Welcome to Gaia! ::

Chapter 1: Creation

It was a dark, rainy night in the city of Hong Kong and our hero, Samuel Grant, finds himself pinned down with an armor plate around his chest and a couple dozen mercenaries guarding the only known exit. He peeks out from behind the flipped table and hits a barrel of flammable substance, triggering a small explosion, which he used as a diversion as he climbs up the ladder to the next floor. He follows the corridor until he comes to a corner and presses up against the wall. He then pops his head out to see if the coast was clear before moving ahead. At the next corner, a single mercenary was all that stood in his way; he presses up against the wall, reloads, and waits for the right time. He fires a couple shots and misses. On the third try, he aims for the pipe above the gunman's head; the steam, which came out, scalded him and gave Samuel an easy target.
After taking him out, he continues to the roof.
As a mercenary pops out from the doorway on Samuel's left, Samuel quickly reacts by disarming him of his knife and a palm strike to the jaw.
The mercenary kicks him in the shin and knocks him to the floor with a kick to the back of the head. as he bends down to pick him up, Samuel shoots him in the foot, gets to his feet, twists his arm, spirals and slams his face into the wall before picking up his weapon, leaving him and moving on. Around the next corner, two mercenaries waited for him. As they open fired, Samuel quickly unsheathes his sword and waves around, stopping their bullets as he ran at them. He makes it halfway and pulls out a submachine gun and fires back. After getting close enough, he strikes down the one on the right and then the one on the left immediately after before jumping out of the window behind them.
Once he made it on the roof, he finds himself in another firefight; a helicopter flies overhead as Samuel takes cover behind a huge fan-like box thing on the roof.
As the mercenaries open fire on his position, Samuel shoots a white balloon-like thing into the air, which gives off a blinking light.
A huge jet swoops in, the hook attaches to it and Hoists Samuel into the air at the blink of an eye and he was gone in a flash.
"You always like to play things dangerously, sir."
"At least I got what I came for…"
"Let's hope it was worth almost being turned into Swiss cheese, Mr. Grant."
Once over American Air space, the pilot lands the jet at their private hangar not too far from Samuel's estate; the pilot then hands Samuel over to the Limousine driver, who then escorts him back home.
Back at the mansion, Samuel retreats to his laboratory, "M.E.G.A.N., I wanna open a new file; title it Secret of the Karma Lunari."
"Still chasing Fables, sir?"
"Oh I think I'm past chasing something that doesn't exist, don't you?" he shows off the armor plate he extracted from somewhere in Hong Kong, which he is still wearing at this very moment for MEGAN to see.
"Unless you have the seven jewels that attach to the areas indicated by the small holes in the chest, then it is too early to celebrate."
"I know, but…"
"And even if you decided to continue this ridiculous request, it'll take you almost all of your life to track them down."
"Yes, that's true…"
"You'll be an old man before you can even use the power for your own personal gain and…"
"Okay, MEGAN! I GET IT! How about we get off the subject before my feelings get hurt."
Meanwhile outside the laboratory, Bradshaw, Samuel's longtime butler and friend, barges in and down the stairs, "Dinner is ready." He said, walking in on Samuel as he and a bunch of mechanical arms were busy working on his top secret project.
"Just set it down over there, I'll get to it." "Not too tight, you'll strip the bolt." He said to one of the robot arms.
As the day went by, Samuel was seen fast asleep as his desk; his food remained untouched as Bradshaw came down to retrieve the tray and put it in the fridge in the kitchen.
As Samuel slept, Zierian appeared over him in his spirit form as he watched over him like a guardian angel.
He whispers, "Allow me to put the finishing touches…" he moves in closer, presses his ghostly hand over the tarp and emits a golden glow.
"You are not authorized to tamper with Mr. Grant's technology."
"I know what I'm doing…" Zierian answered back.
Come morning, Samuel awakes in his own bed unaware of how he got from his lab to here in the first place. He undresses, takes a shower, does his daily routine and heads downstairs to the kitchen, where he finds Bradshaw is serving guests, "Hey, Bradshaw," he yawns. "Who's this?" he asks, pointing at the twin boys eating a bowl of cereal.
"How should I know? They claim to be your sons."
"What are you talking about, I don't have any…" he pauses, takes a moment to think, rushes down to his lab and finds secret project not on the table where he left it, and rushes back upstairs, "But… But how…?" he asked, but before he could speak, Zierian reappears.
"I believe I can answer that…"
"Zierian? You did this?"
"Yes. I believe they are the key to saving your world from the tyranny of Celsior and Farenhart."
"Who's Celsior and Farenhart?" Bradshaw asked.
Down below on the streets of Richmond, a blueish-white comet touches down, making a huge crater on impact. Not too far away from that comet, a redish-orange meteor touches down as well.
Everyone in their cars stop just a few feet away and get out to take a look.
An icy hand emerges from the comet while a fiery hand pops out of the meteor.
The crowd steps back as the rest of the bodies attached to the hands pop out and reveal themselves just before teleporting to their level, freezing and burning the ground which they stood on.
"Alright, FREEZE!" barked a cop with his gun pointed and ready to fire.
Celsior, in his glowing icicle form, slowly turns towards him and inches himself closer and closer.
"Not another step…"
Celsior didn't respond, he just kept moving; eventually, the cops start to open fire; their bullet hit, create a sparks on impact, but not a single dent was made in Celsior's current form. As he got closer to the cop in the front, he puts his hand to the barrel of his gun and freezes it. The ice flows further and further until enveloping the cops arm and soon his whole body.
Celsior then summoned his staff and with one mighty swing, he shatters him to pieces. As the crowd screams, Celsior summons his army from within the comet and starts causing random destruction to the city, which could be seen from an invisible portal that Zierian conjured in the living room.
"They were once part of my team, but were consumed by greed. Now they seek the power of the Karma Lunari and will not rest until they obtain it."
"Well why not get your other teammates to help you stop them?"
"They… they were destroyed by Celsior and Farenhart long time ago. As for myself, I am too weak to go after them."
"Why not tell this to the army and have them do something?"
"You military won't be able to stop them let alone match up to their power. Besides, What I've seen from Samuel Grant, he has the technology and the money to create weapons capable to putting a stop to their evil intentions."
"Well, if it's up to us, I guess we can give it a shot. Follow me, boys. You too, Bradshaw." Samuel leads his new sons into an entirely different room with a multitude of electronic equipment, "This is my state of the art command center, complete with radar tracking system hooked up 12 networking satellites created by Grant industries, that's the name of my company; it has various branches that specialize in home appliances, groceries, hardware, plumbing; almost anything you can think of. As of now, I'm working on a new branch that manufactures weapons. My A.I. named M.E.G.A.N. is plugged into the mainframe and runs most of what you see. MEGAN, say hi."
"Hello, Mr. Grant, and unnamed guests."
"Oh, that reminds me, I forgot to name you guys." He points to his son, who was dressed in a red shirt, "I'll name you Max." he points to the other one in green, "And you will be named Willis. Do you like those names?"
"I don't know do we, dad?"
Samuel chuckles softly, "I can't make the decision for you; you need to start thinking for yourselves, that's how I programmed you."
"Alright, then we like the names."
"Oh and one thing, no one outside of me, Bradshaw and you guys can know your androids, understood?"
"Understood, dad."
"Now it's time to give you your superpowers; they'll protect you from any heavy damage you take during a fight. Step over this way and into the Gene re-sequencer."
While Samuel and his boys were preparing, Celsior and Farenhart were causing more destruction. Their actions caused the military to break out the big guns. They start with Celsior and Farenhart's foot soldiers, but for every dozen they took down, more of them would take their places; it seemed endless.
Several minutes later, after Max and Willis were done getting their superpowers, they put on their new uniforms, which consisted of black pants, and a black jacket with a colored stripe going diagonally across the chest. (For Max, it was a red stripe, and Willis' was green), Samuel then introduces the vehicles they will be driving.
"For ground support, this is the best I could do. Max, you'll be driving the red Kawasaki ninja 1000; Willis, yours will be the green Kawasaki Z1000: both with a four-stroke engine, liquid-cooled, DOHC, four valves per cylinder. As long as M.E.G.A.N. can get a lock on your signal, she'll be able to teleport them to you wherever you need them, whether it be in a different state, overseas, whatever; they're in the vehicle holding bay on the other side of that wall. There's a secret doorway that'll open up by pressing this button on the control panel." He presses the button and allows his sons to hop on their bikes; the platform raises and they exit through the garage, head down to the street and follow it into the city.
They arrive in the city, hop off their bikes, and take the fight to the enemy. They tear through Celsior and Farenhart's army, dropping them like flies until only a couple dozen were left.
Celsior steps in between his men and confronts Willis, while Farenhart confronts Max; Celsior swings several times with his snow staff and misses as Willis duck and dodge and finally sidesteps using his super speed before throwing a punch to the jaw. Celsior attacks again, Willis ducks stands up and lands a shin kick to Celsior's right leg. Celsior swings his right arm and Willis blocks with his foot. One of Celsiors soldiers, which were known as Glacieroids, knocks Willis off his feet with a sweep; Willis spirals before landing on his face. The Glacieroid drags him backwards by his feet, but as soon as he flipped him over, Willis pulls out his laser pistol and hits him 3 inch laser beam right in the chest.
As Max fought Farenhart, he ducks and dodges his every attack until spiraling around behind him and hitting with a back flip kick on the top of his head. Farenhart fell quickly without even knowing what hit him. As Max lands on his feet, two Magma golems grab him by the arms as Farenhart gets up.
After two slashes to the chest, Max uses his super strength to make the Magma golems collide with each other and release their grip.
Farenhart then strikes Max with a left punch, but Max blocks with both arms crosses like an "X". Farenhart draws back and slashes with his left.
Max ducks under his blade, spirals and hits with a straight punch to the stomach.
Farenhart recovers and strikes from the right with his sword.
Max knocks the sword out of his hand with a fan kick.
Farenhart rapidly approaches and Max knocks him down with a low kick to the right side.
Farenhart responds with a leg grab; he spins Max and swipes at the back of his knee and causes him to flip onto his stomach. As he was about to curb stomp him into the asphalt, Max rolls out of the way, reaches for his laser pistol and fires some shots off, which Farenhart block with his sword.
Max gets to his feet and attacks with an inside leg kick.
Farenhart blocks with his palm.
Max throws a right hook.
Farenhart blocks and throws back a low kick to the shin.
Max kicks at the same time to counter.
Farenhart slashes from the left.
Max ducks and throws a straight punch to the stomach.
Farenhart grabs Max's arm and pulls him along with him.
Max reaches with other hand, twists Farenhart's arm and flips him over his head.
Farenhart shoots a red, electric beam from his eyes and strikes Max down.
Over to Willis; as Celsior attacks with his left arm, Willis moves to his side at sonic speed, grabs his arm, wraps his leg around his arm, lifts himself up and kicks with his other leg to Celsior's neck. As he releases his grip, Celsior stumbles backward while Willis fires a couple more shots from his laser weapon and knocks him on his back.
Over to Max, who got the better of Farenhart to the point where he decided to retreat with his tail between his legs; after he left, Max gives his brother some assistance with fighting Celsior.
They both fought as a team and caused Celsior to retreat 15 minutes later. After the battle, Max and Willis hi-five each other while the crowd cheered. They then returned home to find the place trashed as if someone threw a wild party in their absence.
Bradshaw walks in clutching his right shoulder and limping a bit.
"Bradshaw… What happened here?" Willis asked.
"I did all I could, but in the end… they overpowered me; as for Mr. Grant… they took him."

