Pandora rose, supported herself with her staff. "We are...the voice of Model W."

Prometheus began to laugh.

"Hah-hahaha! If you want to know more, you'll have to face Model W!" he sneered at the Mega Man. "You. Serpent. The citizens of this country. All of you were just players on a stage acting out your parts just as Model W had written them. We are all just pawns on the great board. His board."

And with that, the two disappeared, twin white lights shooting up into the sky. After a moment, Vent and Aile's intercoms went off as Prairie contacted them. "The Maverick activity is finally subsiding. You must have taken out their leader!"

"It's not over yet," Vent said. "Have you pinpointed Model W's current location?"

"I'm sorry. We're going to need a little more time with that," she replied. "Everyone, come back to Guardian HQ while we try to find it."

Ileyna hovered down to ground level, holding the shards in either hand. R.D. held his arm out, letting the Shell Bullet disintegrate away into prismatic light and particles while leaving his arm intact. "Matt," he said, looking over at him. "We don't get paid enough for this shit."

Matt watched Helena stride up next to him and make a derisive snort. "That's for sure," he said, dismissing his armor.

"That was incredible!" Aile said, running toward Vent. "You totally have to let me borrow Model X sometime so I can do that!"

With a sigh and a flip of his pickaxe, Hugo walked back toward the group.

Vent nodded. "Yeah, this power is definitely something else," he said. "I'm sure we can stop Serpent now."

Thrusting his hands out, he demerged, now holding both Model X and Model Z in his hands, the latter of which he returned to his sister.

"There's a Trans-Server room up ahead," R.D. noted, looking off in the direction they had been traveling. "Let's get back to the Guardian Base now."

"Here," Ileyna said, holding out the Omega Essence shards to Matt.

"Thank you!" Matt dropped the shards in the pendant, and it glowed a bit brighter. "Helena, you want a place to change or can you fit in the Trans-Server like that?"

She growled at him. "What? You could fit!"

"Come on, let's go," Hugo barked, walking toward the Trans-Server without so much a glance at the others.

After a few minutes, the group had returned to the Guardian Base's Trans-Server room, worse for wear but victorious now that Slither, Inc.'s army had been driven off with the retreat of Prometheus and Pandora.

"Thank God it was only those two that had the Essence and not Model W," R.D. said as Vent and Aile went to talk to Prairie about the matter. He was finishing up repairing his clothing with the gemstone that Colleen had given him, and then passed it to Matt and Helena. "I'd hate to see how powerful it'd have gotten if the thing had both shards."

"Yeah, THAT would've been fun," Matt said. He ran the gem over a torn sleeve. "Did you know that this tingles?"

"Will you guys be okay?" Helena asked, human again. She had wanted to help them some more, but now that they had retrieved the Essence, Matt insisted that they move on.

Aile nodded. "We'll be fine. Serpent's our fight. You need to go on with your own journey."

"As much as I hate to admit it, Prometheus and Pandora were right," Vent said. "This is the destiny we have to fulfill. We'll have to go it alone from here."

R.D. nodded. "Good luck, then," R.D. said, holding his hand out to the two of them to shake. Vent shook his hand and smiled.

"No hard feelings about our meeting, right?" he asked.

"Right."

"Sorry I tried to blow you up," Matt said.

"It's okay," Aile said. "We're used to it." She looked at Helena. "You stay strong, okay?"

Helena took Aile's hand and shook it. "I will."

"Something tells me you're gonna need it," Aile said, with a smirk.

"That's for sure."

"Bye!" Ileyna waved as the two of them used the Trans-Server to chase after Serpent and Model W back down in Neo Arcadia.

"Well, let's get this show on the road," R.D. said, making his way up onto the Trans-Server platform and configuring it to warp them to the Trans-Server next to the forest. "We'll need a secluded spot to use the Great Serpent's Scale. We don't need to make an uproar again."

"Can you take us back to the place Vent and Aile found us, Prairie?" Matt asked. "Or is there something else closer by that won't attract any attention?"

