Chapter 14
"…Crap, what IS this?!" Tororo shouted as he tried once again to override the reserve energy, and he slammed his fists down on the ground. "I… This language it's written, I—"
"Kuku! Too much for you?"
"Hey, you haven't figured it out, either!" Tororo shot back. Kururu only gave a grunt at this.
"This isn't working," Kururu pulled away from his screen a bit, and Fuyuki watched as the yellow Keronian sat there, silent in thought. He turned around to look at the energy beam, and Fuyuki did the same.
"…Here. Throw these."
"Eh?!" Fuyuki took the pair of glasses and looked down at them, puzzled. "Wh-where?"
"Pretend you're the Hinata child with some ability and try for that energy beam," Kururu glanced sideways at Fuyuki a moment, and Fuyuki did a double-take, stunned.
"Hey! That's where Kirere-chan—"
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Kururu's glasses were just as soon replaced, and he pushed them up on his face. Just as soon as he did this, something sliced right through the seat they'd been hiding behind. Fuyuki fell back one way and Kururu another.
"…How nice of you to join us," Kezanstav walked over, his cool regained as stared down at Fuyuki, his arms folded behind his back and the cold, confident grin on his face. "I was wondering where you'd run off to. I've been able to keep track of all the others of your little… Happy family. There's some coming this way right now, as a matter of fact!"
He stepped out of the way to reveal the screen he had been watching, and sure enough Dororo, Tamama, Keroro, and Giroro were all running towards them. He then glanced over at his Keron bodyguard, who had his blade at Kururu's neck.
"This one isn't much without his technology, is he? Almost as useless as that other one, the pink one…. I suppose you could turn him into sushi, I don't have much use for him otherwise."
A shot fired, and the sword went flying out of the teal Keronian's hand.
"I don't like him very much, but our daughter seems to see something in him, so I suppose we could keep him around," Giroro said as he stood there with the rest of the platoon, his gun drawn.
"What?!" Kezanstav spun around and saw the screen, which showed the platoon still running down the hall.
"Time delay technology. Kuuukuku!" Kururu giggled.
"Ah, just like in Lupin III!" Keroro snapped his fingers and smiled.
"Focus, idiot! It's not the time!" Giroro shouted.
"Hehe… Right," Keroro scratched the back of his head and chuckled. "Anyway, we'll be stopping you now, Kezanstav-san. This has been fun and all, but we really have to get home."
"You really think that?"
"We've done a good enough job of kicking your ass so far!" Tamama shouted.
"Fuyuki! Your friends are adorable, but stupid. ….I see a lot of myself in you. What do you say? Stay with these fools, or finally know all of the answers to all of those questions you've had about the occult. The choice is all yours."
"The occult's great because we don't know all the answers, it's the questions that make it fun in the first place! And, and… I'd rather live a boring life with my friends than an exciting one with someone like you!" Fuyuki answered. "Gunso!"
"Eh?" Keroro barely caught the glasses as Fuyuki threw them, and looked down at them, puzzled.
"Into the energy beam!" Fuyuki called out, and was just as soon knocked down by Kezanstav's Keronian.
"Oh! That one!" Keroro nodded at this, and used an annoyed Giroro as a springboard to lunge off of, and threw the glasses into the said energy beam. The thick glasses were swallowed up soon enough, but not before refracting off some of the energy and causing it to shoot out onto the main computers. The computer Kezanstav had been standing at moments before went up into flames. Kururu gave a chuckle at this.
"A little anarchy always helps when all else fails, kuuuukuku!"
"W-what?!" Kezanstav turned around to the computer, and glared at the Keroro platoon as the backup energy now flickered. "…You… Get them! Kill them! I don't care!"
"Gunso-san? Any ideas?" Tamama looked at the sergeant, who took a step back.
"Just one, Tamama Nitohei! RUN!" Keroro turned around and ran out, followed by the rest of the platoon and Fuyuki, who were now being pursued by the lone Keron bodyguard. That was everyone, save for Kururu. He got a nice lift up by the sides, courtesy of Kezanstav.
"You really are an annoying little bastard," Kezanstav muttered, and Kururu gave a laugh.