Washington D.C. 9:30am
"I'll say again, Mr. Grant. Do you… or don't you… possess an array of advanced weaponry far beyond that of the United States Military?"
"Define advance…"
"The weapons your team known as Operation W.A.S.P. currently use. Example: the WASP stinger."
"Without a doubt, Senator."
"Well then it's my duty, no make that priority, to get all your lil high-tech toys turned over to the US government…"
"Well, let me stop you right there, Senator, you have your priorities outta whack; it should be the priority of the government to do everything they can to help prevent an alien invasion. Instead, you're just sitting in your chair all high and mighty while trying to pick on the little guy, i.e. me, lil old Samuel Grant: the face of the hero, who saved Gaia once before in the past; you've seen the news, right? You've seen what's going on? The attack on North Richmond was just a first. I have reason to believe these evil forces seek an energy source known as the Karma Lunari and will not rest until it in their possession… and the destruction of our world ensues."
"Now, Mr. Grant…" a General Daniel Creed of the USMC interrupted, "This Karma Lunari, what is it, where did it come from, and how powerful is this device?"
"Well, General, it is not a device, it is a piece of armor with seven indentations that house seven jewels of distinct colors, which are named after the constellations Scorpio, Virgo, Pisces, Andromeda, Hydra, Leo, Taurus. On their own, they're somewhat harmless; it is when you combine them that you need to worry. The one wielding the armor and jewels holds the power to either produce a miracle or cause great catastrophe."
"And who is it that led you to believe that is what our extraterrestrial friends are looking for?"
"If I tell you, you probably won't believe me; you'll have to see him for yourself to know the truth and at this time, he wishes to remain a secret."
"Then perhaps this is a matter best left in the hands of professionals."
"Professionals. General, you so-called professionals just got their asses handed to them back in California by beings from another world with no amount of military training. And on top of that, my team, who also displayed no form of military training, showed up and made your men look like a bunch of boy scouts with water guns."
"Your point being…?"
"My point being, you wanna leave this situation in the hands of professionals? It's already in the professionals' hands; Operation WASP's hands. And I have no intention of stepping down. Not now, not tomorrow, not ever; this meeting is adjourned, we've got a planet to save."
"Were do you think you're going, Mr. Grant, this meeting isn't adjourned until I say so… Mr. Grant!"
Samuel, Max, Willis, and Bradshaw leave the courtroom with their heads held high as if they've accomplished what they've been summoned for.
Though it wasn't over just yet, not according the General; He picks up his cellphone and dials an unknown number, "Yeh, it's me. We've got a serious problem here."
The caller on the other end mutters something to the General.
"Yeh. Get me someone, who's right for the job."
"You do realize you're playing with fire, sir…?"
"I understand they're really serious about this, but I have a responsibility, and I will not abandon it. Zierian entrusted me with this task and I will see it through to the end."
Half an hour later, in the dark room of the archive building at Samuel's company, a shadowy figure drops from the ceiling. Before moving on to the archives vault, he looks around for the power box to the security cameras. After putting them on an infinite loop and rendering himself an invisible man, he was free to roam around and do what he please.
"Ah, a HW-5901 Honeywell Security Steel Top-Opening Drawer Safe with digital thumbprint scanner; not impossible to crack, but it'll take a bit of time." He breaks out his tool kit, lays out the stuff he would need and gets right to work. He checks the desk in the room for fingerprints and uses special chemicals to extract them and places a thumbprint to the scanner while at the same time using a device to generate random numbers until typing in the right password. Once the door was open, he strolls on inside. "That's a lot of blueprints; where do I begin?" he starts from one side, going up, and continues this pattern until finding the section of weapons (among other things). He grabs all he can and stuffs it in his knapsack and hightails it out of there.
Back at General Creed's secret military base, the thief he hired returns with the blueprints he requested. He goes over one of the many the thief brought back, looking at it from top to bottom.
"One of these days, Grant's gonna realize that just because you come up with an idea it isn't necessarily his…" he looks over to Alex, "Someone get this man his money." He ordered.
One of the soldiers races out of the room and returns minutes later with a briefcase.
"1 million as we agree; in cash…"
He takes the briefcase. "How can you live with yourself? Stealing from one of the richest men on Gaia."
"Mr. McLaren, I paid you to steel blueprints; that's it, nothing more, nothing less. I didn't pay you to give me your 'two cents'… homie."
"Easy with the homie wisecrack; you're not black, so don't act black."
"You have five seconds to get out of my face and 5 more minutes to exit the premises with your money before I have you detained."
"Fine, I'm leaving."
As he leaves, Daniel examines the blueprint he's currently holding one more time, which is revealed be plans drawn up for creating androids, upon closer inspection, he makes a rather startling discovery, "Hmm… I've seen these boys before…" "Have our scientists work on this have it ready as soon as possible."
"Yes sir." The soldier takes the blueprint from him.
"And see if they can get them weaponized!!!"
"Affirmative, sir."
Hours later, Max and Willis respond to a monster attack at a jewelry store; as the fearsome beast they fought against got the best of them, they felt as if they were seeing double when two beings, who looked exactly like them appeared on scene and lent a hand.
"What the…" Willis looked up as if he saw a ghost, and then Max did the same.
"Four of them?" Samuel said sounding shocked as watched the screen.
The doppelgangers look at each other and then focus back on the enemy before holding out their arms and shooting bullets from their wrists, taking out the army of Glacieroids.
"Max, can you get a readout on these impostors?"
"They seem similar to us, but with some modifications; Apart from that, nothing."
"MEGAN, did dad send them?"
"Your father is just as baffled by this as you are, sir."
The monster attacks from all sides and the copies of Max and Willis block his every move, and take him down as quickly as he came at them.
Once the beast was vanquished, the doppelgangers stand at attention as the real Max and Willis get closer and check them out.
"Like what you see, rangers?" General Creed responded.
"You're the one controlling them?"
"That's right and you'll be seeing plenty from now on, so tell your father to pack it up and leave this to those with actual military training…" Creed then commands his robots to return to base.
Back at home, Samuel takes a freeze frame of the General's machines, "MEGAN… can I get a holographic rendering of this?"
She generates the rendering using the black glass table behind Samuel.
Samuel interacts with it and rotates it 360 degrees to get a good look at it, "Can you explode the image for me, darling?"
"Yes sir, and please refrain from calling me darling…"
"Dually noted. Though I'll consider it if you stop referring to me by my last name." He examines each part thoroughly.
"Agreed."
"He obviously had a team of top scientists who knew what they were doing when they built them; night vision, infrared, .380cal auto ammunition; all that and more packed tight into a platinum alloy. If it were me, I'd pick something lighter and similar to that of a bulletproof vest; they're not really light on their feet are they?"
"Assuming he's given them jet-propulsion, no they're not."
"Well let's hope he hasn't given them the ability to fly, otherwise it's time for an upgrade."
"Don't bother…" Max answered.
"With these new rangers, there's no need for us to be heroes anymore."
"Yeh, they're better and stronger than we can ever be."
"But… you can't just quit."
"We just did, dad."
"Let them handle things for us…"
They hand over their jackets and make their exit.
"Any suggestions, MEGAN?!"
"I'm… not so good with advice, sir."
Back at Celsior's lair, he goes over the footage from the battle involving Creed's robots and his monster, "You've done well, General… a little too well for your own good." He swipes at the projection and wipes out of the air. "I need to get a hold of something like that if I hope to defeat the rangers and find the jewels before my brother."
Back at home, Max and Willis sat around feeling sorry for themselves and talking about how out of date they were compared to Creed's design.
Bradshaw couldn't help but overhear and decides to join the conversation, "I've known you two for a week, and I've never known you to feel sorry for yourselves. So what if your doppelgangers are better than you, you have something that they will never have."
"And what is that, Bradshaw?"
"A heart; it's the only thing you cannot program; it is something you are born with. Though in your case, it is something you need to be equipped with. Daniel Creed is concerned with one thing and one thing only and that is to build better, smarter weapons. Without a heart, they don't have instinct."
"What does instinct have to do with anything?"
"Without instinct, all Creed's robots know how to do is follow orders; they cannot make their own decisions. Your father has given you that ability."
During their conversation, Celsior teleports into the city and causes destruction to lure the weapon-based version of our heroes out; after a short fight, he manages to take control away from Creed and reprogram the robots to do his bidding.
The General's top scientist tries to regain control, but his efforts proved useless.
"Nice try, General, but I'm in control now…" Celsior answers with an evil laugh.
"Do something…!"
"I'm trying, sir, but they won't respond to my commands."
Celsior commands the machines to attack their former master.
Max and Willis arrive right on time, "Stop right there, Celsior."
"Wait! They're much too powerful for you to take on," the General replied.
"That hasn't stopped us before…"
Max and Willis draw their guns and get ready to fight. With each attack they threw, the cyborgs just stood there unflinching like statues. On the next attack, the cyborgs both block with their left and fire back with the .380cals in their wrists. Max and Willis jump in separate directions, roll along the ground, and fire back.
The cyborgs cross their arms in front of their faces and shield themselves from the laser blasts.
"What are these things made up?"
"A platinum alloy! You'll need something bigger and stronger to fight them."
"Bigger, eh? We've got that."
They summon their weapons, the Pill bug armor and Elephant axe. Before they rush up to the enemy, Samuel interrupts.
"Attacking them regularly won't work; they'll just bounce everything they've got back at you. You need to change tactics."
Max holds his hands in a cup form and offers to give Willis a physical boost; Willis places his right foot in Max's hands and Max thrusts him into the air while he rushes at his counterpart from the ground.
Willis flies at Max's counterpart and swings his axe, while Max strikes low with a punch from the hand that had the Pill bug armor equipped and knocks his counterpart off his feet and they both worked in unison to take Willis' counterpart down.
Both the cyborgs got back up and surrounded Willis; not knowing what he was capable of, Willis' counterpart fires a small rocket from his shoulder; Willis rapidly moves out of the way and the rocket hits Max's counterpart, blowing his left arm off.
Max approaches Willis' counterpart and sweeps him off his feet with his right arm before taking his laser gun and firing a shot clear into his chest.
After wearing them down, Max and Willis summon the W.A.S.P. stinger to finish the job; Celsior then retreats to avoid suffering the same fate.
Later back at home…
"I hope you've learned an important lesson here, General; never take people's things unless you're sure of what you're doing. You could've endangered people's lives with your little stunt."
"A minor setback..."
"You're a slow learner, aren't you, General?"
"And you're a selfish lil rich boy, who doesn't get along well with other."
"Goodbye, General…" Samuel ends transmission.
"Well that went well."
"He still has a small chunk of my work, MEGAN, which means we'll be seeing a lot more of his handy work in the future."
"Though he will not be able to master your advancements in technology just yet, sir," MEGAN replied.

*derived from Operation Overdrive's "underwater world" and parts of Atlantis the lost empire; i took Atlantis the lost empires' idea for the Leviathan that guards the lost city, i made citizens of Atlantis a race of fish people with both gills and lungs so they can survive underwater and on dry land*



While Samuel deciphered the parchment, Max and Willis took a break as their father instructed and decided to play a game of tennis; Max was losing.
"You know, I wish I was able to get all the data from that satellite before it destroyed."
"Don't sweat it; probably was nothing anyway."
"Could've been everything; Daniel was so eager to have us destroy it, it must've been something he didn't want us to see."
"Max, Willis. Your father requests your audience back at the command center."
"We're on our way, MEGAN."
Once back at the house, Max and Willis head down to the command center.
"You're back, great. Satellites have picked up another energy signature at the bottom of the Irish sea." He diverts their attention to the screen.
"No way. That's Atlantis…"
"It's not entirely certain that that's what it is, but my gut instinct says it is; take a look at this parchment, it's the exact same symbol as that relic on the right."
Max looks at the scroll and at the screen, "Cool."
"If this information proves to be accurate, then it's a possible resting place for the first jewel."
"We'll take the Diving beetle and be there and back in no time."
"Make sure to pick the safest flight plan and stick to it; you don't want Celsior or Farenhart to find you out."
On the way to the Atlantic Ocean, Celsior easily picked up on their location.
"Well, what do we have here? Two lil rangers off in search of another jewel…? Not if I have anything to say in the matter." He points his snow staff at the image as a shark comes on screen and transforms it into another one of his monsters, "Follow them and keep an eye on them." He instructed.
The monster nods and then turns back into his shark form and swims away.
Max and Willis land on the shores somewhere in Ireland and get a directional bearing before setting up to search for Atlantis.
"Well, we're definitely in the right area according this the tracker…"
"Then why'd we land here? Why not plunge directly into the deep?"
"It's not going to convert underwater. Besides, I needed to stretch first."
They board the craft and change it to submarine mode and delve into the deep blue. As Max navigated, Willis took a look around at all the undersea life unaware of a shark following them at a safe distance. He tells Max, who then looks at the monitor.
"It's just a great white; he can't hurt us in here."
"But still, don't you think it's weird he's following us?"
"What makes you sure it's us he's following…?"
"Whatever… did you find anything yet?"
