In the apartment, Pete was back to being tortured, not just the Warners, but Cammy as well. Yakko repeatedly beat Pete on the head with a frying pan, Wakko rubbed the brute's knuckles with a ruler, and Cammy used her Fatal Leg Twister on him. Pete had finally given up, and managed to tell the truth.
"Bison hired me for Dr. N Tropy's world domination scheme!" he said without a moment to catch his breath.
Wakko's violin solo signaled the others that the truth had been told. Yakko, still wanting to teach the peg legged baddy a lesson, decided to offer Pete an ice cream cone. Pete naively accepted the offer, only to have the ice cream get thrown on his face, making him frustrated. Wakko only escalated the situation by spraying seltzer water and tossing a pie made of whip cream on Pete's face, then Yakko stuffed Pete's pants with fireworks and hot coals, causing the brute to run back to the base in pain, with Uncle Harry on his trail.
"Well brother Wakko," said Yakko, "I must say, how we tortured that big oaf just takes me back to the days when we appeared in cartoons in the 1930's!"
"Well, we still got it!" replied Wakko.
"You still got it all right!" said Cammy, taking out an assortment of weapons from her bag.
Cammy quickly threw a whip cream pie at Yakko's face, then threw party poppers onto Wakko, causing his hat to fall off. Once Wakko turned around to pick up his hat, he was swiftly attacked by a rock from a slingshot. That did it.
"HEY, CUT IT OUT OR I'LL POP YOUR HAT OFF!" roared Wakko.
However, Cammy didn't take the warning seriously, so she laughed it off, then she started dancing while mockingly singing her own little rendition of "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf".
Meanwhile, X and the Chipmunks entered in a spacecraft called the Axiom. X immediately noticed something was off. The robots were doing all of the work themselves, (albeit without any free will), while the humans appeared to be extraordinarily lazy and extremely incapable to walk, instead using hover chairs to get from A to B.
"Dear Light!" he said in shock, "It's like I've jumped into the home of fire god!"
"What makes you say that, Mr. X?" asked Theodore.
"Just look at these poor humans," explained X, "suffering, and unable to walk, or help the robots! This is a revolution at its worst!"
"Can there be anything worse?'' asked Simon.
"Maybe you're right," replied X looking through his portal foot locker, "But that's why I have to disguise myself."
X put on an old blue track suit and some white tennis shoes he used in basic Maverick Hunter training, and began sneaking around the Axiom, trying to blend in with the grossly immobile humans.
On a beach in the Inkwell Wasteland, Mickey and Lara swam to safety. Unfortunately, before the two could catch their breaths, Lara looked into her backpack for a map, only to find that her spare clothing had been stolen. She quickly suspected that Mickey had something to do with the situation. Mickey was shocked over such accusations and tried to prove his innocence. However, he was swiftly interrupted by his personally colored communicator ringing, so he picked it up and answered it. Cammy was apparently calling the mouse to thank him for selling her Lara's spares, which she sold to an otaku in Ramsey, New Jersey. Worried, Mickey tried his hardest to destroy his communicator, but it was still functioning otherwise. When he finally stomped it with his foot, he knew he was now in hot water.
"Uh, don't you just hate unexpected calls, ma'am!?" said Mickey nervously sweating.
"YOU LET THAT LITTLE SKIDMARK SELL MY SPARE CLOTHES?!" shouted Lara strangling the cartoon mouse.
"I only did it so she wouldn't kill me!" said Mickey in fear, "Honest, ask Cammy, she'll vouch for me!"
Lara obliged and freed Mickey to call Cammy on her communicator. During the call, Cammy suggested that Lara should give the rodent a chance to redeem himself.
"Very well Cammy!" said Lara reluctantly, "I'll give him a chance, but if that idea of yours fails, I will splatter that mouse on a trap!"
Lara ended the call, and continued her mission finding supplies for weapons, with Mickey on her trail.
At the Axiom, X was close to infiltrating the ship in a quest to get one of the infinity cogs. He hid under the captain's desk to record his progress. But when he tried to access his reports. Unfortunately, Auto found his hide and attempted to report him to Go-4, but Auto was stopped at the last second by Johnny 5. Confused, X chose to escape from the madness.
back in the apartment, Zero was trying to get his strength back through physical therapy during his last few moments of recovery, but he quickly got distracted by the realization of his past violent and bloodthirsty ways with a look of guilt and shame on his face. It wasn't until Zero lost his balance on the parallel bars, only for Cammy to help him back up that he took the liberty to spill his gears to her
"Look Cammy," he said under his throat, "I think I better take a look at the chip."
Once Cammy handed Zero the chip, he took a drastic decision. Closing his white gloved fist, he crushed the chip, moving away from the Stephen King-esque killer robot he used to be.
"What are you doing?" asked Cammy.
"I'm snapping out of it!" answered Zero.
"But why?" wondered Cammy.
"Because I always wanted to," said Zero, "I just never realized it until I met you!"
Those words soon grabbed the attention of a ghost of The Major, Zero's mechanical drill instructor from the Maverick Hunters boot camp on Kubrick Island.
"What's all this nonsense of wanting freedom I keep hearing about?" he shouted.
"Sir I said it sir!" responded Zero.
"Well, what do you have to say for yourself, Private M2?" asked the Major.
"First of all sir, since that chip is out of my system, I don't have to follow your orders!" said Zero.
"Private M2, are you trying to throw me under the bus, or are you trying to be turned into scrap metal?" asked the Major.
"Now wait just a minute, sir!" replied Cammy in Zero's defense.
"You have no place in the discussion, little girl!" shrugged the Major, "I have trained and overworked so many useless piles of junk before the Law took down my beloved boot camp, and I won't let some rusted soda can and a disrespectful human teenage girl ruin my legacy!"
"But you're no better, sir!" argued Zero, struggling to keep his balance.
"What's your problem?" asked the Major, "You proved to me you were a good piece of useless scrap metal! Tell me, are you a hunter or not!"
Without anything to say, Zero did the thing he should've done long ago. He swapped out his right hand for his slightly battered Z-buster, set it to ghost trapper, locked his target on the Major and shot proton rays at him then trapped the spirit in the proton compartment on his buster.
Back at the Inkwell Wasteland, Mickey and Lara found themselves in an abandoned movie theater littered with cobwebs, a scratched radio playing some creepy tune, ink messaging on the walls and old posters of cartoons that would've played before being condemned. The theater was also leaking drops of ink from the ceiling. In addition, the lights weren't working, leaving Lara having to use her trusty flashlight for navigation.
"Gosh," remarked Mickey in fear, "it sure does give me quite the chills!"
"We won't get around with that attitude." replied Lara.
From out of nowhere, Mickey and Lara heard a loud bubbling sound coming from the ceiling.
- To be continued