A/N: Ditto. FINAL CHAPTER! Here. We. Go!
"This is interesting," Jewel said as she watched the two fight."I never knew that Pyro was a fire elemental, however I kinda find it unnerving that she's capable of handling her powers pretty well despite her not knowing about them,"
"WHY ARE YOU STANDING THERE? KILL THEM!" Phoenix shouted as she dodged a swing from the hammer.
"Oh right, we're still in the middle of a Federation camp," Joli said as she turned and punched a Machine Gunner in the face.
"Free for all!" someone shouted.
(Battle Song: Metal Slug 7 OST: Final Attack)
The unofficial truce ended abruptly as fighting broke out once again between the RED/BLU/Allied team and the Federation troops. It was more of a huge fistfight than a gunfight since everyone was within close proximity of each other.
"FREEEEEEDDDDDOOOOMMM!" Demo shouted as he madly swung Eyelander around.
"Hey watch it cyclops!" Scout said as he ducked under one of Demo's wild swings. "You're gonna kill someone you don't wanna kill,"
"Ach no...if I were a bad Demoman then I would have killed someone by now,"
"Yeah right," Scout deadpanned as he used his thumb to point to the soldiers who were missing a lot of limbs.
"It is waste to use such big gun on tiny little baby men," BLU Heavy said as he fended off multiple Foot Soldiers.
TT used his size to clear out a large chunk of the Federation troops; his tail was used as a makeshift battering ram that knocked anyone who was in the way over. "Hey! Get off me!" he shouted as he felt them trying to get on top of him. He lit himself on fire and watched as the burning soldiers ran away screaming.
"Engi are you ok?" Medic said as he ran over to check up on the Texan.
"Yup, well no...I think my leg's broken," he said.
"Not to worry, I can fix that," Medic quickly healed him before helping him up. "Ready?"
Engi nodded as he picked up his plasma shotgun. "Behind you Medic!"
The German turned to find a Commando and quickly dodged the flames from his flamethrower by rolling to the side. Engi returned fire, and quickly killed him.
"Danke," Medic said as he got to his feet.
"No problem,"
"I don't get it," Arachne said as she looked at the screen. She and Wolfshire were able to get into the communication building as the battle started up again, but only to find that the Allied ships were already near Earth. The thing that puzzled her was why they aren't firing yet, or, more importantly, why they haven't. "This makes no sense,"
"Maybe something broke?" her brother suggested.
"Doubt that," she responded. "They came from a direct path to here, highly unlikely,"
"Well, something is preventing them from shooting us. But what is it?"
Arachne was about to respond when something caught her eyes. Multiple red colored dots appeared on the scanner.
"I think that's why,"
"Stand still, will you?" Pyro said as she missed Phoenix for the umpteenth time. "You are just as annoying as those stupid Spies!"
"I could say the same for you, darling," she said back.
It seemed that the two were evenly matched as neither could land a hit on the other. Pyro could easily avoid Phoenix's knives as she could avoid Pyro's hammer.
Pyro changed tactics. Instead of trying to hit Phoenix, she instead slammed the hammer into the ground. It created a red colored shockwave that quickly moved its way to Phoenix. The shockwave knocked her off her feet and she ended up landing on her back.
"This will teach you to never fuck with my friends," Pyro said as she brought the hammer up. However, before she could bring it down, Phoenix rolled forward and tackled Pyro. She pinned the firebug to the ground and got out another knife.
"You really think I give up easily, well think again," she raised the knife.
'BANG!'
A gunshot rang out and knocked the knife from Phoenix's hand.
"That's enough Phoenix," a voice said. She could easily tell who it was even before she looked.
Desperado.
The cowboy was holding a revolver with a smoking barrel that was pointed right at her. Two glowing red eyes stared right into her orange colored ones.
Pyro used the distraction to knock Phoenix off of her. She scrambled away and picked up her hammer again. "Thanks...who are you exactly?"
"A friend," he replied, not taking an eye off of Phoenix. "Name's Desperado by the way,"
"So this is how it ends for me," she said. "Getting executed by a former friend,"
"I'm not executing you, that's for HIM to decide your fate,"
"Well that's a shame isn't it?" her frown turning into a smirk.
"What are you..." he turned to find two LOW-DRs sneaking up on them. "Shit," he fell the first LOW-DR with a hail of bullets before rolling under the stream of fire the second on produced.
Pyro blindsided the second LOW-DR with her hammer. She climbed on top of the cockpit and brought the hammer down, ending the driver's life.
Desperado whipped around, but found that Phoenix disappeared. "Dammit!" he said through his teeth. "Coward..."