Max takes a good look at the monitor, "That's weird, the signal's multiplying. And it's heading for us."
Suddenly out of the blue, something hits them; the targets make themselves visible.
"Holy…"
"…Moly." Willis finished.
"Evasive maneuvers, Willis; hang on." Max swerves to avoid the next shot. As he maneuvered through the rock formations, the enemy subs followed his exact movement like mirrors. If he moved right, so did they. If Max flips 90 degrees to one side, they did so as well. Max used this as an advantage to destroy some of them.
"Max, what are you doing?"
"These are playing follow the leader; I'm trying to see if they can keep up." Max exits the trench and takes the enemy elsewhere.
Some of them split up and came at Max from the front, while the rest behind him fire everything they got at him. Max races towards the guys in front at full speed while swerving, and then fires the secondary guns, taking out half before he ascends and loop-de-loops behind the others.
"Think that should even the odds a bit…"
"Max look out on your left."
Max sees the oncoming crafts and descends, causing their gunfire to hit the guys behind them; the ships that were coming at them also descended. Max leads them under a crumbling rock formation and easily takes them out.
"That takes care of that…"
"What do you suppose that was all about?"
"Probably citizens of Atlantis; they were coming from where the signal's being transmitted."
"I didn't think anyone lived in the city anymore."
"I know, right? Doesn't look like there's much here except a few ruins…"
Suddenly, up from the depths rose a mighty beast resembling a lobster, but green with ancient writing on various parts of its body, four claws; two big and two small one, long fish-like tail, and multiple red, beady eyes.
Max stops in his tracks at the very sight of it. Frozen in fear, Willis takes over the controls and steers right.
The creature's claws following them as they moved.
Back at the command center, Samuel witnessed what happened on screen.
"MEGAN, status report; what is that thing?"
"Scanning references now, sir. It appears to be a creature known as the Leviathan; it is mention in the bible as well as Eastern mythology and more as the Guardian of Atlantis."
"Any ways of defeating him?"
"None at the moment, sir."
During the whole fight, Celsior's monster keeps his distance.
"A Leviathan, huh?" Celsior asks himself. "I didn't think they could survive this long…"
"Max, Willis. You need to get out of there; that thing's too strong."
There was no response.
"Max, Willis. Did you hear me? Pull out, that's an order!"
"Communications seem to be down," MEGAN replies.
"Try the communicators around their wrist them; we've got to warn them before they become fish food."
"Max? This thing got torpedoes?" Willis asked.
"I'm way ahead of ya." Max brings the sub in alignment the creature and fires one off.
The torpedo hits with a huge blast, which seemed to only make it cringe. Through the cloud of smoke, it reaches out with one of its claws, which Max quickly evaded with a barrel roll.
"Anything yet, MEGAN?"
"Communications are still down."
"Well keep trying. And while you're at it, give me a rendering of the Leviathan; every square inch. I'm gonna find a weak spot."
The table behind Samuel generates a wireframe rendering within 12 seconds and Samuel gets to work, inspecting every inch of it.
Meanwhile, Max and Willis still maneuver so not to get taken down permanently. Max fires another missile, which the beast catches with its claw. As if pinches down on it, the weapon explodes.
"Our weapons are too weak; we're not doing much damage."
Samuel was finally able to get through to them, "Aim for the underbelly; that's its weak spot."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm staring right at a rendering of the Leviathan, and it shows a crack on its underside. You need to aim for that."
"How do we do that without blowing ourselves up in the process?"
"Wait, I got it. Dad, do our weapons have a timer on them?" Willis asked.
"The missiles: yes."
"Max, set the detonation time and let's give this thing a goodbye present."
Max flies in low, dodging the beast's claws as he goes for the underside. As he gets closer, he flips the sub upside-down and shoots a missile into the crack. As it sticks, the timer sets itself 30 seconds and gives our heroes time to get out of dodge.
After reaching zero, the weapon does what's supposed to and the beast falls flat on its stomach cold and lifeless-like.
The unfamiliar face of King Neptune watches the events that unfold with a disapproving look on his face.
As they got close to the signal, they hit an invisible wall and cracked it.
"Whoa. What was that?"
"Some kind of cloaking device/force field," Max explained.
"Doesn't seem to be a very good one, seeing as you cracked it."
"Hey, I didn't know this was here…"
"Well… we finally know the reason why the signal is weak; this cloaking device must be shielding it."
"No use sitting around here; let's find another way in."
They locate a cave entrance on the far north side of the city and use it to get into a quiet, uninhabited part of the city. What they found, they couldn't believe their eyes. The buildings were all brand new and untouched as if nothing had happened to it or its people.
"Not bad for an ancient civilization…"
"How could this place survive all these years underwater?"
"Perhaps due to some technology far beyond that of our world… but we're not here to find answers; we're here for the jewel, let's go."
The rest of the way, they continue on foot. Willis stops every time he hears something in the distance.
"What's wrong now?"
"Max, I'm not kidding, there is really something following us."
"Willis, for the last time, it's just your imagination."
"Max… we're machines; do we even imagine?"
"I'll prove it you." Max converts to scope mode and searches the entire area coming up clean. "See, Willis? I've got nothing on my readout." He stops once he sees something run across the area over near the pillars. "Wait, I saw something just then…"
"Aha, I knew it!"
"It's probably just a native playing hide-and-seek with its friends, relax…" Max was cut off as an energy beam shaped like a boomerang flies towards him and back into the hands of Celsior's shark monster.
"Great, as if we haven't had enough sushi already; here's another one."
"The name's Shark-bite, at your service." He throws another energy boomerang and Max and Willis dive out of the way.
Max approaches with a left punch, which the shark monster blocks with an arm grab.
Willis approaches with a low kick, which had no effect. He kicks again and the monster releases Max and grabs Willis by the leg, swings him around and throws him into a pillar, causing it to break.
Max throws a left kick, which the monster dodges. Max throws a right punch, but the monster sidesteps and sweeps him onto his back.
Willis leaps at him with a right punch to the face to knock him on his back.
The monster immediately gets to his feet, takes his fin off the top of his head and uses it as a sword as he slashes back and forth.
Willis ducks, sidesteps, and dodges before giving a kick to the shin, leaping over him and swinging by the pillar behind him, landing a high kick to the back of the head.
The monster rolls and gets on his feet.
Max attaches the Pill bug armor to his left arm and swings with a back fist.
The monster speeds away from him.
Willis pulls out his laser weapon and fires, but the monster speeds out of the way, then over towards Max, slashing through his chest, and then speeds over to Willis and does the same.
Willis drew his Elephant axe and blocks.
The shark monster attacks low with his sword and Willis plants his weapon firmly on the ground and uses it to lift himself in the air and strikes back with another high kick to the face.
The monster rolls onto his stomach and gets back up.
As Max was about to attack, an unknown enemy hits him with a net and then gets Willis with a net as well.
"Seems like you fellas got your hands full; I'll just leave you alone now." Before he could get away, the unknown force netted him, too.
Max and Willis struggle to get free, but couldn't.
The mystery creatures that bagged them came out of the shadows and revealed themselves. They speak in an unknown dialect, asking each other what they should do with the intruders.
One of them suggests taking them to the King, "He'll know what to do…"
So they render them unconscious and drag them down a path towards the kingdom walls.
The first voice they hear when they wake up is that of the King's asking, "Why? Why have you come here, surface dwellers…?"
"I… I cannot understand what you're saying…"
"Any of you speak English?"
"You destroy our guardian… you obliterate half my men… what is it you are looking for?" he shows a picture of the currently unconscious Leviathan on the ocean floor.
"If I may, your highness, that there was out of self-defense; he attacked us," Willis answered back, still unclear what the king was saying.
Max quiets Willis down before he answers, "Your majesty, we mean your people no harm. We've come here following an energy signature that came across our tracking systems. The source of this power is so powerful that if it were to fall into the wrong hands, it could spell the end our world."
"You seek one of the Karma Lunari Jewels, but you will not find it here. That I can assure you."
"But we…"
"And even if it was here, it wouldn't be any safer with you than it is with us."
"But sire… you do not know our enemies, they will not stop until they've…"
"We know of the one you call Celsior; we have met once back before the dawn of your… primitive… species."
"Oh… but they're not primitive anymore," Celsior's voice explained as he slowly walked out of the shadows of the entrance to the throne room.
"You… you dare show your face here…?!"
"I come in peace, your highness. Them, on the other hand, did not. They came in search of the power that dwells here to use it to destroy the above world as well as yours."
"Your majesty, he's lying. Don't believe him!"
"And… what of this fine fishy friend of deep next to them?"
"… He's with them. I've never seen him before in my life."
"Hmm…"
"Your majesty, if I may, I've been fighting these guys for several days and yet they've managed to best me every time. Allow me to destroy one of them to prove my loyalty." Out of the three standing before him, Celsior chooses his own monster; he raises his staff to him and destroys him with one energy blast.
"He just destroyed one of his own monsters," Max whispered.
"You see? I can be trusted… your highness."
"Take the prisoners to the holding cells."
"Don't do this. You're making a big mistake trusting him. Please listen to us…"
Celsior approaches the king.
"Still one of us after all these years…"
Celsior slowly bring his hand to the King's shoulder. Ice comes from his palm and slowly reaches across his entire body, "I was never one of you…"
The king groans as ice begins to envelop his body like a blanket.
As his entire body turned to ice, Celsior gripped the key around his neck and yanked it from his body.
The guards in the room attack Celsior, but he summons some of his Glacieroids to finish them off.
After hearing the commotion in the throne room, Max and Willis break free from their captors and race back in that direction to find the King is dead and so are half of guards.
"This looks like Celsior's doing…"
"Take a look at this. A piece is missing from the king's chest."
"He's got the key to the vault… that's what was around his neck."
"We have to stop him from getting into that vault; which way is it?"
"I'll take you there."
They get to the vault just after Celsior opens in, freezes the display case and shatters it.
"That's far enough, Celsior," Willis said, popping up from behind the case with his gun pointed and ready to fire.
"I should've known it would be difficult getting rid of you two, you're like roaches!" he swings his staff and knocks the gun from his hand, turns to Max and hits him with an elbow strike; Max blocks and throws a left kick, but Celsiors grabs onto his leg and swings him a quarter of the way across the room.
Willis picks up his gun and hits Celsior square in the chest, knocking him on his back.
Several palace guards stop him from getting up by pointing spears at him, but Celsior freezes them all and shatters them as he quickly gets to his feet. He aims for Willis next, but Willis takes cover behind the pedestal the display case was on, pops out and fires back.
Max summons his Pill bug armor and attaches it to his left leg as he performs a fan kick and drops Celsior on his face, "Willis, grab the pod! Let's get out of here!"
They flee the palace and get back into their sub and head back to the surface. As they stop on the shore, Celsior was there waiting for them; he fires upon their craft, "You think this over?!"
"How'd he get up here so fast?"
"Gimme that jewel!" he raises his staff and summons an army of Glacieroids to do battle with them.
"What are you waiting on, convert to plane mode and take off already…"
"Flights been disabled; it's gonna take some time repair."
"Best I can do is five minutes…"
"Be careful."
Willis gets out and the Glacieroids storm the Diving beetle like a swarm of bees; Willis strikes the first one with a back fist to the head, a second one approaches and he strikes with a frontal kick to the stomach. A third Glacieroid strikes with its weapon from the left and Willis crouches, spirals around behind him as he summons his Elephant axe and cuts him in the back. A fourth Glacieroid leaps at him and Willis blocks with his axe before striking with the hilt to the jaw. Willis then pulls out his laser gun and hits a few of them with shots to the chest. A Glacieroid grabs him by the waist from behind and then the rest of them storm him from the front, piling on top.
Thinking quickly, Willis converts his axe to blaster mode, shoots the ground and blows all of the Glacieroids in all directions. The remaining soldiers attack one at a time and Willis drops them with one shot before rushing at Celsior, who knocks the weapon from his hand.
Celsior strikes with his right hand and Willis blocks with his left. Celsior kicks with his right and Willis blocks with his right hand. Celsior attacks with his left hand and Willis blocks with an arm grab; as he gives his arm as twist, Celsior retaliates with several punches to Willis' armpit; Willis blocks after a certain amount of hits, spirals and flips Celsior over his head.
Celsior grabs onto Willis and flips him over his head before getting to his feet. He lifts his right foot and Willis rolls out of the way before Celsior could stomp him into the dirt.
Willis gets to his feet while blocking Celsior's kicks with his palms. He then strikes with a back fist, which Celsior blocks with his right arm as he spirals around and sweeps Willis off his feet with the same arm.
Celsior summons his staff and prepares to strike.
Willis reaches for his weapon and blocks. Willis gets to his feet, approaches Celsior, places his foot behind him as he brings his hand to his neck, pushes him back and causes him to trip.
Celsior teleports onto his feet, he grabs Willis by the back of his jacket and launches him a great distance.
Max fires the lasers at Celsior and sends him flying on face first into the dirt and then converts the craft to flight mode, moves over to Willis, and opens the door.
Willis jumps in and they take off.
"Well, I'd say you took your sweet time bailing me out back there."
"Sorry, maybe I should react sooner next time I'm trying to repair the engines…"
"It was a joke, Max."
Back at home.
"I was expecting a jewel, not this…" Max replied, looking at yet another scroll.
"This one's got a sword on it."
"But whose sword is it?" Samuel asked.

