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I was in the base. Silence. Theo and Axel were still sleeping so I didn’t want to bother them.11Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfLFkEORoTv
But they keep flashing in my head. Telamon asking me. Begging for me. Wanting ME. And I ask, why me? I can’t tell if I'm genuinely losing my sanity or… if this is real.
Skye looked genuinely angry at me when I was in the tech room, watching over. Bella was struggling to stand up after being knocked down.
I just started crying to myself slightly. God, I hate this. I just feel lost. Belief this and belief that. In a world like mine, how am I meant to know what's right anymore?
I looked to the left, wiping a tear off my face. My coat. I haven’t worn it since my injury after we fought against Dominic. I had good reason to hide my identity, to stop that from happening. Being “The Hooded Man” so I could eradicate my past life, become a better person.
And then, last year, I met Skye. Everything changed. I felt like, after everything I had gone through, I could trust her the most. And then, not long before the Swords were stolen again, she joined us. She’s an amazing inventor. She creates D.F.E’s, she constructs weapons, even some that almost replicate the complexity of Hope’s dagger’s shape, and she’s just one of the smartest people I’ve met.
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I looked back at the screen and saw that they were about to teleport back. Zhen grabbed onto Cynthia, who I didn’t realize had been knocked out. I stood up and walked out of the tech room, and I saw Bella, Skye and Zhen put down all their stuff rapidly, before laying Cynthia down on the hospital bed.
It did hit me at that moment. I left and so much had happened. Cynthia nearly died and Isabella was knocked out, and Zhen, Hope and Skye had to defend themselves… without me.
I turned to my left, Skye was staring at me. I wanted to say something, but I just couldn’t, and she eventually just walked off. Zhen came up to my ear.
“You’re gonna have to get ready. We’re gonna have to find Hope, they took her… and her dagger.”
Hope is gone. I’ve let that happen. I didn’t even know what to do so I couldn’t respond.
If I had just stopped being scared, would all of that stuff still happen?
“They’ve definitely taken her to their Lab, and the dagger to the clock.” Bella interrupted.
I think I knew how I could try to know where their Labs are.
“Sara.”
I ran outside, got my D.F.E, and dialed Sara’s number.
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Ring… ring…
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“OH! S-Sorry, I didn't realize it was you, Josh.”
“Maybe tone down your voice a little so they DON’T hear you?”
“Uhm, y-yeah. Right.”
“You’re gonna have to tell me where the Labs are.”
“You know I can’t do that. Obviously I’m not defending them here because you know I don’t believe in… t-this anymore. But if the authorities get involved they’ll arrest me, too.”
“We aren’t going to snitch. It's an emergency.”
“You promise?”
“You’re my cousin, I don’t break family promises.”
“Ok. They… they killed everyone who worked with N.E.T, and took over their facilities. We now use those as the Lab. I don’t know if you’re gonna be able to find it.”
“Well we’ve got Zhen here, who was a pilot. You think she’ll be able to remember?”
“Huh? Uhm, Yeah, probably.”
“Thanks.”
“Anytime. But if you contact authorities, I’ll never forgive you. Got it?”
“Yeah.”
“And that means telling anybody that I told YOU where they are. If they ever find out, t-they’ll kill me in seconds.”
“I’ll… I’ll see you later.”
Beeeep!
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I don’t know why she risks staying there. I mean, it's still sort of useful to get inside information but she shouldn’t do that to herself. I saw someone’s silhouette, which I think was Bella’s. She was probably listening in.
She eventually came outside, walked and leant herself against the wall that I was leaning on.
“Are you ok?”
I didn’t respond.
“I think I know why you ran away. You… you see them too, don’t you?”
“…Yeah.”
She started walking forwards to the small grass hill next to the base. She sat down on the grass.
“Sit down, man.”
I slowly put myself down next to her.
“I heard you talking to Sara. I almost forgot who she was because of how long it's been. I’ve asked Zhen about the N.E.T facilities and she said she knows how to get there.”
“That’s good.”
“Theo and Axel woke up as well.”
“Can you just… tell me why you’re here?”
“I want to help.”
“How CAN you help? I still remember it. I still get more. I can’t tell whether I’m genuinely going insane or all of this is actually real.”
“You’re not insane. A lot of people get visions. I just choose to believe it's not actually Him. It could be something that the Terrors did to us to make us believe, or some kind of weird magic being used against us… I don’t know. At the end of the day, that’s something we can’t control.”
“Just stop. You’re not helping. You can cope differently, it won’t work for me.”
“Because you need to tell me what you’re actually seeing. Maybe there’s some way I could help or-”
I stood up. I couldn’t do this.