Demo was fighting another Swordsman, but this time the Swordsman had the upper hand. The Scotsman was tired from all the fighting and had a hard time blocking each blow. The Swordsman caught Demo's Eyelander with his katana and flung it away. "Oh this is not good," Demo said as he held his arms up. "Mercy?"
Before the Swordsman could do anything, a large blade entered from behind the soldier, causing him to drop the katana. Blood flew from his mouth and landed on Demo. The blade was extracted from the soldier and he fell to the ground, behind him was a knight.
The knight was wearing a full suit of armor with blue plumage on top of its head. It hefted the large broadsword up onto its shoulder before giving Demo a thumbs up.
"Thanks mate!"
Meanwhile BLU Sniper and his counterpart were being pinned down by Machine Gunners. They couldn't pop out of cover or else they would get shot to pieces. Sniper briefly peeked up but ducked back down as a hail of bullets rained over his head.
"Do they run out of ammo?" BLU Sniper said over the sound.
"I think they overhead, but I'm not sure," Sniper responded.
Suddenly the shooting stopped. The Snipers got their rifles and slowly peeked from their cover. They were surprised to find the Gunners all had an arrow in their heads, and one by one they slumped to the ground.
"Holy dooly," Sniper said.
"Sunglasses," Sniper turned to find a woman in green hunting attire aiming a bow and arrow right at him. "Duck,"
Sniper hit the ground as she let the arrow fly. He looked up to find it pierce through several soldiers before deeply embedding itself into a concrete building.
"Keep up will you?" she said as she walked past the two, notching another arrow as she did.
Jaz threw a LOW-DR into a crowd of Federation soldiers, ass he did she heard something behind her. She turned to find something that everyone had been waiting for all this time.
Reinforcements.
Green colored H-Choppers flew overhead while black colored Tows bulldozed anything in their way. Allied soldiers backed the former up and the troops quickly engaged the Federation troops, who where starting to retreat.
"Took them long enough," Joli said as she walked up to her sister. "Hey, you're late!"
A female Officer jumped off a Tow and saluted them. "Nice to see you're ok," she said.
"Nice to see you too, Bates," Jaz said, returning the salute.
The Officer's radio crackled to life. "This is Admiral Logan to Ground Commander, come in commander,"
"Bates here, what is it Admiral?"
"We have a number of Federation ships attempting to leave the planet, permission to attack?"
"Permission granted Admiral,"
"We'll carry that out-" an explosion echoed in the background. "What the hell?"
"What was that Admiral?"
"Those bastards just jumped dimensions!" he said. "Shit I didn't expect them to jump that early,"
"Just make sure no more escape ok, Admiral?"
"Yes ma'am!" he said as the radio died out.
"Slippery sonabitches," Joli muttered.
"We'll get them, eventually," Bates said. "Why don't we meet up with the others?"
The battle ended as quickly as it started. The resistance that the Federation troops put up quickly diminished as Allied troops stormed the camp. Despite winning, many of the Allies were upset by the fact that the Federation were able to slip away from their grasp.
"At least you're all safe," Desperado said as he pushed his sister's hat down causing her to groan in annoyance. "Especially you,"
"Hey...where's Arachne and Wolfshire?" Swift asked. "Weren't they with you guys?"
"Over here!" Arachne said before tackling Desperado with a hug.
"Um do I know you?" he asked the silver haired girl.
"Oh right, you don't know yet," she quickly changed into to her robot form. "Recognize me now?"
"Yeah, you guys have a lot of explaining to do, now get off of me,"
The spider got off of the cowboy so he could get up. He pointed to the silver haired boy. "Wolfshire?"
The teen nodded. "In the flesh, literally,"
"Aww you two look so adorable together. Now you look like siblings," Swift said.
The two blushed at the attention Swift was giving them. "Uh, anyone see Evie around here?" Wolfshire said.
"Right here Wolf-Boy," the sorceress said as she hopped down from a building. The Allied troops brought their weapons up and aimed them at her.
"What are y-" Desperado slowly drew his revolver but was stopped by Jewel, who whispered something in his ear. "Really? On our side now?"
Jewel nodded.
"Stand down," Desperado said with a sigh. Everyone lowered their weapons, but kept a close eye on her.
"Still don't trust her," Joli mumbled before being nudged by her twin.
"So why?" he asked her.
"The only reason why I followed Phoenix was the fact she's my sister," she said.
"This day's getting more and more interesting," Shiv quickly tapped out in Morse code.
"I've been always scared of her, and I didn't want to do anything rash to upset her. So I did the only thing I could do: follow her orders," she took off her hat. "Only now I realized she's nothing more than a complete lunatic who hungers for power," she sighed. "What happened to the Phoenix I once knew...?"