*you'll see a small hint of race to witch mountain with a p***k of Scott Pilgrim vs. the world added in during the bar fight*

A shining star over sleepless city

For thousands of years, astronomers wrestled with basic questions about the size and age of the universe. Does the universe go on forever, or does it have an edge somewhere? Has it always existed, or did it come to being sometime in the past?
Another question that boggles the minds of astronomers is… the possibility of life on other planets; does it exist? There is a high probability, but it is not yet certain… until now…
Las Vegas, 2am on a Monday, an object is seen entering the atmosphere at an alarming rate, messing with all electronic equipment within a few mile radius. It touches down in the desert not too far from Vegas and causes a huge crater upon impact.
"We have an anomaly of unknown origin entering our atmosphere at an alarming rate. It seems to be changing directions, sir…"
"Where's it heading…?" General Creed answered.
"It just touched down over Mt. Charleston near Kyle Canyon Rd."
"Deploy ground units to that location, I want a perimeter set up within an hour and road blocks set up to keep passersby away from the area."
Moments after the impact, the object of unknown original begins to pulsate with a bright white light; a pair of glowing, white hands reaches out and pulls the rest of its body out.
Second later, the object converts into human form after coming across a poster; its human form had blonde hair, white skin, grayish-white eyes and was seen wearing a gray jacket, and pants as well as blue shoes. The alien continues down the road heading east as the troops pass by going the opposite way.
"Sir, I'm picking up an energy spike of abnormal proportions over Nevada."
"Could be General Creed to perfect some of my designs again…"
"Negative, sir, the energy level is way off the charts of anything on earth."
"Just how big is this unknown entity, MEGAN, be specific."
"About around 50 Petajoules or more, sir."
"A pocket sun… either could be a falling star or some kind of alien life-form, can't be sure."
"It seems your main competition, General Daniel Creed, has already confirmed it; he is deploying ground troops to the sight right now…"
Back on the road, the unidentified being continues heading east until a brown pickup truck slows up beside her.
"Hey!" the driver called out to the girl.
She turns to him.
"You need a lift?"
She looks at him as she didn't know what he was saying.
"You need a ride, miss?"
She hesitates and looks at the other passengers in the back before finally walking towards the truck and getting in the back with them.
Later at the impact site, General Creed arrives, asking for a status report.
"When we arrived, all we found was an empty crater, well sort of… the entity that caused this is clearly gone, but it left behind a kind of… trail of some sort. Little crystal like particles scattered across every inch of the sinkhole."
"Gather some for analysis; I wanna know what it is made of. And also get me anything you can that can pinpoint its known location; security cameras, satellite tracking, I don't care. When you're done here, cover up the site."
"I dunno, Max, it looks pretty quiet to me," Willis whispered as he and his brother watched the military at the crash site from a safe distance.
"Dad wouldn't send us out here if it weren't important, besides, it there was nothing there, Creed wouldn't be…"
"It looks like they're gather some sort of stone from the crater; doesn't register as any stone found on earth."
"We need to get close enough and get some to take back with us."
"But how, there's just too many of them?"
"I'm still working on that."
"Just leave that to me," Phoebe whispered; she moves in closer and uses her power of invisibility to get over there unseen and grab a few crystals and run back.
"Boy, does that power of yours ever come in handy…"
Meanwhile, somewhere in Las Vegas a half hour later, the alien and her new friends stop at a hotel and check in before heading to a club, where the music was loud and she had her first drink as a human. She brings the shot glass to her mouth and takes a sip, immediately spitting the drink on the floor after.
"A bit strong, huh?" the guy asked.
"A big strong for what? What is this?"
"It's a beer, where you from, Outer space?"
"Actually, I am…"
The guy looks at her funny, "Yeh right; you mean to tell me you're an alien? I don't believe it."
"Fair enough, Human Drew, believe what you want to believe…"
"You wanna talk about fair? Well, it's not fair that you know my name and I don't know yours…"
She hesitates as she sees someone she recognizes across the room, "Starla… excuse me for a moment," she answered as she set her shot glass down and left the counter, "And here they told this was a 21 and over establishment…"
"It's called a fake ID, most of these knuckle-dragging primitives in here have one. Besides, the drinks are terrible; taste worse than the drinks back on our home world; not that you'll ever be able to return home after I'm done with you…"
"For the last time, you lil brat, I didn't kill your father."
"LAIR!" she unsheathes her sword, which turns into a long purple rope with red thorns all over it. She whips it on the ground a couple times as a scare tactic.
"You I'm afraid of you parlor tricks, little girl…? You're wrong." Starla stands in her fighting stance ready to throwdown.
"Oh, but you will be…" she whips it at Starla, who side steps and causes it to knock the glass out of the hand of the person behind her. She whips it at her again and Starla leaps into the air and lands back down again. The third time, Starla grabs the whip with her right hand and jerks it towards her, pulling the girl closer so she could deliver a left hook to the jaw, which knocks her to the floor.
"You always went for the cheap shots!!" she gets to her feet again.
"Give it a rest, Sapphira."
"Not until you pay for your crimes against my family." She changes her whip back into a sword, rushes at Starla and slashes at her from all sides.
Starla ducked and dodges before finally throwing a swift kick to the shin.
Sapphira jabs her sword forward and Starla kicks it away with her right foot before delivering a spinning back kick.
After exchanging a couple more hits, the security stepped in and tried to break the fight up.
"Stay out of this, monkey man!" Sapphira elbows him in the crotch and hits him in the face with a back fist, knocking him into the speaker behind him.
The second guard rushes in and Sapphira changes her sword back into a whip, grabs his leg and pulls it forward, dropping him on his back. She then pulls back, spins him around and launches him all the way back towards the bar before turning her attention back to Starla. She latches onto Starla's arm and says, "I'll shatter you into a thousand tiny pieces and airmail you back to Ling-Khan." She pulls hard on her whip, reeling Starla in for the final attack as she backhands her in the back of the neck and drives her to the floor. "DIE!!" she transforms the whip into a sword again and lunges at her.
Starla rolls out of the way, gets to her feet and quickly gets Sapphira with an energy blast from her palm and launches her past a crowd of people off to the side.
Within an instance, Sapphira lashes her whip out at Starla and a green blur rushes in and grabs her and takes her outside.
"What are you doing? Unhand me!"
"Well…?"
Max scans her up and down, "She's definitely who we're looking for…"
"Who are you?!"
"Easy, we're on your side." Phoebe holds up a crystal shard.
Starla snatches it, "Where do you find this?"
"Out in the desert where a bunch of military guys were gathering them up."
"We have to go get them."
"You're kidding, right?"
"Listen… if those shards fall into the wrong hands, your world is doomed."
"Great, like we haven't heard line before."
"What are you talking about?"
"That's the same thing we hear about if we let these jewels of the Karma Lunari fall into the wrong hands."
"The Karma Lunari have been found? Here on this dirtball of a planet?"
"Whoa, watch it with the dirtball comment; you don't see us going to your world and trash talking your planet, do you?" Phoebe asked.
"Phoebe, settle…"
"What's with these shards?"
"They're my power source; if anyone else were to get a hold of them, it could cause a chain reaction, which would spell the end of this planet. If they're not returned, they will create a miniature sun like the one powering all life here and will proceed to self-sustain until consuming your race in a giant supernova."
"How do we know you're not trying to trick us…?"
"You don't, but I'll tell you this much; I am currently the only one who can contain them, no one else."
"How long do we got…?"
"Measuring in your planet's time? 2 days…"
Back at the military base…
"Talk to me, what do you got…?"
"Satellite image of the anomaly; it exited the crater and headed due east, i lost signal once it reached about here, where you see that big billboard."
"Anyone else got anything?"
"Security cam footage from a nightclub in Vegas not that far from Caesar's Palace; two girls, a 20 year old and a 9 year old with a fake ID got into a barroom brawl. Keep watching until about… now." He pauses the video right when Starla shoots a bolt of white light from her palm."
"When was this…?"
"Almost an hour ago, but there's more you need to see. Right about… here, when a green blur swoops in and grabs our E.T. friend. Slow it down a lil and…"
"I know that boy… Operation W.A.S.P. has made their move. Set up road blocks outside the city limits, ground all airplanes at every surrounding airport; if they move, I wanna know about it. Also, sever any and all forms of communication. Without that, they'll have no way of summoning their vehicles for an easy escape."
Meanwhile, back in Vegas; Max tries to contacting Samuel at the command center, but his call wouldn't go through, "That's weird. I should be able to get good service out here."
"I'll try my cellphone, what's the home number?" Phoebe asked.
Willis gives her the number to Samuel's house; Phoebe dials it in and gets nothing but a busy signal and an indication that her cellphone has no service, "My phone's dead, too…"
Willis tries his phone and communicator as well, but no luck.
"C'mon, let's get to the airport; we parked out private jet in the hangar."
Once they got there, the place was swarming with Marines; the pilot for Samuel's private jet was being detained against his will.
"Now what do we do…?" Phoebe asked.
"Well, we can't draw them away and take off; they'll shoot us down on sight."
"And we can't summon our vehicles; in order to do that, we need to be able to contact MEGAN at the command center, which we can't."
"How about we drive all the way back and come back for the plane later?"
"Great suggestion, but what about our pilot?"
"He looks fine to me; they may be detained, but it looks like they've got good accommodations for the time being." Starla explained, as she watched some of the soldiers bring them various foods to eat from different restaurants.
"Wait a minute, how will we get past the road blocks? They must be dozens of them at every route leading out of the city."
"Well, there must be something we can do…"
"Hey, I got an idea…"
Moments later, Willis pulls up to a black Mazda Rx8 with tinted windows, holds the driver and gunpoint and commandeers the vehicle.
The driver calls it in as Willis races off like a man on a mission.
After several miles, the cops back off and let General Creed's men take over; all the soldiers posted at every route out of the city head back into the city and chase after Willis.
"Something seems wrong here, sir; cops say the driver didn't report seeing anyone else enter the car besides the initial guy."
"Could be that it happened so fast, he can't remember; keep on him."
Further up ahead, they corned Willis, got out of their cars and surrounded him with guns, "Exit slowly!"
Willis opens the driver side door.
"C'mon, not that slowly…!"
Willis gets out all the way.
"Hands behind your head; down on your knees."
He does he is told to avoid getting shot.
"Where are the others?"
"It's only me…" he said with an evil smirk.
The soldiers check the back seat and find nothing.
"He's just the decoy, sir. They others are not here."
Meanwhile on another route, Max, Phoebe, and Starla ride a Charter bus out of town, trying their best to blend in with the other passengers onboard as they rode all through the early morning.
"So… you're part of a race of being made up of light?"
"That's correct, though we prefer to be called Solarians. We get our powers from the sun and stars. We still require food and drinks, but not as much as humans do."
"What about that girl you were fighting with at the nightclub, is she one of your kind as well?"
"Not exactly; she's a member of a different race of beings much similar to your own. Something had happened in which she lost her father and now blames me for his death."
"Did you kill him?" Max whispered.
"No, I would never do anything to harm her father; he and I were best friends, but once he died, Sapphira promised to make me pay for his death."
"Is there some way you can… I dunno… make her come to her senses, so you can tell her the truth?" Phoebe asked.
"I've tried and tried, but she refuses to believe me; ever since she allied herself with Ling Khan, she's become… a whole different person."
"Who's Ling Khan?"
"A Brutish space warlord with abnormal strength and mad agility; when he has his heart set on something, he pursues it nonstop."
"Sound like anyone you know, Max?"
"Well, if he's anything like Celsior and Farenhart, he'll be easy."
Just then, the bus spirals out of control and does a somersault in the middle of the road; the people inside struggling to get out, but they weren't as lucky as Max, Phoebe, and their new friend Starla.
"What just happened?"
"He's what happened…" Starla points to Ling Khan, standing there in his samurai armor, straw hat, orange snowboarding glasses, furry, black legs that look like he hadn't shaved since he started growing leg hair, and gold rings around his ankles.
"Glad to see you're doing well…" Ling Khan smiles with an evil grin.
To be continued…