“W-wait!”
I started walking towards the door back into the base.
“Come on.” I said. Another tear began forming and I wiped it immediately. I opened the door and went back to the Team. Bella followed.
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I looked at Axel and he was right next to Cynthia, crying really hard while his face was on her chest. Theo was pacing around, probably stressing about Hope because I knew that the two were close. He wanted to come on the rescue mission with us. His reasoning was… justified. They decided to let him come, so he went to a chair and hung his camera on it.
“Me and Hope were in a Lab before, and it wasn’t too bad.”
“Yeah, the problem is, there wasn’t any security. This shit will be GUARDED.” Zhen added.
Zhen was grabbing all our weapons and throwing them to us. Bella’s staff, my Metal Fists, and Zhen grabbed the Illumina. She also tossed Theo one of Hope’s fake daggers.
“If the D.F.E signals aren’t blocked by it, we could still teleport inside.” Bella flipped her D.F.E. “We’ll still need to blend in, everyone there wears a uniform.”
It felt like Bella was taking over Cynthia’s role here.
“Well we could blend in, but it’ll take way too long. Hope is in danger.” Zhen had grabbed her D.F.E, she reached out her hand to Bella, and she reached her hand out to me. I hesitated, but eventually grabbed on.
“So you’re suggesting we rush them.”
“It’ll be hard without Cynthia, but if we do it unexpectedly, we should be able to find Hope.”
Skye finally came down.
“The Clock? We still need to-”
RING! RING!
Axel’s phone rang. He simply raised his phone and showed us who was ringing. It was Zephyr.
“W-why haven’t you blocked him?” I asked.
“I didn’t think he’d frickin’ speak to me again! Skye, should I answer?”
“Let’s just see what he wants to say. I haven’t spoken to him at all since the Amalgamation situation anyway.”
Beep.
“Axel.”
“What do you want?”
“You’re in the Base, aren’t you?”
I looked towards Skye, but she shook her head. Too bad Axel is a dumbass. Zhen moved slightly back with Theo and Bella to let Skye come down to the phone.
“Y-yeah-”
“SHHHHH! Just stop talking, man.”
“Skye? Skye, oh my god.”
“Yeah. Why are you calling?”
“Because of Cynthia… and the fact that I need help. I saw the fight between you guys and Toxin, they have TV’s in this… lab. They kidnapped me and put me here, and then I saw Hope not too long afterwards. They were dumb enough not to realize I had my phone with me. But they’ve locked me up in this room. TV’s watching the arena.”
“So what about Cynthia?”
“She’s finally… dead, right? I just wish it was me instead of-”
“She’s not… dead. Don’t say that.” Axel muttered.
“You’re kidding me.”
“Sorry, why have THEY kidnapped YOU? At least Hope has an excuse.” Skye looked at Axel and then back to me.
“You wanna ask something too, or are you just gonna stand there?”
I stepped forward.
“Uhm, yeah. What Skye asked.”
“I tried to… capture the Windforce. I don't know why I’m in the TV room though, I think they wanted me to see something. Maybe they’re trying to prove my point on how hopeless you are without me on your team.”
“Shut the fuck up.” I grabbed Axel’s phone and hung up.
Beepp.
“What are you doing?” Skye shouted at me.
“You know full well what he’s going to do. He’s gonna try to make us feel like he was a better Guardian, he’s gonna ask to be rescued and he’s going to find Cynthia and finish her off!”
“He’s still MY brother!”
Axel spoke up. “The brother that tried to kill me and Cynthia! Forget about it!”
“Yeah, your brother tried to kill us all! And because of his stupid grudge, he unleashed the Amalgamation and ruined everything. He hurt Axel, made Zhen’s entire crew suffer, forced Cynthia to kill Buck and ruined the friendship between her and Hope. Not only that, but the Arena was destroyed along with the entire N.E.T.”
“So you suppose we just… leave him there?”
“YES! That’s exactly what I’m saying. He’s better off rotting and being experimented on-”
I think I offended Bella by saying that.
“Just shut up!” She shouted. “Let’s just go in and out.”
We maintained eye contact for a moment. She put her staff on her back.
“I-I’m sorry.” I told her.
“It's fine, I know you didn’t mean it like that.”
Skye looked at me.
“So, are you coming with us?”
I nodded. She walked towards me and, hesitantly, held my wrist, tightly. I looked at her but she didn’t actually look back, so I whispered to her.
“I won’t run away this time, okay?”
No response.
Theo held on to Skye after she grabbed her Hyperlaser. Bella spoke one last time before we left.
