neck, white pants, and yellow gloves. While the car is still moving, the driver leaps right out of the car and right towards the Zaku.
"FALCON PUNCH!!!" Speed Racer called out.
The punch connects right on the Zaku's head, completely knocking him over. However, Speed Racer lands right on the fuzzy creatures, known as Soot Balls, and causes them all to dissolve.
After a long pause, Chihiro finally speaks up.
"Um, mister? Thank you for saving me, but you sort of accidentally stepped on my friends," Chihiro politely pointed out.
Speed turns to the girl and blinks, not noticing she was even there until just now.
"A little girl like you shouldn't be in a dangerous place like this, ha ha!" Speed blurted out. He spoke ridiculously fast and his words didn't even match his mouth movements.
"Oh, it's alright. My friends are with me," Chihiro reassured him. The Soot Balls suddenly reshape themselves and slowly waddle back to Chihiro. "And they'll be fine as long as they have work to do," she added.
"Well, don't get yourself in anymore trouble, ha ha! I have to go stop whoever's behind this invasion, ha ha!" Speed replied.
Speed starts to leave, but Chihiro reaches out to him in protest.
"Hey, wait a minute! Don't leave me here!" Chihiro whined as she runs after him.
And so begins another partnership. As they travel across the island, they run into plenty of enemies, but Speed Racer is surprisingly capable of fighting them off. The Soot Balls, which are quite strong for their sizes, also do their share of the work and whilst protecting Chihiro in the process.
Eventually, the team reaches the edge of the floating island. Speed looks around and sees something coming towards the island. It's the same platform with the chained Al in trophy form.
Tailing the speeding platform is the Red Tail. Faye is inside piloting it, with Edward Elric crammed inside with her.
"Hurry! Can't this thing go any faster?" Ed complained.
"I'm going as fast as I can!" Faye retorted. "And don't you even THINK about trying anything back there!"
Ed rolls his eyes. "Yeah, like I'd really want someone as bitchy as you," he muttered under his breath.
Faye opens up the cockpit and flips the Red Tail over, which makes Ed fall right out of the ship. He lands squarely on the middle of the platform with enough force to knock the Masses off of it.
"Very funny!" said Ed sarcastically as he quickly recovers and shakes his fist at Faye in anger.
Back on the edge of the island, Speed Racer and Chihiro witness everything.
"We have to help those people, ha ha!" Speed decided.
"Well, yeah, but how are we going to…" Chihiro couldn't finish as Speed grabs her and jumps off the island, sliding down the cliff as Chihiro screams the whole way down.
Ed quickly taps Al's stand, revitalizing him. Al easily breaks out of his chains.
"I can move again!" Al cheered happily.
"Al! I'm so glad you're back!" Ed teared up as he hugs his brother.
Their reunion is quickly interrupted by the arrival of Speed and Chihiro, who land on the platform.
"Don't mind us; we're just here to help you out, ha ha!" Speed explained.
Not a moment afterwards, a group of Mass Monsters hop onto the platform, ready for a fight.
"And it looks like we just might need your help too," Ed admitted while getting in a fighter stance. The others likewise prepare themselves for a fight.
Ed cuts through several Mass Monsters with his blade-transmuted auto-mail arm. Speed beats down several more opponents. The Soot Balls overwhelm and completely disassemble some of the Mass Monsters. As they are fighting, Al pulls out a sheet of paper with a transmutation circle on it from inside himself. He lays it on the ground slams his hands on it. Pillars pop up from the platform, bumping all of the Masses off of it.
"Way to go, Al!" Ed complimented, giving his sibling a high-five.
"Actually, I was pretty impressed with Speed's moves myself," Al gushed. "I didn't know that you're that good."
"Well, I was training for something not too long ago, but then something came up, ha ha!" Speed conceded.
"You thought you were going to be in Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, didn't you?" Ed guessed.
"AH!" Speed gasped with a shocked expression on his face.
The Red Tail flies past the platform, getting everyone's attention.
"Who was that?" Al asked.
"A friend, sort of," Ed answered. "If it wasn't for her and the rest of her colleagues, I never would have found you."
Faye, now seeing that the situation is under control, gives them a thumbs-up before leaving. Ed waves back at her as she goes.
"Um, guys?" Chihiro interjected. "I'm sorry to break up this happy moment, but where exactly are we going?"
The others turn around and see the platform they were standing on fly into a hangar on the side of the island.
"I don't know but it looks like we're going to find out," Ed said intently.
A/N: Look forward to Kaiba's introduction, amongst others, in the next chapter.