Our heroes arrive at a pawn shop in the city of Alamosa, Colorado.
"I dunno, Max," Phoebe said.
"What's not to know? All we gotta do is go in and purchase the artifact."
As they approached the front door, they heard commotion on the inside.
"Alright, old man, we know it's here. Just hand it over and we won't have to tear this whole place apart."
"Please, I have no idea what you're talking about."
"You hear that?" Willis asked.
"Yeh, it sounds like Christi and Cameron."
They pull their guns from their holsters and approach the front door like cops about to catch a criminal; Max kicks the door in and Phoebe and Willis follow him in with their guns armed and ready.
"Operation W.A.S.P.. as usual, your timing is like 'the worst'…"
"Let him go, Cameron."
"Oh we'll let him go alright, once we get what we came for."
"I got it, boss…" Cameron and Christi's monster answered as it stumbled in from the back room and dropped a gold ring with an orange stone on top.
Willis recognized it right away and dove towards it as Christi did, "Sorry, baby, snooze you lose," Christi answered as she scrambled to her feet.
Christi, Cameron and their monster head out the front door after a short fight; Willis and Max chased after them and their fight continued in the streets. Willis tackles her to the ground and they both roll out into the middle of the street; Christi lands on top and pelts him with punches to the face.
Willis pushes her off and they both fight for possession of the ring. While Max and Phoebe settle with Cameron and her monster; after a short fight, Max, Willis, and Phoebe make off with the ring.
An hour later, they combine it with the map they got from the four scrolls and it pointed them to the island of New Zealand. So they fuel the diving beetle and head out.
Once they land, Max pulls out the map and plots their course, "According to this, there should be a cave on the other side of that mountain in the distance, so let's go…"
As they moved onward, they were unaware of the presence of a few unsavory characters in the distance; one of them being Alex McLaren, master thief. The others were a brown skin Australian woman and an Australian male, Caucasian.
"Who are these guys, Alex?" the guy asked.
"I dunno, but they're obviously looking for something; check out that huge map."
"Yeh… pirate treasure, maybe…?" the girl answered.
"If we get that map from them, it'll mean double for everyone," Alex explained. "Follow them, but don't get spotted."
They spread out and stick to the dense tree lines as they follow our heroes on their journey.
Max, Willis, and Phoebe approach a rope bridge and proceed to make their way across. Phoebe keeps looking behind her every time she heard a noise.
Once they make it ¾ of the way across, the rope snaps loose and the bridge starts to collapse; our heroes rush to the other side. Max grabs onto the ledge, while Willis grabs onto his feet and Phoebe grabs onto Willis'.
"Hold on, guys!" Max shouted down to them.
"Like we have a choice…" Phoebe yells back.
Max then uses all his strength to pull himself up and his friends as well. As he climbs up, Willis grabs the ledge and Max turns to help pull him up. As soon as Willis was safe, he pulled Phoebe up.
"You guys alright?"
"Yeh…"
"Max, that was no accident; someone cut the bridge. The ropes seemed fine before he set foot on that thing."
"I'm sure it was just your imagination, Willis. Let's keep moving."
Meanwhile, back on the other side.
"You idiot…" Cameron whispered.
"What, I thought with them gone, no one would stand in our way when finding the jewel."
"Well now how do you expect us to get across?"
Christi hesitated for a bit, "Oh…" While she and Cameron looked for another way across, our heroes continued on the path until coming up on a cave.
"Is this it?" Willis asked.
"We've barely gone 2 miles, Willis," Phoebe explained.
"We just have to go through this cave and we're one step closer."
"Yeh, that's what you said a MILE AGO!"
Checking up Cameron and Christi, "See, I told you I'd find another way across," Christi said to Cameron, who cut her off.
"Yeh yeh, you got lucky. I swear you need to start thinking before you act before your impulses cause us to come up empty handed."
"Hey, I was trying get rid of the competition; I don't see you doing anything except complain."
"You wanna see me do something? Gimme that spell book!!!" she snatches the book from Christi's pack, flips through the pages until finding the perfect monster and chanting a spell to summon it.
Seconds later, a green, scaly skin lizard in a ninja costume stood before them, saluting them with its left arm, which was replaced with a cannon from an old pirate ship, "I'm here to serve you, mistress!"
"Good to know; now try and keep up…," Cameron said, shoving him aside.
"And try keeping your voice down. We don't want the people we're following to know we're here," Christi explained as she passed him by, leaving him to drag up the rear.
Checking back with Phoebe, Max and Willis, who were still traversing the dark cave…
"Sure is dark in here," Phoebe said, stating the obvious.
Max and Willis, who had put on sunglasses to hide the fact they had nightvision installed in their eyes, took the lead; Max, who stayed behind his brother the whole way, held onto Phoebe's hand the whole way.
"Remind me again why I don't have those special nightvision shades?"
"Standard issue…" Willis explained.
"Besides, dad wasn't expecting any new team members for quite a while. But don't worry, we'll tell him you need some…"
"That's comforting, but I could really use them now; I can't see my hand in front of my face and I'd like to know what in here?"
"Trust me, this is one of those things you're better off not knowing…" Max said, looking up at all the bats resting on the cave ceiling.
"How can I trust you, and I hardly know you guys…?"
"Is now really the time to get to know us? In a dark, creepy cave that probably would have bats sleeping above us?"
"Bats? I don't like bats that much."
"I never would've guessed a woman of your persona would be afraid of anything…"
"Yeh, you are a rodeo champion; youngest one at that."
"First off, you forgot 'former' rodeo champion and second… I'm actually human, you know, so why wouldn't I be afraid of something?"
After making through the cave in one piece, they come to encounter a new threat; Alex and his team of modern day pirates in search of treasure. The two Australian blokes from earlier held them at gunpoint while Alex himself robbed Max of the map and gave it to two another new member; a young, brunette Australian girl, who looked to be about 16 or 17 years of age.
"Thank you so much, gents…" Alex answered in a British accent.
Before they could make off with the map, Cameron and Christi intervened after their monster shot an energy beam at them in shape of a ball, which hit the tree behind them with a bang.
"What was that?"
"Not so fast, ya silly landlubbers…!"
"Christi, don't try to sound like a pirate; you're not good at it…" Cameron commented.
"You Sheila's are too late; the treasure's gonna be ours…" one of the Australian guys answered.
"1. Don't call me Sheila, 2. I'm not too keen on sharing." Cameron replied before ordering the monster to destroy them.
Willis quickly puts his hands down, grabs his gun, turns to Cameron and Christi's monster and shoots him. Max and Phoebe then do the same and a three-way battle took place, which at the end, Alex and his team took off, leaving the trio to deal with it; Cameron orders the monster to take pursuit, while they stood back and fought Willis, Max, and Phoebe.
Christi kicks twice with her left foot and Phoebe blocks.
Max intervenes with a right punch, which Christi ducked under before serving back a backhand punch to the chest and performing a back flip.
Willis rushes up with a flying kick and knocks her to the ground only to have Cameron intervene with several slashes to the chest with her ninja sword.
Willis strikes with a left kick, but Christi grabs his leg, spins him and trips him; as he landed on his back, she bears down her sword, but Max intervenes with his Pill bug armor attached, pushes her weapon upward and throws a punch, which Cameron stops from behind him with an arm grab.
As Max turned to throw another punch, Cameron blocked; with both his fists clutched in her hands, Cameron plants her foot on his chest and pushes him back.
Willis strikes with his Elephant axe and Cameron blocks as Christi strikes from the left.
Meanwhile, Cameron and Christi's monster caught up with the others, who did their best to fight him off.
Eventually, Willis rushes off to aid them in their struggle, leaving his friends behind; he races up at the speed of sound, bounces off a tree and strikes the beast in the back as it plays tug-o-war with the map and manages to pull the ring off of it.
As Willis lands on his feet, the monster strikes with a back fist swing, which he ducks under as he fires a shot to the stomach. The monster takes its cannon-like arm and fires a ball of energy, but Willis back flips before it makes its impact.
Alex swings in on a vine and knocks the beast to the ground. As Alex lands, he turns sideways as a ninja star is thrown at him at the speed of sound. He looks up and sees Cameron and Christi approaching.
Willis races in from the right at the speed of sound and trips Christi up, but Cameron jumps over him and continues towards Alex's friend, who held the map in his hands; he passes it to the girl as Cameron approaches and reaches for it. They played keep-away until Phoebe jumped in and grabbed the map.
One of the Australian guys stopped her and tried to wrestle it away.
Max tapped the guy in the shoulder, he turned around and Max decked him with a left hook, "Get out of here; we can handle them."
Phoebe nodded and took off towards the location of the cave they needed to get to. As she fled, the monster gets up and takes a shot at her.
Max dashes in front and blocks the shot with his pill bug armor as he swats it away with his left arm. He approaches the beast, which fought back with a strong backhand, which Max dodged as he climbed onto the monster's knee, leaps in the air, and takes a shot with his laser pistol, aiming for his back.
Willis dashes in with a sweep and lands the beast on his back and then he and his brother call on their W.A.S.P. stinger and finish him quickly.
"Think it's about time we took off…"
"I agree," Christi answered as they vanished in a puff of smoke.
"They're going after Phoebe…" as Max and Willis took off, their way was obstructed by Alex's goons.
"Where do you think you're going…?"
"Yeh, we gotcha now…"
After betraying his crew, Alex lead picks up the ring dropped by the monster and Max and Willis follow him as they race off after Cameron and Christi, who finally caught up with Phoebe as she entered the cave.
Phoebe places the map in the center of the room at the exact time it said to on the map, but nothing happened.
"I don't understand it," she said to herself, picking up the map and unrolling it.
"Missing something?" Christi's voice answered from the entrance.
Phoebe pulls her laser gun out and takes aim.
When Max and Willis got there, Alex had crept up on them and disarmed them while their ex's had Phoebe in a strangle hold.
"Just hand over the ring and she won't get hurt…" Cameron answered.
"Max, don't. You got that look in your eyes…"
"You'd do the same thing for the one you love." He holds the ring out and hesitates before throwing to them, but as soon as the ring was on Cameron and Christi's possession, Cameron kept ahold of Phoebe while Christi places the ring over the map and places the map on the pedestal.
As the map basked in the glow of the sunlight, it changed shaped; as it expanded into a sword like shape, it breaks the ring holding the orange stone in place.
The stone grew 2 times its size until taking on the form of an orange diamond.
Max, Willis, and Phoebe's tracking devices went crazy.
"The Star of Leo. The first jewel of the Karma Lunari," Cameron said. She looked up at our heroes and gave a bit of a nod, "Take care of them…"
As she said that, Alex knocked Max and Willis out. When they woke up, they were dangling from a tree inside a huge net over a deep, dark hole.
Down below, Alex puts up a good fight against Cameron and Christi over possession of the jewel while Phoebe lied on her side with her hands tied behind her back, struggling to get onto her feet.
Alex puts up a good fight until getting knocked on his back right below where Max and Willis were dangling.
"Hey!" Max calls out to Alex. Alex didn't respond, so Max called him again, "Get us down from here and we can help you."
Alex ignores them as he lays on his backside, rotates left and strikes Cameron to the ground with a punch to the shin. He then gets to his feet and blocks as Christi approaches with an array of punches and kicks. Alex spirals around her and does a sweep with his right leg, rotates and hits Cameron with a laser blast to the chest.
All the while, Max and Willis still called out to him from above; it wasn't until Cameron and Christi got the better of him that he got Willis and Max down; Max grabs onto the edge of the hole with one hand while holding onto his brother with the other. As he makes his way up, he pulls Willis with him. They both get to their feet; Willis rushes over to untie Phoebe while Max accompanies Alex. He summons his pill bug armor and deals blow after blow. The fight went on for minutes at a time until Christi and Cameron ended up with the sword and Max, Willis, Alex, and Phoebe ended up with the Star of Leo.
As Cameron and Christi retreated, so did the others; Max, Willis, and Phoebe invited Alex back to the mansion, convincing him that they will compensate him for his help.
"Welcome back, guys, how'd everything go?"
Phoebe presents Samuel with the Jewel.
"Cameron and Christi made off with the sword, though."
"We'll get it back; the important thing is that this is one jewel that's not in the hands of the enemy."
"We couldn't have done without Alex's help."
"I was happy to have helped."
"We kinda promised him a small reward, is that okay?"
Before Samuel could answer, MEGAN interrupted, "Download complete, sir."
"Download? What's going on, Mr. Grant?" Phoebe asked.
"I finally got around to going over the footage from the break in at my company," he explained.
"Shall I commence with playback?" MEGAN asked.
"You know, I don't really have to get the money today, can we reschedule?" Alex asked nervously.
"Nonsense," Willis said, "It'll only take a second."
"Help yourself to anything in the fridge," Samuel said, "Max, maybe you can give him his reward for me."
After going over the video, Samuel finds evidence, which linked Alex to the robbery. He turned to him in shock as Alex stood there.
Max returned shortly after with a small sum of money, not aware of what happened in his absence, "What's going on, dad?"

