Cody's touchdown on site was an unorthodox one, to say the least... Mainly because there wasn't one.

He'd warped into the thin air of an empty, black void!

Any bravado he'd entered with had melted away instantly as yet another rather girlish scream ripped its way from his throat. He'd have been mortified had mortal terror not overwhelmed his rational thinking...

It was a foreign whirring noise with an accompanying bright light that finally snapped him out of his fit.

What's that...?

Even with his enhanced speed, he didn't had much time to duck to avoid getting roasted by a red-hot laser that was headed infinitely past him.

He recovered just in time to dodge one coming for his feet. And another. And another. And another. All of them coming from every direction imaginable.

Miraculously, the near-death experiences eventually had an end.

He had to collect himself upon hitting solid ground for the first time, realizing how lucky he was to escape with only the burn marks from grazes he got rather than the alternative.

The surround-sound echo of a voice he never wanted to hear again despite only hearing it once before broke through his thoughts.

"Enjoy the warm-up, boy?"

The taunt in his tone immediately got the normally mild-mannered teen angry.

"I'm not in the mood. Where are you and where's my brother?!"

"Oh, close by..." his tone turned darker and even more unsettling. "Very close, indeed. But we'll get to him. Just as soon as I'm through...testing you."

Now he was staring to get just plain annoyed. "I'm NOT a guinea pig. Where is he?!"

Lucien's voice turned cold. "I don't remember saying that you had a choice in the matter. Remember who holds the cards here, Organic."

"Organic?" He knew they were human?

"Yes, Organic. And unless you want me to snuff out the life of the clone you care for so much, you'll provide me with the information I need! Now go. Show me everything that you have to offer."

A blinding flash of light soon gave way to a grueling path that seemed to stretch on forever.

His shoulders slumped. Before he could talk himself into backing out, he reminded himself of what was at stake before racing off.

When me and Zack are back together, safe and sound, this'll all be worth it.

-000-

Zero hadn't taken long to act after the taller of the twins had left. Much like he had done the previous night, he headed to the sparring arena at Troia Base and trained alone.

He refused to think about…them. Refused to relive it. He missed them, that was a cold, hard, fact. But he'd moved on. He wasn't that person anymore.

He was a weapon. He'd never let himself lose...

"Zero?"

The warrior turned around, half-expecting to have to chew Layer out for breaking his concentration.

The face he saw was not his would-be admirer, but a different girl with a slightly lighter complexion.

"So this is what you've been up to..."

He raised an eyebrow at the unnecessary statement. "London, right?" She nodded the affirmative and he continued. "What're you doing here?"

"I... needed something to do." Her hesitation implied that there was more to it than that, and he could guess what.

He knew that she had been around to hear what went on back at Hunter Base. He cut her off before she could possibly think of some empty platitude to give him. "I don't need your pity."

The girl looked at him as if examining him for a moment before giving him a small nod as if in understanding before she asked him something he hadn't quite expected.

"Wanna spar?"

He couldn't help but slightly tilt his head at that one. Did she know what she was asking?

"You DO know I'm out of your league, right?

She shrugged nonchalantly. "Yeah. I saw you earlier. I don't really care."

Zero looked at the girl warily before relenting. "Okay…if you insist. Just know that I won't be holding back. Give me all you got."

"Right." London took a fighting stance as he did, and within a minute, they'd launched at each other.

-000-

An exhausted Cody stared ahead at the latest of his adversary's traps, a curtain of fire stretching down the corridor before him.

"Now what will you do, Organic?"

After a while of Lucien's taunting, he'd learned to tune him out, instead choosing to focus on getting past each obstacle as it came up (his previous plan of trying to think about what he'd say to his brother once he saved him proved too distracting). This one only needed blast of Hydro Cannon timed just right to allow him to slip behind it without being burned alive.

His dashing around was ground to a halt by him nearly flying off a ledge and falling a long way down that was surrounded by spikes. Gulping and gathering what courage he could, he dove down and had to endure his life flashing before his eyes several times as he nearly nicked the pointy instant-death objects.

Still shaking as he hit the ground, he heard the Maverick congratulate him.

"Impressive."

"Shut up," the boy mouthed, not sure if he was talking about Lucien or his own feelings of his heart leaping out of his chest. Tapping into that part of himself that more closely resembled his brother, he shoved his tightening emotions aside and kept going.

Saving his brother was all that mattered. Saving...

All thoughts of any kind stopped when the end of his latest path saw him confronted with his brainwashed mirror image, just as emotionally dead and zombie-like as he'd seen on that transmission.