"I try, kuuukuku!" Kururu laughed.
"We're not much different, either, right? Tortured geniuses forced to live on a planet of insects?" Kezanstav moved out of the flaming room, and into the hall with the yellow Keronian. "You could fix this all, couldn't you? Come on, you don't care about those fools, now, do you? You're too smart to!"
"Kuku! I'm just smart enough to not go flaunting about it when I do. Really, who wants to bother with this all the time?!" Kezanstav's grip became tighter, and Kururu flinched a bit, and struggled to grab hold of his remote. If he could just…
BAM! A direct hit. Kezanstav's eyes rolled back, and he fell to the ground, as did Kururu, who sat up and took a moment to take in what he was seeing. There was Kirere with her wrench, and behind her on the same small saucer Garuru, who was working the controls.
"That's going to be two hugs!" she announced with a smile.
"Tch, I think I would've preferred him killing me, kuku!" Kururu stood, and placed a hand on his back as it popped. "Kuku, my back had been bothering me, anyway!"
Garuru hopped off of his saucer, and looked to Kirere. "You get back to the ship, I'll take care of him myself."
"Got it. Come on, we've got to get back!" Kirere called out to Kururu, who slid up and then lay there on his side.
"Really this is more work than I usually put in in a Pekopon year, kuku!" he laughed as they took off. "I didn't know you could fly one of these."
"I don't know all the buttons, but I know how to make it go forward!" she answered. Kururu gave a yell as he nearly flew off when she sent them flying down the hall she and Garuru had come from full-speed, and Garuru watched them until they vanished.
He then heard Kezanstav groan and begin to move, and the lieutenant turned around, and looked down at the Pekoponian in disgust. "Don't move. Don't even try to move. Rest assured that whatever I do to you I can make look like an accident, or justified."
"Gunso-san! He's still gaining on us!" Tamama cried. "I want to go home!"
"Me, Tamama Nitohei, me, too!" Keroro shouted.
"We… We can't keep going like this!" Fuyuki panted.
"And he doesn't look like he's going to stop, either!" Keroro moaned.
"…Dororo, if we get that collar off, he'll be out of that monster's control!" Giroro called out to the assassin as he fired back another shot, which the Keron bodyguard promptly dodged.
"If anyone has ideas, I'm open!" Keroro yelled.
"GYAAAAAA!"
"AHHHHHHHH!"
All stopped then as a pink and yellow blur came shooting down the long hall, and rammed right into the teal Keronian, before he even knew something was coming their way. Fuyuki ducked just in time, and the blur, now with a bluish-teal streak in it, continued down the hall, until it reached the end. There was a crash then, and all went to investigate.
In a tangled mess there was a fainted Kirere, Kururu, and Keron bodyguard.
"How… How did she get back here?" Keroro wondered aloud.
"Kirere!" Giroro stepped on Kururu, who gave a squeak as he headed over to his daughter. "Are you all right?!"
"That… That was really cool," she muttered, still dazed from the crash. "I… I wanna go again."
"Nin!" Dororo took this opportunity to slice through the opposing Keronian's collar, and it fell off in several metal slices onto the ground beneath him.
"You swore to me your father taught you how to drive one of those," Garuru's voice shot through the room, a hint of annoyance as he stopped and looked over the scene. He had fresh bruises on his arms and face, but Giroro said nothing of these.
"My… My back problem's back… Kukuku!" Kururu groaned as he stood up, swaying a bit and his glasses cracked around the edges.
"We should get out of here, the fire's spreading. There's enough power left to where it will convert to autopilot and then hopefully be able to make it out of Pekopon's atmosphere. We'll meet you down at loading," Garuru announced calmly.
"Right," Giroro nodded, and Garuru disappeared down the hall. He then looked at Kirere. "How did you convince him you knew how to fly one of those?"
"I… Memorized the names of some of the ooperations…" Kirere answered reluctantly.
"We need to follow Garuru-dono out of here," Dororo lifted up the passed out Keronian, and Keroro almost instantly went into a fit at this.
"What?! Why're we bringing him, too, when he spent over half of this story trying to kill us?!" Keroro snapped.