*if you've seen power rangers time force, you'd recognize a part of this chapter as being from their episode, "movie madness". the rangers get trapped in a world based around their favorite genres. meanwhile, Samuel is entertaining an 18 year old girl who mostly grew up on the streets and fell in with the wrong crowds*



It was a quiet, sunny morning. Max, Alex, and Willis sat down to breakfast while Phoebe was in the bathroom, doing her hair and stuff. The guys didn't feel like waiting on her, so they dug in and enjoyed themselves.
Samuel came down the stairs in a hurry.
"Hey, dad." Willis called out.
Samuel responded as quickly as he could as he rushed into the kitchen, grabbed a few breakfast bars, and shoved them in his jack pockets.
"Sir…?" Bradshaw asked. Samuel didn't respond, so Bradshaw asked him, "Sir. Where are you off to in such a hurry?"
"Well, I somehow signed myself for this 'troubled youth' program."
"What's the troubled youth program?" Max asked.
"It's one of those programs for juvenile delinquents, who wanted avoid jail time; volunteers are paired with an individual for a day. If any delinquents in the program show signs of improvement, they'll be released on good behavior," Alex explained.
"I've been assigned someone by the name of Caitlin; I'm meant to be at the place in half an hour, so I gotta go; sorry I don't have time for a proper breakfast."
15 minutes later, Max and the others enter the command center to check and see if Celsior, Farenhart, or any of their other enemies were up to no good.
"There seems to be no activity on the scanners," Phoebe answered.
"Why does today have to be so BORING?!" Alex answered.
"I, for one, am glad we don't have to fight any monsters; gives us time to ourselves to do something even more fun."
"Like what?" Alex asked.
"How about a movie?" Phoebe suggested.
Checking back with Samuel, who had arrived at the group home; after his driver parks, he exits the limo and heads inside and up to the receptionist's desk. After signing in, he sat and waited on someone to give him a tour of the facility. The tour guide takes down the hall to the cafeteria, where he meets the girl he's paired up with, Caitlin Rose, who was a 18 year old blonde girl in a light blue sleeveless top with the words "you got a problem?" and "See if I care…" in all capitals, and a pair of blue jeans that came up above her ankles.
"I'll leave you to it then." The woman leaves Samuel alone to talk with the girl.
"Caitlin?" he said, not getting a response out of her the first time. "Caitlin, I'm Samuel Grant. It's a pleasure to finally meet you; do you mind if I sit with you?" she still didn't answer, but Samuel took her silence for a yes and sat down in the chair opposite of her. He sat there for about 5 or 6 seconds before blurting out, "So where are you from?"
There still no answer from Caitlin.
"You don't say much, do you?"
An hour or so later after going to the theater, Max, Willis, Phoebe, and Alex exit started discussing the movie they saw.
"It was awesome… but I'd much prefer racing movies; something like fast and furious."
"You stick to driving over the speed limit, brother; leave the Kung Fu action to me."
"Give me a good spy movie anyday; I love the gadgets, taking trips to foreign lands, the beautiful women… not that I'm saying you're ugly or anything, Phoebe…"
"Thank you for that, Alex; I'll keep that in mind."
"So what kind of movies do you go for, Phoebe?"
"I pretty much prefer old westerns, myself."
As they walked down the street, they come across a gang of Konglatons being led by a human sized hamster in baggy pants, and director's clothing sitting in a chair talking into a bullhorn, "Quiet on the set, folks." He looks over at our heroes, "Well it's about time!"
Our heroes stand in their fighting poses.
"Who are you?" Alex asked calmly.
"They call me Cine-Mike, and I'll be directing your demise today…" he then orders the Konglatons to attack.
After fighting the army until only one remained, Cine-Mike aims his camera and fires a beam which made Max, Phoebe, Willis, and Alex vanish without a trace.
Meanwhile, as we check back with Samuel, we find him having a tough time getting Caitlin to say anything.
"Well I'm really enjoying our time together, but isn't there something you wanna do that's a lot more fun?"
"I'm fine right here, thanks."
"Fine? No no no no, you are not fine. You need to get out into the fresh air and get some exercise."
"Exercise? So you're implying I'm fat."
"No… but sitting in here on your a** feeling sorry for yourself is healthy for a girl your age."
"What would you know about being healthy…?"
"Tons…"
"Well, since you're being so persistent, perhaps I'll take you up on that offer, if it'll shut you up," she answer, muttering the last five words under her breath as she got up from her seat.
After signing out, Samuel and Caitlin hop into the limo and slowly exit the parking lot.
"So… what do you like to do for fun?"
"You're asking me and this was your idea?"
"Yes. I haven't had much practice with this; I have two sons, no daughters. I have a sister, though, but we don't speak much."
"I had a sister, but not anymore."
"Oh really? Anything you wanna talk about?"
"With you? Not really…" she rolled her eyes.
"Tell me something, Caitlin; you have any friends? Any at all?"
"Plenty, why do you ask?"
"Because judging by the attitude you're giving me, I could only assume you didn't a single person you could call your friend."
Moments later, Samuel's driver drove past the fairgrounds where a carnival was taking place; Samuel ordered him to pull into the parking lot.
Samuel drags Caitlin up to the ticket booth.
After purchasing some tickets, they went on in.
"I wasn't always like this, you know…" Caitlin said.
"Really? Well you sure could've fooled me."
Before she could open her mouth, Samuel interrupted her…
"Lemme… take a guess and say, you were an A student all your life, something horrible happened; maybe the death of a loved one or something and that somehow caused you to slowly change into this closed off lil brat that's sitting in front of me, am I right?"
She looks at him in a weird way before she started to look she was crying.
"Did I say something wrong…?"
"You know… I really don't wanna get into it at the moment; can we do something else?"
"Sure, anything you want…"
Before he could even suggest anything, she drags him towards the roller coasters.
"You coming or what?" she asked.
"You know, I probably shouldn't…"
"Oh c'mon, you're not afraid of heights are you, Mr. Grant?"
"Me? Afraid of heights? Heck no, it's just that we just ate and you should wait before getting on the rides."
"Whatever, ya chicken." She starts clucking like a chicken, coaxing him to go with her.
After a few seconds, he finally gave in and followed her onto the roller coaster.
As they rode the tracks, going with wild spins, loop-de-loops, and stuff, Samuel felt butterflies in his stomach.
Checking back with the others, we find Max waking up in a museum setting with no idea how he got there; his Pill bug armor attached to his right arm.
"It's about time, red ranger."
"Cine-Mike?"
"I hope you appreciate the good job wardrobe has done with your weapon; not as effective as your original, but it'll do…"
"Where am i?"
"In my Demon-boy movie, of course. You're just in time for the big action sequence! ROLL CAMERA!"
As the camera rolls, out comes a big brute like monster with horns coming out of its arms. The beast marches up to our hero and the fight begins.
"Yo, ugly! Don't provoke me, or you'll get the business end of my right hand of doom…"
The beast snarls in rage and slides it right hand across the ground like a bull ready to charge and races up at an alarming speed, knocking Max into the doors behind him with such force that they almost broke open.
Max peels off of the doors and lands on his two feet and right hand, "That all you got?" he looks to his left, pulls the red flag off the wall, tears it and uses part of it like a bull fighter's cape. "Toro, Toro…"
As the beast rushed up, Max slid under his legs, grabs his tail and swings up onto its back. From there, he rode him like a bucking bronco while pounding into his with his right fist angrily.
As the fight waged on, Cine-Mike cuts to Phoebe's old western film, where we find her stuck in the middle of a gunfight between her bounty and his gang, who were held up in an abandoned house.
Phoebe was wearing a tan jacket, which ran half way down her calves, blue jeans, brown boots and a black cowboy hat while carrying two six-shooters; one in each hand as she popped out from behind the tree and fired off several shots, hoping she got one of the varmints in the windows.
"Hope I'm getting paid extra for this…" she pops back out and fires more shots before taking cover again.
Next on Cine-Mike's list was Willis, who we find waking up in the driver seat of an illegally modified Toyota Supra painted green with a spoiler, tinted windows and glowing neon on the underside in the middle of a canyon road alongside a silver Mazda RX-8 in dark blue with orange flame decals and a smaller spoiler than Willis' ride.
"Oh I sure hope you have your license, green ranger; because it's time to put the pedal the metal in my high octane racing film…" Cine-Mike's voice said as his body slowly descended to the set from up above. "And… ACTION!"
Once the camera rolls, both drivers revved their engines; the flagman stood in between them and dropped a white rag on the ground signaling them to take off.
Willis' opponent took the lead and kept moving from left to right to prevent him from passing.
Both of them came up on a hairpin turn, sending bits of rubble over the edge as they drifted around.
With Willis still in last place, they continued down the canyon road until heading into town
During the race, Cine-Mike ventures to Alex's world to start his movie.
Alex awakens in a large drain pipe with a snowboard on his back and a disc in his right hand.
"Roll Camera, Cue explosion!" after saying that, a huge roaring flame makes its way through the drain pipe and flushes Alex out.
Alex takes a leap of faith, removes the snowboard from his back and places underneath him before he lands on the slope below.
"CUE THE AVALANCHE!" Cine-mike bellowed through his megaphone.
A ton of snow starts pouring and chasing after our hero like a pack of hungry lions, while he maneuvered the icy terrain of his arch enemy's mountainous lair doing all sorts of tricks he picked up from a snowboarding game.
"Excellent! This is better than anything on basic cable," Ling Khan said, watching the rangers as they try to survive in their own separate movie dimensions.
"I aim to please, master," Cine-Mike answers.
"Only thing missing is the leader, Samuel Grant. With him gone, no one will stand in my way."
"Where do I find him?"
"How the heck should I know? Just get out there and look or you'll never work in the galaxy again…"
"Yes, sir…"
Half an hour after going to the amusement park, Samuel and Caitlin exit and head around to the parking lot, where they meet Cine-Mike.
"Caitlin, stay behind me…" Samuel instructed as he went for his sword.
"Sorry, but I've already got the samurai movie roles filled, but I've got a good post-apocalyptic movie part with your name on it; ROLL CAMERA!" within an instant, Cine-mike points his camera and fires a green light. As it hit, it sucked Samuel in like a tractor beam on an alien spaceship and dropped him in a lush green forest with original attired replaced with peasants' clothing; his sword gone.
Samuel gets to his feet and looks around, hoping he could recognize where he is right away, but couldn't, "Max, Willis, anyone?!"
Suddenly, Samuel starts hearing footsteps that sounded like galloping horses closing in on his location. It only dawned on him when it was too late to do anything that the men coming to him weren't the cavalry, but something far worse…
"Oh crud…"
Back in the real world, Caitlin stood there in shock until Cine-Mike pointed the camera at her.
"Hold still, girly, the camera loves ya; it wants to be your best friend!"
Despite what Cine-Mike said, Caitlin kept ducking and dodging the beam being shot from the lens.
"She's a lil camera shy; get her, boys!!!"
The Konglatons working the lights and sound effects drop what they're doing and launch a full scale assault. Caitlin blocks with her left arm and kicks with her right leg; one of the Konglatons then grabs her by the waist from behind and she leaps up, delivering a frontal kick to the two approaching from the front before turning her attention to the one behind her. Once he was down, she ducked under the oncoming punch from the enemy 45 degrees to her right and throws back and a strong left hook.
Another one comes in from the left and Caitlin trips him with a sweep from her right leg.
During the fight, the limo drives rolls up quickly, gets out and opens the back door, yelling "Get in!"
Caitlin fends off the Konglatons and races for the backseat.
The driver closes the door, dashes back to the driver seat, closes the door and drives off back the mansion.
Meanwhile, back in Phoebe's movie, she finally caught her bounty and returned to the sheriff's office.
At the same time, Ling Khan sees her progress and teleports to the set, where he meets up with Cine-Mike.
"Heya, boss, what can I do for ya?"
"Just wondering if you're up for a rewrite of some kind?" Ling Khan explained vaguely.
"What'd you have in mind…?" Cine-Mike asked.
Ling Khan pulls Cine-Mike in close and whispers in his ear.
"Oh, that's good…" he whispered back.
"You're the director, so hop to it." Ling Khan vanishes in a blink of an eye.
"Okay, folks, there's gonna be a few changes to the script, let's get to it! We got some rangers to destroy!!"
One of the Konglatons claps the clapboard as Cine-Mike yelled "ACTION!"
Phoebe rides in on her horse with her bounty dragging behind her by a rope. As she reached the sheriff's office, a couple of the deputies stepped out before Sapphira did, wearing a pair of black boots, brown pants, with a matching jacket, and hat, which was covering most of her hair.
"She killed my father, the sheriff of this town!" she sobbed, "GUN HER DOWN!!!" Sapphira yelled.
Heeding her command, the deputies drew their guns.
Phoebe, who was still on her horse, made him raise his front feet as she drew her guns and fired back, after taking them down, more gunmen appeared out of nowhere on the rooftops and fired back.
Phoebe then dismounts the horse and takes the fight to them; she waves her guns around like a true western gunslinger, taking everyone out with a single shot before taking cover.
The men on the towers fired back before taking cover.
Phoebe pops out, shoots the bell on the left tower and gives the gunslinger a ring in his ears before shooting him in the chest.
With only a handful of men left, Phoebe turns invisible and walks out into the open, firing at everyone with a gun that came into her sights. As soon as she finished off the last of them, Sapphira decided to step in; she cracks her whip and knocks the guns from Phoebe's hands. Phoebe rolls towards Sapphira and starts fighting her hand to hand.
Meanwhile, Caitlin just arrived at the mansion; she looked around the place frantically, trying to find help.
Once he heard the call, Bradshaw came running, "What may I help you with, young lady?"
"Something's happened with Samuel; some weird monster thing zapped him with this green light from a camera."
"Let's take a step back to the beginning; who are you and how do you know Samuel?"
"My name is Caitlin Rose, he was assigned to me at the group home; the troubled youth program…"
"Ah yes, the troubled youth program," Bradshaw said.
"We were coming out of the amusement park when that thing attacked us. It had brown and white fur, it looked like a Hamster and it was wearing the kind of clothing a director would wear."
"His name is Cine-Mike…" MEGAN's voice answered from somewhere in the room."
"Who's that?"
"Her name is MEGAN; she controls most of the equipment in the household. If what you're saying is true, then it's best that you come with me, straightaway."
Meanwhile, in Willis's movie, things began to heat up as he turned around the corner and a huge explosion sends a pile of rocks tumbling down the hill towards him; Willis spins out of control as he tries to avoid them and his opponent takes the lead.
Over in Alex's world, as he makes it to the bottom of the mountain, he thinks he's in the clear until an army of mercenaries pop out of the tree-line and hold him at gunpoint.
In Max's world, he finishes his fight with the horned creature only to find himself in a new setting with a dozen more of the beast he just beat.
"This is so not my day…"
To be continued

*once i upload a story to my Deviant art, i tend to forget what it consists of, so i'm not sure if this has any trace of the episode "i love lothor" from the series power rangers ninja storm, but this episode is obviously a Valentine's day episode.*