-000-

Back at the Base, Zero gazed at his defeated and winded opponent as he caught his breath.

He had to admit, she hadn't been too shabby. His victory had been a foregone conclusion, of course, but she had managed to make the journey there a bit more interesting than he thought it would be, showcasing a variety of weapons and gadgets. She had even managed to disarm him with that grappling hook of hers.

Unfortunately for her, he was far from useless even without his trusty saber.

The odd thing was...her battle instincts were highly tuned.

Maybe he was wrong and that might've come from her time out in the field here, but he still felt the need to ask...

"Did you train at all before you were spat out here?"

"Huh?"

He sighed. "Don't play dumb, girl. I know skill when I see it, and I think we both know by now that there's more to us than we're willing to admit."

After collecting herself, she crossed her arms and relented. "Fine. My Daddy made me take self-defense classes to make sure that nobody could steal from him by stealing from me."

"Hmm. Interesting."

After a moment of silence, somewhat out of the blue, she asked (or more accurately, chirped), "So, who does your hair?"

"What...? What does that have to do with anything?!"

"It's a question. Just answer it."

Zero would've blushed. "All right, all right… Provided you can land a solid hit on me."

"Really?"

"You were apparently rich back in your world. You should know what a 'deal' is."

"If that's how you want it..." London got back into her fighting stance and back to a much more serious tone of voice. "Then bring it on."

Both of them went at it again, with even Zero managing to have fun with this even though he wouldn't say it. They both knew in their hearts, however, that they were only distracting themselves and each other for the moment and that it couldn't last forever...

-000-

Cody stood frozen in time, not believing what he was seeing.

"Oooh. Seems like things are getting interesting..."

Zack didn't react. It was as if he wasn't even there.

"Well then, you two likely have a lot of catching up to do, so I'll leave you to it. Attack!"

The taller twin would watch in terror as his brother wordlessly, and without any emotion, did as instructed.

He had to dodge a few strikes before he could even find his voice. "Zack... ZACK! It's me, Cody! Please tell me you're in there somewhere..."

Predictably, however, all this won him was a kick to the head rather than a verbal response.

Even though he was considerably less bulky in the silver, gold, and white armor that he was in now (the resemblance to Lucien's frame hadn't been lost on him), he still hit like a truck.

He found out to his chagrin that while he was the faster of the two twins, his older brother (or the husk that was in his place) would come at him unpredictably from all angles. A straight-on attack would be armored through and countered with a crystal-coated tackle. He sometimes took to the sky to come down on him cloaked in flames in ways that he wasn't always able to catch and counter. Then he'd get thrown sky-high like a ragdoll courtesy of a power from a certain Maverick he'd much rather forget.

Through it all though, Cody knew he wasn't giving it his all. With every shot he fired, every torrent of water, every fork of electricity, every stream of fire, he was well aware that he was aiming to wound, not kill.

The same couldn't be said for his opponent... Could it?

That's when a question occurred to him. How was he still alive right then?

Zack had had a few chances to end him a few times, and even came close to decapitating him wholesale one particular time where he had a blade of air projected from his foot within striking distance of his neck...only for him to suddenly and awkwardly miss, as if something subconsciously had held him back.

Maybe...

"What's this? How are you still alive?!"

Lucien. The fight had ground to a halt when he spoke. Cody decided to take a gamble and hope that his growing hunch was correct.

"Because my brother's still in there, and there's no way he'd ever really want to hurt me like that!"

His shout into the ether was responded to...using Zack's mouth.

"Oh, really, now?"

His eyes now glowing a menacing red, and a dark smirk oozing with malice played on his lips. Lucien was talking through him now and it was utterly unnatural. His brother's grins and smirks (which he had mentally catalogued by this point so he'd be able to know if he was scheming something in advance) may have come in several flavors of arrogant and mischievous, but they were never like this.

"Duly noted. I'll have to fix that. Farewell!"

"No! Wait..." but he had already warped away.

He was left alone to the ever-increasing hazards of the path forward. The tall twin was conflicted now. On the one hand, he was scared stiff at the prospect of what that monster had in store for Zack.

On the other hand, though, the fact that he was clearly still fighting his captor's control really lifted his spirits. He smiled a little bit in spite of it all.

He'd always been the more strong-willed of the two of them, for better or worse...

Cody clenched a fist in determination. "I'll fight too, Zacky. Lend me your strength, Bro. I swear I'll rescue you and bring you back to normal...in more ways than one."