"Gunso, he was under Kezanstav's control, too. He's probably not a bad guy, either," said Fuyuki.
"Or he's a complete jerk. Either way, we have no time to wake him up and find out," Giroro answered.
"He's going to have some apologizing to do when he wakes up, that's for sure!" Keroro snapped, and all ran out with Dororo carrying their new companion.
The Pekoponian transport ship and the Garuru Platoon escape ship were both in the loading bay when they finally made their way down.
"Fuyuki!" Natsumi called out as she stood in the back of the open ship.
"Nee-chan!" Fuyuki called back out, and he was the first to jump on, followed by Keroro, Tamama, Dororo, Kirere, and Kururu.
"Where did that Pekoponian go, or do I want to even know what you did?" Giroro asked as he saw his brother standing solitary, his arms folded as he watched his Platoon loading into the escape ship.
"He escaped. This is where we part ways. I must admit, this was good practice for my Platoon," Garuru walked over to Giroro, and looked back at Kirere, who was already being greeted by a relieved Haruki with a large hug. "It's a shame she won't have a military career."
"She's clumsy, now, but she'll be able to control herself, and her ability, as she gets older," Giroro answered. "She has a lot of growing to do yet."
"I think you mistook that as a prediction, not a fact," Garuru said sternly, and Giroro's expression immediately shifted. "I care about her, too, and that's why if she ever attempts to enter the Keron military I'll make sure she does everything to not get accepted. She's too powerful. She'll either lose control, or be used, Giroro. It's for her own good."
"She would never let that happen, and I never would, either," Giroro grit his teeth at this, and balled his fists. It was the most he'd felt like punching Garuru in years.
"Really now," Garuru's tone was flat and unamused. The Gamma 7 ship began to shake beneath their feet, and Garuru turned to his brother, "It's getting ready to take off. Take care."
Giroro remained there a moment, then hopped onto the ship as Natsumi called out for him. They then shut the door, and both ships exited the loading bay.
"Bye, Garuru Ojisan, Pururu-san, Zoruru-san!" Kirere was waving out the front window as she watched Garuru's ship take off. No one questioned why she left Taruru's name out.
"Kuku, they can't hear you," Kururu said from his seat, and Kirere hopped over to him. "…What?" he grunted as the little girl closed up to his face, a large grin spreading across her mouth.
"I heard you say you cared about me," she poked him in the shoulder and grinned.
"Tch, you heard wrong. I was losing oxygen," Kururu waved her off. "Let me be, the adults have to work."
"…I'm not sad to see that thing go," Giroro looked out the window and saw the large saucer fly out of Earth's atmosphere as they headed back him.
"How're you guys going to explain that? I mean, a lot of people probably saw it on the news," Haruki wondered aloud as he sat back in between Tamama and Dororo.
"We'll find a way," Giroro reassured him, and he looked over at Natsumi, puzzled, as she began to chuckle. "What? What's so funny?"
"Well, um…" Natsumi looked offward, and Giroro frowned.
"Eh?" Kirere stopped bouncing around the ship long enough, and looked at her right glove. She pulled it off and shook it a few times, and out fell a tooth. It was sharp, and…
Giroro went bright red, a mixture of embarrassment and anger. He felt inside his mouth, and sure enough, he was right; it was indeed one of his own. Natsumi placed a hand over her mouth, and the rest of the Keroro Platoon looked away, aside from Kururu, who gave a shrill laugh.
"T-this belongs to you…" Kirere picked up the tooth and handed it to Giroro.
"I-It's all right, Gocho, look at the work Kururu Socho did on me, this front one's fake!" Keroro grinned, and Giroro threw the tooth at Keroro as hard as possible. It lodged in the middle of his helmet.
"Really that wasn't necessary," said Keroro with a glare.
"Hrm?" Fuyuki heard his cell phone go off as they sat there in the ship, Keroro attempting to extract the tooth from his helmet, and reached into his pocket. "Nishizawa-san?"
"Momochi?" said Tamama aloud with surprise as Fuyuki answered.
"Nishizawa-san? Eh? Don't worry about it? Um, yes, as soon as we get home we will!... She wants us to turn on the news as soon as we get home."