With Valentine's Day only a day away, our heroes help set up for the party being held at the university courtyard.
"Remind again how I let you rope me into this?"
"Well, you needed a sparring partner to test out the new weapon Samuel gave you, remember?"
Caitlin and Phoebe flash back to early yesterday when they were out in the backyard; Phoebe had her weapon, the Mantis Boomerang; Caitlin had replaced her old weapon, the Rhino Hammer with a new one known as the Swordtail nunchucks.
"If I help you out, you need to help me out with the decorations for the Valentine's Day party, deal?"
"We got a deal."
Phoebe made the first move; she throws the boomerang at Caitlin, who deflects by holding her weapon out vertically; the boomerang returns to Phoebe's hand and Caitlin approaches. She swings from the right, Phoebe ducks and swings her weapon from her right; Caitlin arches forward and then spirals off to her left. She then immediately presses the two halves of her weapon together, pressed a button and instantly turned it into a Bo Staff with a small blade at the end. She jabs towards Phoebe, who bobs her head to the left.
"Apparently, they don't have sarcasm where you're from…" Caitlin said with a surly attitude.
"One thing you need to learn about me is that I take things seriously."
"Yeah, I noticed; hey can we switch jobs, my arms are getting tired?"
"Oh stop being a crybaby, you don't have that much to go," Phoebe said, admiring the fine job Caitlin was doing with the colorful assortment of ribbon-like decorations hovering overhead.
"Where the heck's Samuel when ya need'em?"
"He said he had an important assignment to take care of; didn't mention what it was before he left."
Meanwhile, at the front entrance, Cameron and Christi were on the prowl. Cameron snags a flyer from the table by the door and sneer as they walk down the street, "People actually celebrate a day devoted to loving each other?"
"Well I think it's a splendid holiday. I could finally show Willis my love is true, despite our differences."
"You've been playing at that for days and still you're no closer to having him interested in you, so why not just give up this crusade?"
"Because we're meant to be…"
"Why you always fall for the enemy, I'll never know…"
"Maybe there's a spell to make a love potion in our book, c'mon." she grabs a hold of her sister's arm and races off.
Back at their house.
"Are you sure this will work?" Cameron asked, sounding uninterested. "It's not like we've tried making potions before; just monsters."
"Our auntie made one once to use on that handsome Lycanthrope fellow in the red scarf."
"But it only worked for a short while, remember?"
"Oh…" Christi answers with a blank stare on her face before flipping through the pages and coming up on the L's, "Here we go: Love potions. To conjure, place right hand on heart, close eyes, and press index finger of other hand down on page while thinking thoughts of love and affection." Christi did as the book commanded and a pendant popped up out of the page like magic; the pendant which mostly brass with a red ruby or something in the middle in the shape of a heart. She reads onward in the book, "Wearer of this will have the nearest member of the opposite gender become instantly infatuated in you."
"If it does exactly what it says, then this will make it ten times harder get his attention."
"Whatever… I'm gonna go find someone to test this out on and; see if I can make him irresistible to my charm…" Christi disappears in a puff of pink smoke.
"Hey, wait for me. I don't wanna miss this for anything…" Cameron follows her.
They teleport to a random part of the city after changing into more normal looking clothing and decided to test the pendant's power out on an unsuspecting nerd. At first, Cameron objected to the idea; even an evil space ninja bent on world domination has to draw the line somewhere.
Christi ignored her sister and took off after him. Once she caught up with him, she holds a small conversation with him, "Do you like my new necklace?" she asked, putting her her hand over the ruby in the center and turning the pendant on.
The boy looks at it and hearts appear over his pupils to show it was working, "That's not all I like about you…" he literally under her spell.
Christi holds him back with her palm in front of his face while she talks to her sister.
"It works," Cameron whispered, "It actually works."
"See? I told you. Now all I need to do is find Willis and make him mine forever."
"Why stop there? We can make the whole world like you if we wanted to. Think about it, some of most influential people on this planet are men; we control them, we control the world."
"How do we go about controlling the male half of the population?"
"Perhaps your admirer knows…"
"You… boy, what's your name?" Christi asked as she removed her palm from his face.
"Eugene," he answered.
"Well, Eugene, if you were to go about making everyone like you, how would you do it?"
"The most effective way is through television."
"Television, eh?" Cameron asked.
"It worked for certain celebrities, who wanted to make their rise to fame. If it worked for them, it'll work for you."
"But we know nothing about producing a Movie let alone a TV series."
"Perhaps I can be of assistance, ladies? If you want, I can print out a resume…"
"No need, you're hired."
After finding a suitable place to broadcast from, Cameron and Christi find themselves vexed with another problem.
"We'll need some people to be in charge of security."
"No problem, we just look back under the spells for monsters and…"
Eugene strolls into the room, "If it's security you need, these guys are just right for the job."
Christi took one look at them and said, "No no no, their image is all wrong."
"Yeah, I have to agree with my sister, their too puny."
"I can find some others if…"
"We'll just have to make do with what we have." She chants a spell from their book and instantly turns Eugene's nerd friends into brutish, savage monsters.
Eugene was shocked by what he just saw, that he temporarily blocked out what Christi was saying.
"Eugene!" Cameron shouted.
"Oh sorry…" he said, shaking himself out of his trance.
"The script, did you write it?"
"First episode right here." He hands it over to the girls. "Prior to your specifications, we've attached the pendant to satellite transmitter. Once we start rolling, it won't matter what you do on screen, the pendant's power will transmit to everyone's TV if they have this channel tuned in."
"Well, let's start quickly as possible."
Meanwhile, in other part of the city, Starla, Willis, Max, and Alex were left in charge of hiring the caterers. They would split up into teams of two and scout good places that offer their services.
Starla and Willis ride around until coming across a place called "Top Dog gourmet hotdogs", they ask around for the manager and put in a request for catering services while at the same time, Max and Alex do the same thing at a shop called Pizza shop. They explain the situation to the managers that they're planning to hire two restaurants for the job before getting down to business.
After discussing the terms of the agreement, Max and Alex head back to the mansion. Willis and Starla stuck around to sample some of the establishment's entrées.
On the TV inside the restaurant, displayed an episode from the "food network" for a short moment before the program was interrupted by Cameron and Christi on the first episode of their series.
Willis put down what he was eating and stared and the Television.
"What, what happened?" she turned to see what Willis was looking at, "They'll let anyone into show business these days…"
Back at the mansion, Max and Alex turn on the TV to the same thing. Alex takes the remote and flips through the channels; each one showed the same thing over and over, "Yo, Max, what's wrong with the TV?"
"I dunno, it was working fine this morning."
With no other options, they decide to watch on. The more of the episode they watched, Max then recognized one of the main characters.
"Is that… Cameron?"
"As in 'your-ex-who-tricked-you-into-giving-her-the-scrolls-of-Ares', Christi? That Christi?" Alex asked.
I never noticed how pretty she looked until now…"
"Who, Cameron? She's alright, I guess… but she's got more of a mean streak than her sister."
"Mean streak? Care to elaborate?"
Moments later, Starla exits the establishment, leaving Willis where he was while she contacted Phoebe and Caitlin.
"Hello?" Phoebe answered.
"Phoebe, it's me. Something's wrong With Willis, he saw this program on TV and now he's just sitting there staring at the screen like some lovesick baboon; can you meet me back at the mansion?"
"I'm on my way." She hangs up, "Something weird is going on, need to meet up with Starla back at the house."
"Finally, I needed a break." Caitlin was relieved.
They went outside to the parking lot, put on their helmets and mounted their bikes. They make it back to the mansion shortly after Starla did to find Max and Alex fighting in the middle of the living room "They've been like that since I got back; I can't seem to separate them long enough to get them to calm down"
"What the heck were they watching to get them like this?"
"I dunno, but it has something to do with those two halfwits, Cameron and Christi. I caught a glimpse of them on the Television at the Hotdog place. I tried carrying Willis out, but he was too heavy, so I left him."
"You left him there?"
"Well it's not like he and the rest of the men in that place were going anywhere…"
Checking back with Willis, his status was still the same. He watched the screen even after Cameron and Christi's episode had finished; Christi's face appeared in his drink and then she magically appeared in the seat across from him.
"Hey, Willis…" she said in an alluring tone of voice, snapping him out of his trance.
"Christi, how have you been?"
"I've been great, thanks for asking. How about yourself?"
"The same."
"What do you say we get outta here and go someplace more private?"
"Sounds like a great idea. I'll drive."
Back at home, Caitlin and Phoebe head down into the command center to try and solve the mystery behind Cameron and Christi's sudden interest in television.
"It's going to take a while to trace their signal; whoever's helping them really knows what they're doing," MEGAN replied.
"Take your time."
"Guys, Willis is gone." Starla said over the communicator.
"Gone?"
"As in he's not where I left him."
"Maybe he got up and walked off; he's not some inanimate object, he's a human being."
"But his eyes were glued on the television set just like the other mindless drones in here. If they haven't gotten up and walked up, then what make him so special?"
"MEGAN, can you track Willis' location?"
"Tracking him now… no sign of him anywhere; it appears he's shut off his locator."
"Or maybe someone shut it off for him…"
"Let's not jump to conclusions until we know all the facts, Starla," Phoebe answered before ending the transmission.
Meanwhile back upstairs, Max and Alex continue to argue and shove each other around.
"You know what, I'm sick of you, your brother and you guys' attitudes. You think you can just take anything you want because your father's a millionaire entrepreneur."
"Oh yeah? Well what ya gonna do about?"
"An old fashioned sword duel on the beach at sunset."
"You're on…"
"Since you don't have a sword, just bring your Pill bug armor and watch me crush it like the bug it is…" Alex and Max part ways.
Meanwhile somewhere in the park, Willis and Christi sit down to a nice picnic she had prepared before the first episode of her show.
"How's your food so far, honey bunny?"
"It's delicious, how long did it take you to make this potato salad?"
"I made just before airing our first episode; the pork ribs are a different story."
"Who knew you were such an amazing cook?"
"It's one of my many talents; a girl gets hungry trying to conquer worlds, you know…"
"I know the feeling all too well."
"Speaking of conquer worlds, I was wondering if you could do me a tiny favor…"
"Anything for you, my love."
"My love… oh I love it when you call me that…"
While Willis and Christi had their picnic, Starla continued the search. After a while, she came across a bunch of monsters, similar to ones Cameron and Christi made out of a bunch of Eugene's friends, entering a TV studio.
"Either they're filming a monster movie and those are actors in costumes, or something weird's going down." She moves in closer to investigate unaware of a strange man in trench coat and hat watching him in the distance.
Meanwhile, on the inside, Cameron is having a polite conversation with Eugene, "What are the ratings so far?" she asks.
"Ratings look promising. We beat almost every teen comedy series out there by several points."
"The powers of love at its finest…" Cameron commented.
Starla peeks out and watches from a distance and ducks back down.
"Excuse me, but this is a closed set." One of the Cameron's security guards uttered.
"Sure is, 'cause I'm gonna be the one to close it."
"Looks like we got a troublemaker; I need backup over here."
A few more monsters surrounded Starla on all sides, giving her no choice but to fight her way out. She strikes the guy on her left, goes for an inside leg kick on the guy in front of her, rotates left and shoots a ball of white light, knocking the guy into some of the props off in the distance.
The guy behind her grabs her by the waist; Starla jumps up as high as she could. On her descent, she wraps her legs around the guy's midsection and flips him over her head.
One of the men on her right attacks and she turns into light, scatters herself in every direction and reappears behind him to perform a choke hold, which puts him to sleep.
As another monster approaches, she unsheathes the sword on the fallen enemy and uses it to fight back. She turns towards this blue, plastic bucket, picks it up with the sword, spins it around and tosses into one of the monsters, knocking him on his back.
The rest of the monsters attack from all sides and Starla takes her sword, blocks left, then right, and sticks it into the monster behind her before slashing diagonally down the chest of the one in front. As she slashes 45 degrees to her left, the sword is kicked from her hand. The beast in front of her knocks her into the arms of the guy behind her with a frontal kick. As he had her in a bear hug, she tries to break free with several elbow strikes to the pelvis. After getting loose, the monsters then force her to stop by holding their blades to her neck.
"That's enough, boys. Put those away."
"Cameron… I suspected you and your sister were behind all this; where's Willis?"
"Willis? As if I'd be interested in that fool. You'll need to talk to Christi if you wanna know anything."
"I'll do that, where is she?"
"Heck if I know; she's probably out having a good time with him. She is smitten with him and always has been even after their breakup. And I'm willing to bet that the feeling is mutual."
After Christi and Willis had their picnic, Willis escorted Christi back to the mansion, where we see them sneaking around trying to locate the jewels of Karma Lunari.
"This way," Willis whispered as he showed her the way to his father's office.
"What are you two planning, anyway?"
"As if I'd tell you. Take her away, I got a show to do."
Cameron's security team haul her off, but as they did, Starla still fought with them every step of the way until Cameron knocks her out with a ball of pink light, "Stuff her in a closet or something; without any type of light source, her powers will grow weak."
Back inside the command center
"It's been half an hour. Starla hasn't radioed back, and there's no sign of Willis."
"Speaking of Willis, I detect motion descending the staircase."
"Willis, you're back. Where's Starla?"
"I don't know. She was with me at the restaurant and now she's not."
"Oh."
"In fact, the same could be asked about Alex and my brother. They've gone walkabout."
"That's strange, since they were upstairs arguing like two love-struck teenagers over a girl. Where could they be?"
Down on the beach, Max and Alex stand facing each other. They summon their weapons individually and they each stare the other down like two samurai in a duel.
"I'm picking up their signal down by the beach." MEGAN brings up the image of Max and Alex on screen just as they prepare for their duel.
"Oh there they are."
"What are they doing?"
At the same time, an alarm goes and another image with Christi breaking into Samuel's safe shows up.
"We got bigger things to worry about."
"This one's mine…" Caitlin rushes towards the stairs, but Willis stops her.
"I don't think so…" he points his laser gun at her.
"Willis, what are you doing? Get out of the way."
"Not gonna happen. You see, Christi is with me; we're taking the Star of Leo with us."
"Willis, are you outta your mind? Think about what you're doing."
"I've thought about it long and hard. And I've come to the conclusion that I love Christi and I'd do anything for her."
"Willis, snap out of it! Can't you see she's playing you?"
Willis hesitates before giving the two their orders, "Step away from the console… slowly."
They do as he says. "You're not going to get away with this," Phoebe answered.
"We already are." Willis moves towards the console.
"Woohoo, I got it!"
Willis presses a button and answers her back, "Excellent work, honey. I'll meet you back at the studio."
"You got it." Christi teleports out of there with the jewel; Willis heads through to the holding bay for the motorcycles and takes off.
"Let's go after him."
"Best idea I heard all day. He'll probably lead us to her…" Phoebe and Caitlin take follow Willis from a safe distance and then get on their all-terrain vehicles to follow him.
Meanwhile, back on the beach, Max and Alex run at each other and start the fight.
Max throws a left, Alex leans back and then comes forward with a left slash. Max's armor attaches to his right as he lifts his arm to block. Alex throws a right and decks Max in the jaw. Max's armor transitions to his left arm as he performs a spinning back fist. Alex blocks with his sword and sparks fly. Max spirals and performs a low kick to the shin. While on knee, Alex attacks low; Max's armor moves down to his lower leg as he blocks with it. He then pulls away and leaps behind Alex Capoeira style; Alex converts his sword to chain mode, swings around and attacks.
Max leans his head to his right.
Alex then attacks again, but Max leans his head to the left. The third time, Max grabs with the pill bug armor, wraps the chain around his arm and drags Alex towards him. As Alex drew closer, Max throws a punch with the other hand, which Alex immediately blocked. After letting go, he and Max both strike with their weapons at the same time. When they collided, the force was enough to temporarily disable Max's pill bug armor, giving Alex the perfect opportunity.
"Whoa whoa, wait… this hardly seems fair."
"You're right, it doesn't…!" Alex finishes his strike, which Max blocks before disarming him and forcing him to go hand-to-hand.
Checking back with Phoebe and Caitlin, they chase Willis around almost every corner with him shooting obstacles to slow them down.
"At this rate, we'll never catch up with him."
"You're right about that; I'll try to cut him off." Caitlin takes a separate route; she turns the corner on her right while Phoebe continued straight.
Willis caught on to her plan right away, "Clever, Caitlin, but not clever enough." Once he came up to the onramp, he enters the freeway, where things get a little dicey as there was more traffic.
"I think it's safe to assume he's on to us," Phoebe replied as she followed after.
"Keep going, I'll get the next one."
"There isn't another ramp for miles."
"Just trust me…"
Meanwhile, back in the studio, the man in the trench coat, who was following Starla finally enters the building. Noticing the pendant was too guarded, he decided to free Starla first. He goes over to the closet and opens the door. Starla was inside unconscious and weak, so he brings her out into the artificial lighting to power her back up.
Starla slowly gains consciousness. She wakes to the sight of the man in the coat standing over her.
Meanwhile in the background, Christi appears in a cloud of smoke, "Guess what I got…"
"Yeah yeah, later Christi, check this out." Cameron looks at the monitor at the sight of Max and Alex fighting for her love at the beach.
While they watched, the man in the coat quickly tangles with the security team.
"Care to join in?" Eugene said to Cameron.
"Nah, I got bigger fish to fry." She then takes off in a flash. As she pulls up on the beach, she conjures up a chair and sits back, "I'll let 'em wear each other out and then I strike…"
Back at the studio, Starla gets in contact with her team.
"It's good to hear your voice again, you had us worried," Phoebe answered.
"I got a bit tied up at the moment, you won't believe where I am. I'm in Cameron and Christi's studio. There's an unidentified male and he's taking on several monsters on his own."
"Oddly enough, Willis is heading there; he helped Christi pilfer the jewel."
"He helped her? Are you sure it was him?"
"Unless he and Max have a triplet we don't know about, then yes we're sure; Caitlin and I stared him right in the face as he held us at gunpoint. Strangest thing about it was, he didn't seem like himself."
"I'll bet it has something to do with this place sending out some sort of subliminal messages through the TV waves. Anyway, I'll handle things on this end; you two break off and find Max and Alex."
"Are you sure, Starla?"
"I'm sure…" Starla joins the man in his fight.
"Change of plans, Caitlin. MEGAN, send us Max and Alex's coordinates."
"Affirmative, Miss Dallas."
"Phoebe, what are you doing?"
"Starla reckons she can handle things by herself, so let her."
"Right, MEGAN, can you offer your assistance to Starla just in case?"
"I'll do what I can, Miss Rose; sending you Max and Alex's coordinates: now."
"Thanks."
Caitlin and Phoebe arrive on the beach.
"Cameron…" Phoebe answered furiously as she took aim.
Cameron slowly looks up, "Oh man, not you two. Can't you let me enjoy the sun and the sight of two men vying for my heart?"
"You don't have a heart, now stop this before they kill each other."
"Hey, boys!!!" Cameron gets Alex and Max's attention. "A lil help here…"
Before Phoebe could take aim, Cameron kicks the gun from her hands and backs away as Max and Alex approach and fight Phoebe.
"Max… Alex. You guys are under a spell, snap out of it." She said in between each attack.
While Phoebe had her hands full with them, Caitlin takes off after Cameron, "Where do you think you're going…?" she grabs Cameron by the right shoulder.
Cameron turns, twists Caitlin arm and brings her to her knees with a punch to the stomach. Caitlin got the wind temporarily knocked out of her. She gets up and continues fighting; she throws a straight punch, but Cameron sidesteps, strikes with a Judo chop to the chest and then a spinning back kick, which Caitlin dodged.
As Phoebe fought back, she displays a feat of athleticism; she throws several punches to Max's chest, spirals and brings down on one knee with a spiraling back fist before she places her hand on his back and uses him to perform a vault kick to Alex's chest.
Max spirals and grabs her in a bear hug; after Alex regained focus, he charged at Phoebe, who lifts both her feet into the air and kicks him back down before she breaks free of Max's grip with several elbow strikes to the pelvis. After releases his grip on her, Phoebe turns around and lifts Max off his feet with a palm strike to the solar plexus. Then she summons her Mantis boomerang, turns and knocks Alex out with it before running her index finger across the outer curve after it returned to her hand.
"Phoebe… if you're not too busy, can I get some help over here?" Caitlin asked.
"Oh right…"
Meanwhile, back inside the studio, Starla and the unknown man continue their fight against the security team, "This is getting us nowhere we have to find the source of the subliminal waves."
"The satellite…" Starla suggested just before she and the man temporarily disable the goon squad head to the roof.
"There is it!" the man points out his pendant, which was attached to some type of high tech machinery, which was plugged into the satellite. He moves over to it and tries to dislodge it, but a pinkish-red force field prohibited him.
Starla tries to counteract the force field with her powers, but it proved useless, "There must be another way…"
The man tries tugging on the cord until he jerks it loose and disables the force field and the spell the pendant had on the viewers of the broadcast.
"I believe this is yours…" Starla hands the pendant over to the man, who then removes his hat to reveal his face, which showed him as a man in his late 30's with curly, unmanageable brown hair.
"You seem familiar."
"Call me Cupid…"
"Who?" Starla asked.
"I know your world's literature doesn't do me justice; I, for the life of me, can never understand why your kind made me wear a diaper in the books."
"I'm sorry, I'm not of this world and have no idea who you are or who Cupid is. But we can dispense with pleasantries later; my friends are in trouble down at the beach."
"You need a lift?"
"No thanks, I can manage." Starla turns into a light ball and flies off.
"I can see that…"
Back at the beach, Alex and Max wake up not remember where they were or even half of what happened.
"Why do I feel like I was hit with a sledgehammer to the melon several times?"
"I think it was because we were fighting. I don't really remember for what just yet, but I remember kicking your butt really well."
"You kicking my butt? Of that's priceless, I'd mop the floor with you from here 'til next Sunday."
"Keep dreaming, Alex…" putting their squabbling aside, they join Phoebe and Caitlin as they're getting their asses handed to them by Cameron. Max and Alex leap in and catch them both before they land on their backs in the sand.
"Even in the heat of battle, I manage to sweep you off your feet."
"Max? but… but how…?" before she could even figure it out, Starla appears and joins their side.
"I believe you have me to thank for that…"
Max and Alex set Caitlin and Phoebe back on their feet.
"But where's Willis?"
As if by magic, Willis comes flying at them through a puff a smoke and lands face first in the sand.
"Honestly, William Grant, you're just like every other guy; love'em and leave'em. I'll show you that this is one heart you can't break and apologize for like a kid breaking a lamp!" Christi said as she stepped through the cloud of smoke and joins Cameron's side.
"Hell hath no fury…" Alex said.
After a short battle, our heroes send Cameron and Christi running.
"Well there's another plan up in smoke."
"Well at least got one good thing out of this"
"And what's that?"
"The Star of Leo."
"What about the crew?"
"We'll have to fire them; can you promise me one thing?"
"What?"
"We never go into show business again, "Cameron said as she and Christi retreat.
On the day of the party, the music was pumping, the party was jumping. Everyone who attended danced, mingled, and had a good time while enjoying the assortment of entrees and desserts.
"So this is what you been up to all this time, eh Mr. Grant?"
"People always need sweets for a sweet day," Samuel replied as he basked in the glory of how the party was turning out. "So, you gonna go over there or what?"
"What are you talking about?"
"Oh c'mon, boys. You haven't taken your eyes of Phoebe and Starla since they got here; it's obvious you like them."
"Really?"
"Yeah, despite what you are, it's still written all over your faces. Now go have a good time."
Max and Willis casually walk across the dance floor towards the two, who were dancing alone to the fast paced music the DJ is playing.
Samuel makes his way towards the DJ as his sons go to Starla and Phoebe. He whispers in the guy's ear his song request.
"Alright, this next track is dedicated to all the lovely couples mixing it up on the dance floor tonight. He switches the original song with a slow paced love song for hot young couple to dance to.
Max and Willis pull Phoebe and Starla close and dance the day night away.