-000-

Back with the two dueling Hunters, the girl was finding it pretty hard to hit her mark.

No matter what weapon she tried out, Zero had an answer for it. Even when she pulled out her crossbow, he merely twirled his sword around rapidly to deflect the shots.

Throughout the spar, the more experienced Hunter threw out pointers to correct her technique, much like he did with his own recruits...

...and he wasn't the only one that knew where this fight was going.

"I... I give up." London admitted. Her expression said it all: she knew this was a lost cause.

After a moment on his guard, Zero finally relaxed.

"Interesting. You have good instincts."

"Apparently not good enough to hit you, though..."

"Don't sell yourself short. I train every day to be the best at what I do. You're still learning."

"Seriously, though, it's like you're..." The right word wouldn't come. Instead of that, two possibilities sprang to mind that she'd heard from others. "Invincible? Invulnerable?"

"Both could work," the warrior replied, a smirk curling his lips.

"Maybe if..." her mood turned somber, clearly bothered by something. "If you were out there instead of me, you wouldn't have... I wouldn't have..."

"You're talking about what happened with the shorter one, aren't you?" He motioned for more explanation, unwilling to admit what he had been dealing with back when he'd first came back in with her critically injured body.

After she gave it to him as best she could, he gave his own advice.

"First of all, never let your guard down around your enemy. That's a recipe for disaster. Secondly, this job, in most cases, is a team effort, and you need to act like it is. You guys don't have the skill to fly solo if you don't have to."

"I know." She still seemed deep in thought.

It was as if the red reploid read her mind. "Worried about them? I wouldn't be. That kid, Cody, reminds me a lot of how X used to be: really skittish when it comes to fighting, but will eventually do what he has to get the job done."

"You think he'll be fine?"

"At the end of the day, yeah. He'll rescue Zack and they'll both come back mostly in one piece so that we all could get back to planning our next move."

"How can you be so sure?"

He couldn't give a good explanation for that, so he just shrugged. "Just a hunch, really. You guys all seem pretty inseparable."

The girl turned her back to him, closing her eyes as she whispered, "Yeah. They do... They at least have each other and their...family."

Zero decided not to press further on the topic, given how her reaction reminded him about how he'd react to certain subjects.

He did press on another topic, however, as he walked next to her.

"Regardless, you'll want to stay sharp for them, if nothing else. I'm sure none of them would want you dying."

At first, London stiffened at this, causing the warrior to worry that he'd stuck his foot in his mouth. Then she turned around, utterly bewildered.

"How can you talk like this about..."

"Let's just say that me and the Reaper have shaken hands more than once."

For the second time, she was in awe of him. He seemed absolutely fearless.

She had to know. "How did you..."

"Ah, ah, ah. You didn't hit me, so..."

Zero was interrupted by the sound of the condition of their bet being satisfied, her back fist hitting his chest with a thud.

"What the...?"

"Now I did," the girl chirped.

"When...? Did you plan this?"

"Nope. I saw an opportunity and I went for it. Yay, me!"

She settled for saying her catchphrase this time, because despite clearly being proud of herself, she wasn't really in the mood to jump up and down and clap like usual.

Choosing not to acknowledge... whatever that was, he moved on.

"Alright then, what do you want to know?"

-000-

The next leg of his journey saw Cody submerged underwater. As annoying as the slowed movement was to work around, apparently his adversary didn't think things were difficult enough already. The next few rooms had this as well as the occasional burst of electricity flowing through them.

The first one had been little more than a taunt, as the current sent through hadn't been strong enough to kill him when he inevitably screwed up. Just looking at what went through the following rooms made that clear.

Thankfully, though, he had a few high walls to cling to over the pool to work with.

He forced back his anxiety as he looked down at his potential high-voltage doom at one point.

If he were like his twin, Zack would owe him big-time for this.

He'd like to think he wasn't that petty, however…

Most of the time.

With that, his mind couldn't help but drift back to the others for a moment.

Whatever Lucien said to her back there had sent the normally strong-willed young adult (it had become surprisingly easy to call her that as of late) off crying.

Something about her being "illegitimate".

He would have to remember to ask what she meant by that later but would have to trust Bailey to take care of her for now.

And what of the rest of the Hunters?

He shook himself out of his thoughts. He had a brother to save right now.

He dove back in the instant it was safe and began working his way to the next room as quickly and carefully as possible...

-000-

The water eventually gave way to dry land once again...

...along with another encounter with Zack.