"Are you sure this isn't a ploy?" Swift asked.
"She's the one who contacted you guys," Jewel responded. "Plus Phoenix is out for her blood now,"
While the main members of the Gang talked, the others gathered with the mercs.
"So what now?" Engi asked.
"Life goes back to how it was, laborer," BLU Spy said. "Isn't that how it always goes for us?"
"It does, but I think this time it's different,"
"It was a pretty exciting experience wasn't it though, am I right?" Scout said. "We kicked so much ass!"
"Not to mention almost die a couple of times..." BLU Sniper mumbled.
"You guys are quite the interesting group," Arachne said. "And that's coming from someone who lives in such a family,"
"Guys, um, why did I end up like this?" Pyro asked.
"To be honest with you Pyro, I don't really know, TT?"
The white colored dragon cocked his head to the side as he looked over Pyro. "I've never seen an elemental transform like that before," he said. "Much less able to control their element with such proficiency even though you never knew you were one,"
"Well burning things is her job," Spy said. "I wouldn't be surprised if the BLU Pyro is one as well,"
Both teams shuddered at the thought of such a thing.
"Ok, next question, how do I change back?"
Suddenly Pyro was enveloped in a whirl of fire. When it dissipated, she was back in her suit. "That was easy,"
"She's good," Wolfshire said to TT.
"You can come back with us, Evie," Desperado said. "But he has to make the final decision, not me,"
She sighed. "I only I never followed her out," she said.
"It's ok," Jaz said patting her on the back. "Everyone makes bad decisions every once in a while, some more than other, but still,"
Desperado looked up to see the night sky turning into dawn. "Time to go, think you should say your goodbyes," he said.
Jewel motioned to the twins and walked over to the other group.
The moment was tense.
"So..." Jewel said. "This is it,"
"Yeah..." Soldier said, almost inaudible.
"We are going to see you again, are we?" BLU Scout asked. "I still want that rematch!" he said to Jaz.
"Maybe Scout...maybe," Jaz said. "It actually depends, time almost doesn't exist for us. A minute back in our dimension may be centuries in yours,"
"Time does fly doesn't it?" Engi said. "It seemed that it was yesterday when we first found Wolfshire in 2Fort," he said with a chuckle.
"Scared you didn't I?" Wolfshire said with a grin. He felt someone latch onto him, he looked to find Pyro crushing him in a bear hug.
"I'm gonna miss you the most," she said in between sobs. "So sad..."
"I know," he said as he returned the hug.
"GROUP HUG!" TT shouted. He used his tail to round up everyone into one big hug.
"Yay!" Pyro shouted.
"This is getting awkward," Spy said as he was squished up next to BLU Pyro.
After a minute or so the group dispersed into their respective groups: RED, BLU, and Allies. Two H-Choppers landed behind the Allied group.
"Bye, everyone!" Wolfshire said. "See you soon!"
"Oh Engi!" Arachne ran up to the Texan and took out a small, silver cube from her pocket. She handed it to him. "Here, this contains the plans for all the weapons I made,"
"T-T-thanks!" he said.
"Oh and I think you should get everyone out of the camp, we're bombing the place as soon as we lift off,"
Engi nodded. "Take care, Arachne!"
"I will, good luck with Pyro!" she said as she got in a H-Chopper.
The mercs waved goodbye as the H-Choppers took off, with TT in tow. They watched as they disappeared into the rising sun.
"I think we should be heading back now," Engi said.
"Why? It's a Saturday," Medic said.
"No, it's because the Allies are blowing this place to kingdom come,"
"..."
Another squadron of H-Choppers flew overhead, before circling around. The bottom hatch opened and the helicopters started to bomb the camp.
"Merde," BLU Spy said as he started to run.
The mercs hauled ass as explosions got closer and closer to them. They barely made it out as one last explosion knocked the two teams a good distance from the camp. They rolled over and over on the ground before coming to a stop.
"That could've gone better," BLU Engi said as he dusted himself off.
"No kidding," Scout said.
The mercs stood up and got a good glimpse of the burning Federation camp.
"Isn't it beautiful Engi?" Pyro said as she snuggled up closer to the Texan.
"Yeah it kinda is,"
"Engi?"
"What is it, honey?"
"I think I'm pregnant..."
To be continued...
A/N: AAAAAAAAAND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! IT IS DONE! DONE I SAY!
Thank you ALL for your support throughout this story. If it wasn't for you guys I wouldn't had made it through, so THANK YOU! As a reminder, OC submissions will continue through until 9/25, and then I'm closing submissions.
See y'all Through the Rift!
-D.W