based off "there's no business like snow business" from power rangers zeo, and the movie "extreme ops", which is a snowboarding movie where they hotshot film guys or whatever are trying to make a commercial. i'll give you an IMDB page, maybe it can explain it better than i can.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0283160/


Samuel and the gang wander about the lodge looking at the various pictures of famous snowboarders and ski champions plastered on the walls as well as watch the video montage on the TV in the northwest corner of the ceiling.
"So Samuel's sponsoring a snowboarder?"
"One of the newcomers, actually; all of the greats have their own sponsors already," Alex explained.
Meanwhile at the bar, Samuel takes a sip of his drink the same time a beautiful dark-brown haired girl in her mid-20's takes a seat in the chair to his left. She takes a look at the menu and orders a drink called the "tropic fantasy orange".
Samuel sneakily looks over at her, so she doesn't notice him right away, but fails at that task as she answers back with a witty remark. He answers her back, but just as he was about to introduce himself, she interrupted.
"I know who you are, Mr. Grant."
"No need for formalities, miss. You can just call me Samuel and you are?"
"I'll give you a hint…" she holds her glass and wiggles it a bit. "That's the hint."
"Your name is Glass? Very… interesting name."
"Haha. Close, very close; it's Olive, actually. Olive Winters."
"Winters, huh? Well you certainly have the right last name for this type of climate."
"Uh-huh…" she finishes her drink, pays for it, and gets up from the bar.
"Yeh, because your name's Winters and it's snowy out."
"I pretty much got the joke, it's just I've heard it a lot."
Samuel pays for his drink and leaves it unfinished while he chases after some girl he hardly knows, "I got betters jokes if you'd like to take the time and listen to them…" he passes by Alex and Caitlin, who continue to wander around the place.
"It's a shame that Bradshaw, Max, Willis, Starla, and Phoebe aren't joining us."
"Lil miss rodeo champion is afraid to learn a new sport unless it involves dirt and the hot Texas sun beating down on her."
"Now that's not very nice, Caitlin," Alex replies.
"Well it's sorta true; on days off, all you see her do is either helping out in the garden or lounging around reading a good book."
"You let her live her life and we'll let you live yours."
Back at home, a completely bored-out-of-their-minds version of Phoebe and Starla sit on the couch watching movies on TV.
"I feel as though I should've gone with them when I had the chance."
"Not me, I like it right here," Phoebe answered.
"You, a retired rodeo champion, are afraid of a lil snow?"
"I'm not afraid of anything; I just don't see the attraction sliding down a mountain of snow; I'd rather learn windsurfing."
Bradshaw strolls in the front door with bags of groceries, "You two haven't left that spot since I first went out." Bradshaw said as he struggled to keep from dropping the bags.
"We can't help it if we're bored…"
"Well, how about you discuss your next adventure while helping me put these away?" He set the bags down next to them, "There's more out in the car." He said as he went back out. Several minutes after he came back in, "It's a beautiful sunny day out and you're both sitting around here, complaining of nothing to do?"
"That's because there isn't…"
"What about an arcade?"
"Wouldn't that be a lil embarrassing? Two young adults with a bunch of money playing in a place designed for children?"
"Well actually, Starla, loads of adults out there still do that sort of thing."
"Yeh and most of them with no lives, Phoebe," Starla explained.
"Well how about tennis with the guys or the tons of other sports there are?"
"I'm getting a little tired of sports; well, tired of playing them actually. What I want to do is watch a sports event."
"Maybe a Giant's game."
"That's great, but… how do we go about getting to New York?"
"Not the New York Giants, the San Francisco Giants."
"Wait, what about the groceries?" Bradshaw asked, but it was too late as Phoebe and Starla had exited the room.
Meanwhile onboard Ling Khan's ship in Earth's orbit
"Baseball, number one pastime of such an inferior race, don't you agree, Sapphira?"
"Exactly, father."
"I never really got baseball. You hit a ball clear across a field and run around a diamond shape in a complete circle. Seemed so boring to me."
"What do propose we do about that, father?"
"I've got the perfect monster in my army for such an occasion; why not unleash him on the masses?"
"Sounds great, shall I do the honors?"
"As you wish…" He hands his daughter the monster summoning device to call forth Double Dreader; he wore an all gray baseball uniform; only thing not gray was the mitt and the mask with yellow diagonal lines he used to cover his face. In his left hand, he carried an aluminum bat while in his right mitt, he held a baseball.
Back in Austria on top of the lift, Samuel and Olive ride to the top. Samuel is blathering on and on, unaware of that Olive is paying no attention to him whatsoever as she scouts the location around her with a pair of binoculars.
Finally, Samuel notices she's not even listening. Even though he was aware of this fact, he still felt the need to ask, "Hey, are you even listening?"
"Hanging on every word…" she answered sarcastically.
"Honestly, I don't even know why I got up here…"
"Me neither," she mumbled. She continued scouting as the weather began making everything less and less visible.
"Who are you looking for?"
"Just some friends of mine," she answered vaguely.
"Friend? What, you lost them or something?"
"No actually… they lost me." Through the layers and layers of fog, Olive finally casts eyes on the location she was looking for, a big old resort building out in the middle of what seems to be nowhere. She waits until she gets to level ground and jumps off the lift.
"Wait up, you just gonna leave me here?!" Samuel follows.
"Kinda the idea," she mumbled to herself as she kept going.
Back at the lodge, Caitlin and Alex spend most of their night on the couch in front of the fireplace, drinking their hot chocolate.
"This is boring…"
"You got any better ideas?" Alex asked Caitlin.
"We could go hit the slopes…" she suggested.
"You know I would… but I'm still not used to the cold yet."
"Oh c'mon…" she sighed. "What, you're afraid you'll get beat by a girl at snowboarding?"
"Me… get beat by a girl? No way."
"What well c'mon then…"
"Can we just finish the hot chocolate first?"
"We can heat it up once we get back." She drags Alex off the couch.
"A bit overeager, are we?"
After snowboarding towards the location, Samuel and Olive arrive at the resort in one piece.
"You say you're friends are here? This place doesn't look like it's been inhabitable for decades."
Olive tries ignoring him the best she can.
"I can barely see two feet in front of me, how about you?"
She continues ignoring him as she shines her flashlight around to try making her vision better.
"Can you at least talk to me?"
"Hmm… no…"
"Why not?"
"Cuz I'm used to being alone."
"Well tell me that straight up next time I follow you into unfamiliar territory; I don't take hints really well."
"You really should start; following strangers around could get you into the trouble, Grant. Ever hear that expression about curiosity and how it killed the cat?"
"Well this cat has nine lives, sweetheart."
She turned to him and shined the light in his eyes, "Don't call me sweetheart…" she hears a sound coming from the direction they're heading, "You hear that?" she asked.
"Hear what?"
She sighs, turns away from him and continues on her mission.
Out on the snow, Alex and Caitlin line up side-by-side as they stare down the slope.
"You ready for this?"
"One thing I learned from my life as a professional jewel thief is be prepared for anything. So yes… I'm ready." Alex responded.
They both begin their descent; Alex taking the lead for a short time as he performs various flips and tricks to show off. After passing him, Caitlin makes a sharp left with Alex not too far behind. They exchange positions as they make their descent.
To show off, Alex approaches a flat rock covered with snow and uses it to get serious airtime as he pulls of insane tricks you'd only see in the X-games or a snowboarding video game. They come up on a tunnel and spiral through it until coming up on a snowy barrier at the end. Using her laser vision, Caitlin melts the snow, giving her and Alex a clear path.
Caitlin shoots through first like a cannonball and so did Alex; reaching the ground below them, they maneuver through it normally until coming up on the tree line; as they zigzag through, they take turns jumping over the other as they approach some of the slopes.
"Still with me back there?" Caitlin asked.
Alex smirked as he tried to keep up. He looks to one of the branches above and hatches a plan to get back in the lead; he changes into a gorilla, leaps off one of the mounds of snow and ice and onto that branch, swings around and leaps out ahead of Caitlin.
"No fair!!" she shouts from dead last.
Meanwhile, at the Giants' stadium in San Francisco, Starla and Phoebe make it to their seats just as everyone sung the national anthem. After that, the 1st inning began.
"First time I've been to one of these," Starla said to Phoebe over the roar of the crowd.
After a couple of runs, the third batter hit the ball high towards center field where as soon as the center-fielder got to where it looked as if it were going to land, a red beam of light hits him and suddenly two baseballs landed where he stood.
The crowd as well as Phoebe was shocked.
"Is this part of the game?"
"If it is, it's a first for me too." Phoebe answered.
The baseball that landed after the first one turned into Ling Khan's monster and started terrorizing the other players; the people in the bleachers ran for their lives as they saw the beast take form.
"This has Ling Khan written all over it."
"Oh, what lead you to that idea besides the swarm of Konglatons joining the thing?" Phoebe said sarcastically.
Starla takes Phoebe by the hand and they both turn into light; Starla then shoots down the field as the speed of light, they turn back into human form and take care of the problem. They face the Konglatons first while the monster just stood back and watched.
Phoebe slid under one of them with her sidearm in hand and fires a couple shot into its crotch area before standing up behind it. A second Konglaton attacks from her right; she throws a right back-fist. The beast grabs her wrist. Phoebe tries fighting it off, but it manages to toss her clear across to third base.
Starla hits one of the minions with a low left kick to the waist. The Konglaton absorbs the blow and throws a backhand, but Starla ducks just in time and then performs a back flip kick to the chin.
The baseball monster, double dreader winds up and pitches a fast ball at Starla, who cartwheels out of the way and allows one of the Konglatons coming up behind her to take the hit.
The monster takes aim at Phoebe and Starla shoots over to her as a ball of white light and tackles her out of the way.
"Thanks," Phoebe answered, taking Starla's hand.
The monster throws another pitch, but Starla manages to notice it; Max comes out of nowhere with the assistances of his brother and with his weapon attached to his right arm, he bats it to the ground beside him.
"Just in time…" Phoebe replied.
"Bradshaw contacted us and we got here as quickly as we could," Willis explained.
"Look out!" Starla warned Willis as the monster winded up for another pitch; Willis looked up and Starla rushed to his side. As she jumped in front of him, she took the hit and turned into a baseball.
Willis picked the ball up, "Starla…" he cried just before looking up at the monster angrily. "That does it…" Willis tosses the ball to Max, summons his Elephant axe and holds it like a baseball bat. The monster throws a pitch and Willis managed to hit it back and knock the beast for a loop.
The monster coughed as he got to his feet and brushed himself off.
"That all you got?"
"Oh I'm just warming up, ranger…" he spits on the ball before throwing a curve ball.
Willis takes a swing; the ball drops at his feet and knocks him and the others off their feet with a powerful blast.
Phoebe jumps up, summons her weapon and races at the beast, who then throws a flurry of baseballs her way. Phoebe bats them all away as she approaches. Once close enough, she slashes at him with a bombardment of strikes, which Double Dreader dodged gracefully before striking her in the stomach with his bat, circling around and sweeping her onto her back.
Willis converts his weapon to cannon mode and fires a powerful beam, which knocks the monster off his feet.
After several more minutes, the monster summons more Konglatons and gets the best of our heroes before taking off.
Checking back with Samuel and Olive, we find them inside one of the structures the abandoned mountain resort.
"Okay, this place is starting to give me the creeps…" Samuel whispered.
"Ooh… the great Samuel Grant is actually afraid of something after all…"
"I am not afraid, okay?"
"What's that over there?"
"Where?" Samuel looks around cautiously.
"See? You're afraid." She pauses as she sees something moving in the shadows up ahead.
"Now where are you going?" Samuel whispered.
Olive ignored him and took off.
"If you're trying to scare me, it's not gonna work twice?" he whispered. He hears a scuffle taking place up ahead and moves in to investigate. As soon as he gets close, he sees Olive with a guy pinned and a silenced handgun at the back of his head.
"What the heck are you doing…?"
Olive aims her gun at Samuel now while keeping the man pinned down with one knee.
Samuel pulls out his gun, "Easy there Calamity Jane, I just want to know what's going on here. First, it's the silent treatment on the way up here and now we're in somewhat of a Mexican standoff."
"Less you know the better, Samuel. Now lower your weapon."
The guy underneath her says something in Russian.
"Shut up," she mutters loud enough for only him and Samuel to hear as she points her gun back at his head. "Where is he?" she spoke back in Russian to the guy.
"Where's who? Tell me something, Olive; if that's your real name…"
Unknown to Samuel, a guy sneaks up from behind; Olive quickly points her gun and takes him out; at the same time, Samuel reacts quickly and takes aim, but Olive quickly moves out of the way and the guy receives a shot to the hip. His scream alerts the others.
"Now look what you've done…"
"Me? You're the one taking shots at me."
"I was trying to get the guy behind you, take a look for yourself."
"Well maybe you could've told me."
A couple of enemy mercenaries converge on Samuel and Olive's location; one of them shouts something in Russian to alert the others. Seconds after the warning, a long drawn out gunfights ensues, which alerts the boss in another part of the structure.
"I should've knocked you out and left you for dead out there in snow; you've been nothing but trouble since I met you, I could feel it."
"Can we concentrate on trying to stay alive, please?!"
The more men they killed, a couple more took their places. Soon, the duo finds they're outnumbered.
It didn't take long for the enemy to capture them and bring them to the boss for interrogation.
"I'm gonna be honest with you, I think of you as a plague."
"Me?" Samuel asked.
"iIf you hadn't shot him, he wouldn't have alerted the others and we wouldn't be in this mess…"
"Well you started it. You gave me a scare by shooting the guy behind me; I thought you were gonna kill me."
"As of right now, it doesn't sound like a bad idea…"
The leader walks in the room and tells them to be quiet.
Back at the mansion, Willis pounds his fist into the kitchen counter. He was angry at himself for what had happened, "I can't believe I let him get away, I'm so STUPID!" he paces back and forth smacking himself in the forehead. "And I got Starla turned into a baseball."
"Stop beating yourself up, it wasn't your fault."
"Oh really, Phoebe? I was right there. He was aiming for me." He picks up the baseball that was Starla, "If you can hear me, I'm so sorry."
Max yanks the ball away, "Don't be so hard on yourself; It could've happened to any one of us."
"Yes, but it didn't. It happened to Starla and it was all because of me." Willis takes the ball back from his brother and leaves the room.
"Where you going?" Max asked.
"I need to be alone."
Back at the resort Samuel and the others were staying at, Alex and Caitlin return from snowboarding and find Samuel hasn't come back yet. Thinking he was out for a late night session, the two head off to their rooms for some relaxation.
Meanwhile, Back to Samuel and Olive, who were still tied to the chair…
"So… I know you're CIA… but who are you?" the boss directs his question towards Samuel after looking at Olive.
"I'm Samuel Grant… wait… wait, you're CIA?" he looked back at Olive in shock and silent awe.
She said nothing.
"Well, glad I didn't ask you what your day-job was, otherwise I would've known right away." He looks up at the bad guy, "I have a knack for figuring these types of things out…"
The leader knocks him out.
"Thanks; if you hadn't done it, I would have at some point."
The bad guy signals the guy in front Olive to knock her out.
They awake half an hour later locked inside an office of some kind.
"Where are we?"
"In another fine mess that you've gotten us into with your big mouth…"
Samuel goes for the door, but Olive stopped him, "Not gonna work; they've got eyes on us." She points out the security camera.
"Wait, it doesn't have a microphone on it, which means they can't hear us."
"Yeh, so what's your point?"
"You'll find out soon enough; I learned this trick from an old movie." He moves over to the corner underneath the camera and pulls out a digital camera. "C'mon over here."
"I sure hope you know what you're doing…" she moves over next to him.
"We catch enough footage of us walking around in a circle, loop it, and let it play while we make our escape."
"I forgot to mention they've got a guard outside waiting…"
"I wasn't counting on just waltzing out the front door." He pointed to the vent above them.
"About time you started working your brain more than you work your mouth."
"Not sure if that's a compliment or not, but thanks."
"What do you need me to do?"
"All I need is your necklace to hold the camera in place; you just sit at the table looking bored while I pace back and forth looking worried." He places the camera right below the security camera and continues with the rest of his plan for a couple of minutes to get enough footage and then circles back around to the camera. From there, he quickly hugs the wall closely removes his digital camera, quickly unplugs the security camera in order to put his camera in front of the lens. After securing his camera in front, he plugs the feed back into the security cam. "Alright, let's get to work; we only got a couple minutes worth." Samuel takes out his pocket knife and unscrews the vent on the ceiling, "Catch this," he whispers to Olive. Samuel then climbs up, turns around and gives Olive a lift up.
As they venture through the ventilation, the voices of the bad guys echo throughout. All what they were saying was in Russian, so Olive had to translate.
"What are they saying?" Samuel whispered.
Olive didn't answer; she was still trying to translate.
"If these could find me, who's to say no one else can't?"
"What are you suggesting, General?"
"Set the charges and blow this place right off the mountain; when you're done, meet me at the evac chopper."
"Well?" Samuel whispered again.
After coming up on the heating vent for the room the soldiers were just in, she waits until all of them have left before she jumps down.
"You gonna tell me what the hell's going on now or am I gonna have to guess?"
"Change of plans, we need to intercept them at the helipad; they're gonna blow this place sky high."
"Serious?"
"Yes."
"Well, which way's the helipad?"
"I remember seeing one when we came in with a helicopter on standby. Obviously, that's gotta be the one."
"Assuming they're not gonna roll out the red carpet for us, what do we do then?"
She hand Samuel and gun, but he doesn't accept it; he flashes his own custom gun that he also gave to his team.
"Compared to yours, this has a much large ammo capacity. When this is over, I'll issue a few thousand to the CIA if they'll let me…" he offers the one he's holding the Olive. "Go ahead, I got another right here. I have a thing for dual weapons in a combat situation."
After fighting their way through an onslaught of enemy soldiers, they meet the General at the helipad and greet him with small arms fire.
The General's men fire back and force the two to take cover.
"Not to be a downer, but… while he's getting away, we're stuck here on a ticking time bomb playing team death match with a bunch of Expendables."
"Well, unless you've got a rocket launcher of some kind, we're s**t outta luck!"
Just then it hit him like a rock to the back of the head. He summons the W.A.S.P. stinger, "Cover me, I'm about to do something dangerous." He pops out from behind cover, races past all the gunfire, takes his aim at the chopper, and fires; in an instant, the helicopter starts spinning out of control, spiraling back down towards the helipad.
Samuel rushes in, grabs Olive and drags her towards the edge of the pad where a bunch of snowmobiles were. As they took off, the chopper hit the ground same time the explosive charges went off, causing an avalanche to chase the duo down.
"Next time, I think you should lead with that cannon thing you just pulled outta nowhere like that…"
"It's called a W.A.S.P. stinger, and it takes time to charge up before each use." Samuel answered back over the roar of the avalanche.
"Oh."
Back at the mansion
"Hey, Phoebe, come take a look at this…" Max said.
"What?"
"Out of nowhere, I got a strong reading coming from somewhere in the mountains of Austria."
"Isn't that where the others are?"
"Yeh…"
"Shall I contact the others in that area?" MEGAN asked.
"Make it so…" Max answered.
MEGAN dials Alex's cellphone, but doesn't get a response, so she dials Caitlin's; still no response.
"Try the telephone for the resort." Phoebe suggested.
The receptionist at the front desk answers the phone.
"Hi, I'm calling for Samuel Grant's room, please."
"I'll put you through, sir, may I ask who's calling?"
"Maxwell Grant. He'll know me as Max."
"Max? Do you have any idea what time it is?"
"Alex, listen. Is my Dad there?"
"He hasn't come back yet; we assumed he'd still be out on the slopes with his new girlfriend."
"Well, when he gets back, let him know something's shown up on radar not too far from you."
"Will do, now can you let me catch what little sleep I can, please? Caitlin kicked my butt on the slopes earlier on tonight."
"I can't believe you got beat by a girl; my aunt, no less…"
"Hey, make jokes all you want, but you won't be laughing if you were in my shoes…"
"Okay, good night, Alex. Don't forget the message."
"Yeh, whatever…"
"Who was?" Caitlin asked.
"Max with a message for his dad. They received a massive energy signature on their sensors back at home."
"Well, instead of waiting for Samuel, maybe we oughta check it out ourselves."
"You do what you want; I'm still wiped out from the a** kicking you gave me on the slopes."
"Oh c'mon, lazybones…" She literally drags Alex outta bed.
Back at the mansion
"Looks like our star player's back on the field…"
"I'll go get Willis and meet you down there…" Phoebe replied.
"Okay…" Max takes off.
Double Dreader was seen terrorizing a little league softball game when Max came to the rescue several minutes later.
Max sees one of the kids is in trouble and slides in to the rescue like a player heading for home base; he summons his pill bug armor and with it on his left arm, he blocks Double Dreader's attack before picking the kid up and rushing him out of the way.
Moments later, Double Dreader is knocked off his feet by an invisible force, which was later revealed to be Phoebe.
"About time; where's Willis?"
"I dunno…"
After a couple minutes of fighting the monster by themselves, Willis later joins the others carrying a green baseball bat. He calls out and gets the monster's attention. He and Double Dreader look at each other with fire in their eyes as they both got ready; Double Dreader winds up for a pitch while Willis readies his bat.
Double Dreader throws his famous fireball and Willis bats it back at full speed, knocking Double Dreader off his feet and causing him to burst into flames.
Willis regroups with the others only to find Double Dreader was not finished yet; they call upon the W.A.S.P. stinger and finish him off with one final shot.
Back at the house, Starla changes from the baseball sitting on the dining room table back into her old self.
Later back in Austria, the sun started to rise as Caitlin and Alex go out for an early morning snowboarding session. After a while of being on the slopes, they encounter Samuel and Olive, whom Samuel eventually found was actually named Elizabeth, Elizabeth Chambers.
"Samuel, glad we found you…"
"Who's this, some unrequited love victim of the great Samuel Grant?" Elizabeth commented.
"Her? Dude, I'm like twice her age; she's my kid sister and my sons' aunt."
"Speaking of which, your sons called; they've picked up a massive energy signature."
"It just showed up?"
"According to them, I guess so."
"And I suppose every evil force on this planet would be looking for it…?" Elizabeth deduced.
"Yes, how do you know?"
"1. Samuel debriefed me, and 2. I think those are some of them…" she points to the mass quantity of Glacieroids surrounding them from all sides.
To be Continued…