"This should hold long enough," his captor assured with his surround-sound voice. "Now, attack! Rid yourself of your burden forever, boy!"

Burden? The taller twin had no time to think on what was meant as he was launched at without preamble.

It didn't take long for him to sense something wrong.

For one thing, his attacks were much wilder and more uncoordinated. He hit harder, but less often. Secondly, he looked much less like a zombie and much more like someone in the throes of a nightmare, clutching his head and moaning the whole time.

He caught a few words.

"No...can't...he...never measure...failure..."

He tried talking to him as they fought.

"I don't know what that monster told you, Zack, but he's wrong! You're not a failure!"

"That's right, Zack. You aren't a failure... As long as you destroy him!"

"Shut up!" He roared at wherever Lucien was hiding. "It's me, Zacky. You know me! I'd never want to hurt you, and I know you feel that way about me!"

The two had fallen into close quarters by now, with Cody getting a good look at his brother's restless, terrified expression. It haunted him.

He wanted to stop the fight right now and hug his brother, tell him that it would all be okay, much like he all too often used to have to do for him.

His understandable thoughts were misplaced, as he found himself slugged across the room they were in by a charged punch.

Exhausted and battered as he was, he got back up not because he wanted to, but because he had to.

"Weak….stupid…you...leave me...loser..." the shorter boy continued mumbling incoherently as he closed back in.

"You're not weak, stupid, or a loser, and...and... I'm not going to leave you."

"He left...they'll all leave...no."

Was he talking about...? "Zack? You're wrong! Mr. Moseby didn't leave you, I promise."

"Kill the boy, already!" the Maverick ordered. "Unless you want me to leave you as well!"

"No... NO!"

With a practically inhuman, desperate scream, Zack charged.

Cody dodged the strikes coming his way for his life, until he couldn't anymore. He managed only with his superhuman reflexes to catch the punch that got to him.

Then he heard a sickening crunch followed by a horrendous scream.

They both belonged to him.

His right hand and a good chunk of his arm was in pieces a few feet away.

His ensuing agony had two unintended yet welcome consequences: it ground the battle to a halt, and for the first time since he'd left the Base, the real Zack surfaced. He squinted, as if trying to figure out who he was looking at, then his expression changed, the deeper of the two voices trembled with fear at what he'd just done, but this time, it was unmistakably his.

"C-Cody?"

At that moment, the taller boy could've been locked in an iron maiden for all he cared and he wouldn't have acknowledged any of it. He forced himself to ignore the pain and force a grin.

"That's right. It's me." He threw in a lighthearted jab, if anything, to try and calm him down. "Imagine that, me, the weak little brother, saving you, the big, strong older brother... You're never gonna live this down, are you?"

Zack almost smiled back, or at least smirked, until his eyes were drawn over to the sparking stump that his brother was running on.

"Your arm... I..."

"It…It's fine," Cody quickly cut in, trying to hide it from view. "Don't worry about it. You'd do the same for me. I know that."

"How can you say...?" The strange soft, genuine confusion in his tone was distressing enough on its own (as this sudden vulnerability was coming from the normally cocky, brash, and self-assured Zachary Martin), but still not as much so as seeing him suddenly stumble backwards, clutching his head in pain.

"Oh, dear. Was I interrupting something?"

The second he heard the voice, all he wanted to do was silence it forever. Furious, he looked around for the source. It laughed at his frustration as he did so.

"Oh, we'll meet face-to-face, boy, but on my own terms. Now…" The shorter of the twins was warped away in the throes of agony. The path forward lit up, beckoning him. "…we'll have the final showdown at the end of the road in front of you. Until then, show me something worth taking!"

Fury and determination harmonized in his soul. "I'm going to save my brother, and then I'm coming for you."

Lucien laughed from wherever he was. "How unexpectedly vengeful of you... Tell me, how does a whimpering coward like yourself suddenly grow a backbone?"

"It's pretty easy to do that for someone you care about."

"Touching." The Maverick's statement was cold and remorseless, contrasting Cody's passion. "I'll leave you to your travail. For the sake of giving you a fighting chance, though…"

The ground suddenly erupted in a white, healing light. He was completely repaired, but he wasn't about to thank the one behind it.

This was probably one of his mind games.

With that he was alone. He looked ahead to a maze of spikes, and he realized something.

He…didn't care all that much.

As he got moving, the barrage of potential instant death didn't frighten him. It just whizzed right by him as he jumped and air-dashed on by.