"It's already been set up for you," Prairie said over the Trans-Server's intercom. "Teleport there whenever you're ready."

"Alright," R.D. said, getting the Trans-Server warmed up.

"Matt, everyone, thank you. We couldn't have done it without you," Prairie said. "We are indebted to the five of you. Good luck on your quest."

Matt made a two-fingered salute. "Glad to help."

"Good luck yourself," Hugo said.

They all hit the Trans-Server and warped back to the area where they had met Vent and Aile.

Sunlight hit them as they exited the Trans-Server room, and they found themselves at the clearing where they had wound up at when they escaped Neo Arcadia in the first place. "Well, this has been an interesting world," R.D. said as he fished out the Great Serpent's Scale from his satchel. "You alright with seeing this world, Hugo?"

"Yeah," Hugo said, not really engaged.

"Is something wrong?" Helena asked.

"No."

Matt didn't buy that. But he kept his mouth shut.

"Well, time for the next disaster," R.D. said, finally getting a hold of the Scale. He pulled it out from the satchel and held it out in front of him. Soon enough, the red beam tore through the barriers between dimensions and spiraled open a green vortex floating in the air.

This time, Ileyna was ahead of the group as they went through, followed shortly by R.D. and the rest. They hurled through the corridor and appeared out on the other side, and the first thing that R.D. noticed was the chilly air hitting them, and water. Lots of water. Rain?

He looked around where they were as he stepped to the side of the portal. "Whoa," he murmured, taking it all in. They were in a lush rainforest clearing beneath a perpetual rainfall. Green was everywhere in it, on the cliffs surrounding them, covering the walls. Off to his left with a large pool of water hugging one side of the clearing, and next to it, hidden behind some green ferns and moss-covered rocks, was glowing blue lichen. Above them, tree branches and vines coiled through the air, tipped with luminescent orange plants. Around the walls, red starburst-shaped flowers bloomed.

The soil made soft squishing noises as Ileyna huddled over to R.D., clinging to him for warmth. It wasn't the warmest place here, with the chill air and the rain coming down. He put an arm around the girl's shoulders as he looked about, waiting for the others. Strange. What were those blue hexagonal doors set into the walls? Those looked rather out of place.

"Welcome to the jungle," Matt gibed, scanning the place.

Hugo was already doing his own brand of scanning. "None of these plants come from Earth," he reported. "They're definitely alien."

"Alien plants?" Helena looked to the sky, as if she expected an attack. "Where are we?"

"An alien world?" R.D. said. "I don't know. Kind of a crapshoot on where we go."

The skies overhead were cloudy and dark, and R.D. shivered as he looked at them. "We need to find a place to get out of this rain," he said. "I don't think it'd be good if we caught some sort of disease--"

"Look!" Ileyna suddenly shouted, pointing to behind them. R.D. craned his neck to follow her hand, and stopped dead.

Just behind where the dimensional gateway had opened was a large, orange-plated vehicle hovering in the air.

"What the hell is that?" Matt asked.

"It's a spaceship, you idiot," Hugo said.

"I know THAT. It was more of a kneejerk reaction than anything."

"Okay, this is definitely an alien world," Helena said. "Maybe we should get this over with so that whomever owns that spaceship doesn't decide to come looking for us."

"Yeah," R.D. agreed, while Ileyna nodded rapidly. "Let's go find some place to dry off."

And so, they searched the area they were in, and found a small cavern with another blue door in it off to the side, near the pool of water. The rock floor was smoothed out by water, and a pool of it lay in the corner opposite of the doorway, with glowing lichen clinging to the walls above it. More ferns grew near the water. Once out of the rain, R.D. channeled a fire into existence in the center of the small cavern for them to huddle up near while they dried off.

"So, first thing's first," R.D. started, looking to Ileyna. "Do you feel any Essence nearby?"

Ileyna waited for a moment, closing her eyes while she reached out her senses. Nothing happened.

"It's weird," she finally said. "I can sorta sense the Essence, but there's something interfering. I can't get a good lock on it."