“The clock is either going to still be underneath the Arena, or it's been moved to their new Lab, so we’re probably going to have to split up once we get Hope.”
Zhen had activated the teleport. I blinked and…
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We were in the middle of a small desert, we were all looking around until both Theo and Zhen knocked me and pointed.
We were outside of this small… shelter.
“Looks like you were right about it being guarded.” I said.
“Well why wouldn’t it be? It was guarded when we were operating.”
The doors were fairly large and seemed to be locked. It was guarded by around 10 Swordsmen. There were also two strange, fairly large mechs at the front, being controlled by other swordsmen with the name Titan~22 on it. We all hid behind a small hill of sand, luckily there wasn't any wind.
“We could just teleport inside, but it might be difficult in case we teleport in front of somebody in there.” Bella used her staff to stand up.
PING! PING!
We all looked at the Titans, only to realize that they must’ve detected us. Their arms started transforming into chainguns.
“GRAB ON!” Zhen shouted, so we did and ended up inside.
“Oh my god.” I heard Bella mutter.
It was so similar to the Lab at the Chaos Canyon, before they moved underneath the Arena. I never got to see the one underneath the Arena, but it was probably similar.
Nobody was in whatever this room was, thank god. I turned left and saw that Zhen was looking at a Sunrise logo on the wall that replaced the N.E.T logo. You could still see the N.E.T logo smudged on the wall. Bella went up to her.
“You good?”
“I can't believe it's already been months, and it looks so different.”
“Those weird machine things detected us, so do you think the people inside might’ve told everyone that they have intruders..?”
We turned around to see a ton of computer desks. They seemed abandoned, I don’t think they’ve used this room yet.
We went up to a door only to realize they were locked, and we needed an administrator pass to unlock them.
I turned around to Zhen to see if she had something to open it, but she shrugged. She was too focused on the changes to what was her place. She mentioned that “Kai would’ve hated to see this.”
Skye began speaking, “We’ll probably have to wait until someone comes through this-”
BZZZZT!
“…door.”
“SHIT! Hide!” Bella grabbed her arm and shoved me, Skye and Zhen underneath a computer desk. I peeked over slightly and saw her and Theo hide behind one of the walls. The door opened, and I couldn’t help but look, so I crawled slightly so my eyes could still see the door and some of the path that followed. It was none other than Cairo, a Swordsman and a large black orb hovering over them. It was slightly transparent, and you could see Hope. I looked directly at Bella. Theo almost spoke up but she quickly put her hand over his mouth. Cairo and the Swordsman seemed to be speaking about something, and it felt like we were interrupting a conversation.
“…not what I’m saying?” Cairo said.
“It literally is.”
“Nesi, chill. You’ll never be a Lead Terror if you think like that. The Wild Wind have made a solid deal with Z.”
“The… who?”
“Deziah and Antonina, remember? They’re looking after the Windforce.”
“Oh. Right. Is your father handling the Clock?”
“Yeah, he's got the dagger. It's only right that he does it, he's strived for this his entire life. He’s taking it to the Arena. The Wild Wind has unleashed DESTRUCT to blow the Arena into smithereens so he can access it. The explosion won’t affect him if he keeps the Venomshank with him,
I looked at Bella, and I could see her mouth the words “Oh no.”
What was DESTRUCT?
We heard static from a radio attached to Cairo’s torso.
“~~~~~SHADOW RIDER! INTRUDERS!”
“Nesi, stop.”
They both stopped walking.
“THEY HAVE D.F.E’s AND TELEPORTED SOMEWHERE IN THE LAB! WITH HT-3, AND~~~”
It turned off.
“Your s-”
He covered Nesi’s mouth. It sounded like he was about to say something beginning with S, but it couldn’t be… sister? Right?
“Go around the room and double-check to see if anybody’s here. If they are. Kill them.”
“And if it’s… HT-3?”
“Then just bring them to me. If the Clock plan works, it’s only right that she knows the truth.”
“Alright.”
Cairo destroyed the orb floating above him and Hope dropped into his hands.
“Hey! What are you-”
What did he want with Hope? He has the dagger. I couldn’t lie around any longer, so, the closer Nesi got to us, I grabbed him and pummeled his face with spikes.
He died instantly. Skye was the first to react, but got interrupted by Hope.
“Why’d you-”
“Josh!”
She reached out to me but Cairo transformed into a large blob, absorbed Hope and blasted across the room, straight back out of the door. I think he noticed Bella.
I can’t believe I let that happen. I warned them and let them get away.