Maybe Lucien was right (as much as he hated that idea) and he had grown a backbone throughout all this madness…

Maybe he was right, and his brother was strengthening him somehow…

Maybe he'd simply been through so much at this point that he'd outright stopped caring about whatever was in front of him…

He preferred to take the first and second options, personally. Either way, compared to having to hide behind his friends, brother, and even the other Hunters, it felt good to feel this fearless.

I'm coming, buddy…

-000-

London still didn't know what to make of what she had just heard.

At first, she'd laughed out loud when Zero told her that X of all people was doing his hair most of the time. Apparently, he'd learned to do so from Alia.

The mood changed when she asked whether it had always been like that.

He wouldn't look at her for a very long moment.

She didn't have to make too many guesses as to who else might've done it before...

"So, um, what was she like?"

Her uncomfortable, uncertain question hung in the air.

The red warrior glanced at her, eyes, giving nothing away, before choosing to stare at the ceiling as if it held all the answers to life's questions.

"Iris, she...was a détente." The displaced rich girl tilted her head at the unfamiliar word. Sensing that she wasn't following along, he supplied, "A break."

"From what?"

"This," he unsheathed his sword for a second before putting it back again. "Again, and again and again. Fight after fight for no real reason..."

Other than my own atonement, Zero added mentally.

"What about X?" Their sibling-like bond had been obvious even to her.

"There's that... As naive as he can be sometimes."

"Did she fight too?"

He shook his head. "The most she ever did was navigate." He avoided mentioning too many details, for both their sakes, really. "She wasn't built to do much of anything else. We were kinda similar in that way. She was never all that fond of watching me or her brother do our thing more than she had to, but she'd idolized us both all the same…"

Bizarrely, as Zero went on, he found it easier and easier to keep going with the tale as he kept talking. London was at rapt attention as she heard how they'd met on his and X's mission to Laguz Island, her brother's occasional visits on base and his impartations of wisdom during their many spars, and her gradually developing a crush on him over time, which he eventually reciprocated.

"I don't know how to describe it. She just made me feel…"

The girl knew what word he was grasping for, as she knew how he felt in a way. "Normal?"

Zero paused for a beat before nodding slowly. "You know, whenever I'd get back from a mission, she'd just direct me to her room to do my hair. It was the same more often than not before them, too. No matter what I had to do, she never judged me. I could tell by the look on her face at times that she wasn't okay with a lot of it, but she didn't say anything."

He would talk more about her bonding with X of all people over their shared love of nature (though he didn't see a point in telling her just how related those two and Colonel were in terms of creative intent) and their slow journey into dating.

That's where he finally froze. He looked at London.

Clearly unable to urge him on delicately, the girl chose to be blunt.

"How did you kill her?"

"I didn't mean it!" The shock and fear in that exclamation jarred the golden-coated girl. He looked far away all of a sudden, as if he was looking at something else. He continued to mumble the same words on repeat until she waved her hand in front of him to get his attention.

"I don't think you meant it," she said sympathetically upon succeeding. Thankfully, she had dropped the subject.

Coming to himself at last, he snapped, "What'd I say about pitying me?!"

London folded her arms in a mini-pout with her face following suit. It was behavior fit for a spoiled child not getting their way, and over the years, she'd mastered it well. "Too bad, 'cause you're getting it anyway." Said pout morphed into a much more empathetic look laden with the exact pity he didn't want. "It's no fun being alone…"

"London! Zero!"

A certain brunette girl had made her way to the sparring circle, clearly in a panic and holding a tablet in her trembling hand.

"You guys need to see this…" Bailey locked eyes for a second with her rich friend, apparently wanting to say something before deciding against it and forcing herself back on track.

What the two saw elicited slightly different reactions from them both: stomach-turning horror mixed with anxiety for London and a similar feeling of the latter mixing with a bizarre, uncomfortable sense of Deja Vu.

"Those two… They're fighting."

For once, when London Tipton stated the obvious, it filled those around her with a sense of dread instead of annoyance.

"They could kill each other…"

-TBC-

High-stakes fighting and low-stakes fighting with some further character elements here. I wanted to show how Cody fares in a life-or-death situation completely alone on top of everything else he has to deal with and maybe show a different side to him along the way. London adds a little lightheartedness to the otherwise dark atmosphere, even as she's going through her own stuff at the moment.

On your way out the door, be sure to ask questions, comment, review and show your support in any way available if you liked what you've read here. Also, keep tabs on this story and profile for more. Goodbye until next time!