Edited by RisingDragon on December 22, 2008 at 19:12:47.

"Maybe someone else is shielding the Essence from Ileyna," Hugo said.

"You think they already know that we were coming?" Matt asked.

Hugo gave him a look. "If those two crazy Mega Man had Omega Essence, I bet it's because Magister handed it out to them."

"True. I guess we just need to look hard and fast, then."

"Yeah, but that's gonna be difficult if Ileyna can't pinpoint the Essence's location."

"It doesn't feel like someone is trying to block me," the girl in question interrupted. "There's... something on this world. Its all over the place, and its hazing out the Essence's signature."

"That doesn't sound good," R.D. said. He stood up, and willed the Dragon King Armor to his form. "Let me see if I can figure out what this interference is."

"This better not be poison gas," Matt muttered. "If so I will become very angry."

"Not like gas is a problem for me," R.D. said as the visor closed down, distorting his voice ever so slightly. "Just hang tight for a few moments."

He ventured out of the cave and made his way towards the cliffside behind the hovering orange spaceship. Looking up at the ledge, then at the ship, R.D. weighed the odds, and decided that a ship that can hover probably also had one hell of a break-in warning system, and decided not to use it as a stepping stone, so to speak. He jumped upwards and activated his back thrusters, propelling him up onto the ledge, where he had a better vantage point. He jumped up over a gap in the ledge, landing on the other side, which had vines of the red starburst plant and another strange doorway.

He grabbed onto the vines and began climbing up the wall and onto it, next the tree above it, and walked out onto the sturdy branches, which supported his increased weight without much of a problem. Now with most of the landmass out of the way, he began to scan.

Within moments, he felt the blood drain out of his face as the readings completed and information poured down the HUD of his visor's screen. In two places, both of them underground and both of them not too far off from their present location, was an incredibly potent radioactive substance, and massive quantities. "My god, what is up with this world?" he muttered, turning to the left to gather more information.

What he saw made his heart stop. Off in the distance, just over a short stretch of mountainous cliff, looked to be a gigantic black and dark gray spaceship smashed nose-first into the wilderness, resting inbetween cliffsides at an odd angle.

"Holy shit!"

"I hope there's something to shoot at," Hugo said.

"Why's that?" Helena asked.

"I just feel like shooting at something."

Helena gave Matt a look, which earned her a quick arch of his eyebrows.

"What in the hell did this?" R.D. whispered, looking at the crashed vessel. The damage was immense--readouts from the scanner showed that more than half of the vessel had been buried underground thanks to the crash. Luckily, there seemed to be no danger of the thing exploding, luckily for them.

However, if the scanner was right, then the second mass of that radioactive material was just beyond the vessel, somewhere underground... deep underground. R.D. turned and hopped off of the branch, and plummeted to the ground. Moments before impact, he flared out his thrusters, slowing his descent dramatically before landing without much of a problem. He walked back to the small cavern and let the visor open up.

"There's a big spaceship on the other side of this ridge," he said, motioning in the direction of the door, "Looks like it crashed here. And what's more is that there's some sort of radioactive substance underground, beyond the spaceship and back over there."

He made a motion over his shoulder, indicating the direction. "Whatever it is over there, there's a lot more of it there than there is beyond the ship. A lot more."

"How the hell are we going to find the Essence if we stand the possibility of getting nuked by alien radiation?" Matt asked.

"It won't affect me," Hugo said. "And I'm sure R.D.'s armor can protect him. We'll do the searching." Matt raised a finger but Hugo cut him off. "When we got an energy sample of the Essence, I downloaded a bit into my memory. It's a ridiculously small amount but if I detect any mixture of energy that falls in that line, we should find it."

Matt folded his arms. "Will that even work?"

"I don't have any other ideas."

"I can protect you guys!" Ileyna exclaimed, drawing their attention.