Zhen stood up and immediately began to run, Bella and Theo followed as me and Skye trailed. Zhen shouted across to me:
“You’ve messed up again, well fucking done!”
“It was Hope, I wasn’t going to stay there and let whatever HE was going to do to her, happen.”
“Just shut up and stand back! You aren’t helping.”
“Watch out!” I shouted to her. She bumped into two workers. Bella twirled her staff and whacked them away.
“COME ON!” She demanded us to keep running, but Zhen sat there looking at the two. Theo and Skye followed but I slowed down a bit to stay near Zhen.
“Wh- N-Nela? Charlie?”
They were part of her team, I believe. Kornelia and Charlie.
“Oh.. my god. Zhen?” Charlie whimpered.
“Should we kill her?” Nela had pointed to Zhen.
“Wh- No! I mean… I don’t know!”
I ran away because I needed to catch up. Zhen was obviously still in shock to see her deceased friends back to life. Cairo must have resurrected them, but why?
I caught up to the Team, and Bella started talking about DESTRUCT.
“It’s a project I saw them working on, but I never thought they would actually use it.”
“What is it, anyway?” Theo got the dagger and stabbed it into the neck of a guard running towards us.
“Oh shit, nice!” Bella twirled her staff and summoned some zombies to guard us.
“I honestly didn’t mean to do that.”
“Right, anyway, DESTRUCT is essentially… a gigantic sentient Attacker, strapped with tons of tons of firepower inside of it. It’s enough to blow anything apart, but it can be deactivated if it's killed. I’m going to handle it because I know exactly what weak points it has but I need you to come with me and distract Mark-”
“I’ll come with you.” I said.
“Me and Skye ain’t gonna be enough to handle Shadow Rider?” Theo mentioned.
“I think we need to abandon Hope for now. I know she won’t get killed, but if they activate the Machine, we’ll all be killed.”
Theo grabbed his D.F.E. “I’m confused, is it called the Clock or the Machine-”
“IT DOESN’T MATTER! Let’s go!”
…
We all teleported to one of the bottom platforms of the Arena.
“Where’s Zhen?” Bella asked.
“I had to leave her behind, she met up with her crew who died and they must’ve been ressurrected… I think she was in shock and I couldn’t get her to come with me.” I explained.
Suddenly, we all heard a blaring sound. It sounded like an alarm. We looked behind us and a gigantic machine was slowly moving towards us. Its head looked like a Tripmine, spinning around rapidly and speeding up as it kept walking.
“EVERYONE, TARGET IT!” Bella screamed. She summoned tons of zombies to latch onto its arms and legs to weigh it down.
“Shoot!”
Skye charged up shots straight into its body as I grabbed my fists tight and charged into the beast, and I began denting its body slightly. I kept punching and uppercutting into it. I scratched it multiple times as its paintwork came off. It was weakening and slowing down but it kept on walking. Theo was looking up, and I didn’t realize what he was looking at. Absolute Toxin was standing above on one of the bridges, and he came crashing down with the Venomshank straight to Theo, as he readied his base and successfully parried with the dagger.
“What is it that you idiots struggle to comprehend?” The old man spoke.
“This is… fate.” He disengaged with Theo and I didn’t get to see what happened next as I began to smash holes into its body and climb upwards to its head. I grabbed it and punched it, denting it beyond comprehension as its blaring and whirring sounds began to distort and pitch down.
“No…” Bella had shouted.
“What?”
“WE NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE, NOW!” Bella grabbed her D.F.E, grabbed onto Skye and teleported away.
I had to latch off of DESTRUCT as it began to make pinging noises. Slowly, but it began to speed up. Absolute Toxin had clashed again with Theo, but he curled up his legs and kicked into Toxin’s body and grabbed the Venomshank with his other hand. I got my D.F.E out quickly and charged into Theo before teleporting with him straight into the Base.
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If all was successful, he should finally be dead, and I hope his corpse has been blown across this entire city. But if he somehow isn’t by now, even without the Venomshank’s protection, even with the dagger still with him in his pocket, and he stands up…
We’re genuinely screwed.
All of us rushed down to the tech room.
“Move the drone outward before that gets blown up and all!” Bella shouted to Skye.
She moved it backwards as DESTRUCT had finally destroyed it all and we saw Absolute Toxin get flung outside of the Arena in a matter of milliseconds.
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We watched as the middle of the Arena had been blown into ashes. The orange light had flashed on our faces. Smoke had begun filling the entire Arena and eventually the drone started malfunctioning.
Footsteps were heard behind us.
“What the hell..?”
It was Cynthia’s voice.11Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡb6pS3fhw8c
and then Add to home screen.