"How?" R.D. asked, looking skeptical. The girl frowned in response, closed her eyes and opened herself up to the power within her. Immediately the wings, aura, and hollow, melodic sounds came again. The symbol of the Ao-Gem appeared on her forehead and within the Ao-Gem around her neck, flickering to life, and the faint shield-like bubble that encased the girl when she accessed her Purification powers began to expand.

Soon enough, all of them were encased by the bubble, and she opened her eyes. "I dunno how, but I just know that I can stop the radiation," she said, looking at them.

"Let's test that, then," R.D. said, turning around and walking up out of the range of the bubble. Once he was standing just outside of the cave, he held up his hand and began weaving faint flows of Lumiya's energies towards them. Instead of going through the airspace like normal, R.D. could see the weaves, invisible to anyone except maybe Hugo, slide across the bubble, unable to get through. R.D. frowned, grit his teeth, and increased the strength of the flows. Even still, the energies could not get through the barrier, and Ileyna smiled cheekily at him.

"Well, that's impressive," R.D. noted, releasing his hold on Lumiya. At once, he stepped back into the cave, and Ileyna released her powers, her aura and wings fading from view.

"Told ya!"

===

She had come to investigate the alarm her Hunter-class gunship had sent to her armor, fearful that they had finally found her ship--scans indicated that they thought it employed an advanced cloaking device, when in fact she had landed her vehicle dangerously close to the crashed remains of the Orpheon.

The first thing that had caught her attention upon returning through the canyon cavern was the bright blue light emanating from the cove on the other side of her landing site, and for a moment, she thought it was the Phazon, somehow encroaching into the area. Then she noticed the armored humanoid standing at the mouth of the cove, and she immediately began scanning it, as normal procedure dictated. Whatever it was, she only knew two things: That something within the figure was interfering with her scanners, and that it was definitely human.

And last she checked, there were no humans other than herself on Tallon IV. And this person? He wasn't alone. No, something else was in that cavern, she noted as the blue light died out. She raised up her weapon and approached carefully--they may be human. That didn't rule out that they were an enemy.

Helena sighed, clenching her teeth in a grimace. "I don't know if I want to risk it, Ileyna. I mean, if you got sick, I don't know what we could do."

"Well, do you have any other ideas, Princess?" Matt remarked.

"Don't call me that! And why can't we use Hugo's idea?"

"That can be our backup. I'd rather not split the group up if possible."

"Whatever this radioactive stuff is, I know that once I get close enough to it, I'll have access to the energy its putting off through Lumiya," R.D. said. "Once that happens, I can figure out how to neutralize it from the group. But I'm with Matt on this one, I don't think we should split up. This world could be extremely dangerous for all we know."

===

Now that she was close enough, she could hear their voices. They spoke English, at least, so she could communicate if it was needed. There seemed to be five people within the cavern in total. And she also got names of at least two of the people in there. Ileyna, a rather exotic-sounding name, and Hugo.

Well, there was no avoiding it now. She quickened her pace and turned towards the cavern, her weapon aimed defensively at the interior. What she was surprised her: the armored human, two young adult humans without armor and wearing extremely antiquated clothing, one human child, and a small robot armed with a pickaxe and a strange yellow helmet. Everyone but the person in the armor was facing her direction.

The girl spotted her first, and let out a yelp. Immediately, the one in armor whirled around, a visor closing in front of his face, preventing her from getting a good look before it closed, as he raised up his right arm, energy pistons emerging from the forearm and a ring appearing around his wrist.

Well, at least one of them had battle-trained reflexes, she noted.

===

When Ileyna yelped, her eyes pointed at something behind him, R.D. immediately spun around, enclosing his face in the Dragon King Armor's helmet visor and activating his right arm cannon at the same time as Ileyna ducked behind Helena, clinging to her legs.

He froze when he saw what Ileyna did.



The figure's armor gleamed thanks to its wet surfaces, courtesy of the perpetual rainfall. It had its arm cannon trained directly on him, the closest one and the most threatening-looking. He couldn't see the person's face through the visor, despite it glowing and despite it being a brighter color than his dead black visor.

Oh hell, summed up R.D.'s thoughts rather nicely.