- Sdrawkcab Eman
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Thanks, everyone! I'm sorry that I didn't get this chapter finished as soon as I said I would, but I had something important to do. But anyway, here it is!
****Chapter 12: This Seems Expensive****
The duplicate of Pel just stood there, staring back at us. Suddenly, the second Pel turned and bolted away from us.
"Get him!" Pel commanded. We chased the duplicate of Pel down the hallway. We were starting to catch up to the twin. Pel jumped forward with his arms outstretched, trying to catch him. Pel reached his clone, and grabbed him, but his arms passed straight through his double's legs. I kept running.
The duplicate of Pel turned around, and saw that I was still chasing him. He shot his plasma rifle at a corner of the ceiling, and I heard crackling and clanging noises. The Pel duplicate suddenly disappeared. Dust started to fall from the ceiling, and it cracked. I looked up in horror, and the ceiling started to collapse. I turned around, and ran in the other direction, trying to escape the crumbling purple ceiling. The ceiling around that spot that the duplicate of Pel shot fell in a cloud of dust and debris. A piece of it bounced off of the floor and flew toward me, and I dove onto the ground to avoid it.
"You okay?" Pel asked. I heard his footsteps approaching me.
I slowly climbed back onto my feet. "Yeah," I replied. I suddenly noticed that my hand felt empty. I looked at it, and found that my plasma rifle was gone. I frantically looked around the hallway, trying to find it. I couldn't.
"What?" Pel asked, quickly. "What is it?"
"My plasma rifle is gone." I said.
"I dropped mine," Pel started, "when I tried to tackle-". I looked up at Pel. He looked shocked, and he was staring at a point on the hallway's floor. "It's gone!"
I thought I heard a faint noise over the echo of Pel's voice. "Quiet!" I whispered. I heard the sound of two elites' footsteps running in our direction. I looked around the hallway, and the other direction was completely blocked by the cave in. We needed to hide, now! I saw an opening in the bottom of the pile of rubble from the collapsed ceiling. It looked like it was just big enough for two grunts to hide in without being seen from the hallway.
I ran over to it. I got down onto my hands and knees and crawled backward into the opening. I signalled with my hand for Pel to get over here. He ran over and crawled into the crevice. I leaned out of the opening and pulled a hunk of the broken ceiling in front of it, so that we couldn't be seen from the outside. There was a small crack that I could watch the hallway through.
The two elites appeared from around the corner at the end of the hallway. They were both holding a plasma rifle. They paused for a moment at the sight of the cave in, then ran towards the site. I could only see their legs now.
"How did this happen?" one of the elites asked. "Do you think it was them?"
They knew what we had done. My feeling of nervousness had just doubled. They'd find us in here.
"The humans?" the other elite asked. "Who else would it be?"
"The demon probably did this," the first elite suggested. "Why can't we stop him?"
"We've sent thousands of troops at him already!" the second elite half yelled. "We had to bring more of them to this destroyed ship just to fight them off!"
"The humans aren't here!" A third elite's voice echoed through the hallway. The first two elites stepped to either side, revealing the third elite at the end of the hallway. He was wearing white, unlike the other two. He wasn't carrying a plasma rifle, either. He was holding some sort of glowing, blue blade. He paused for a moment. "Did you find anyone?"
"No," the first elite responded, simply.
"Well come on, then!" the elite wearing white instructed.
"Coming," the first two said in unison. They slowly turned around. We were safe, for now anyway.
One of the elite's feet hit the piece of the broken ceiling as he turned around. It started to wobble. I held my breath, and tried to grab onto the piece of debris. I couldn't reach it in time. The slab of the broken ceiling fell over, resulting in a loud thud. The elites whirled around, startled, and saw Pel and I hiding in the crevice.
"Grunts!" one of the elites yelled.
I looked around for any possible way to escape from the elites. They were blocking one end of the hallway, and the debris was blocking the other. There was no way out.
"They're probably part of the squad that the heretics killed," the elite wearing white supposed. "Humans, on the ship," the elite scoffed. The other two elites looked embarrassed, and they slumped over. "Follow us!" the elite yelled, seriously.
I climbed out of the crevice, with Pel following. I walked cautiously over to the elites. The elite wearing white turned, and walked toward the end of the hallway. The other two elites, Pel, and I followed him.
"There's another squad that you'll fit in with well," the elite wearing white started to say while we walked through the hallway. "Two of them were killed in a plasma grenade accident. One of the grunts dropped a lit grenade on his foot, and another one tried to grab it and throw it away."
"Needless to say, that didn't work," one of the blue elites laughed. It seemed more like they were chatting among themselves than paying us any attention. "What happened to the rest of your squad, anyway?"
My mind panicked. "Um..." I stammered, as I tried to think of something to say. "The -" Then I remembered what had happened to Melip. "Elite and grunts come in," I paused, and studied the elites faces to make sure they didn't notice that I was just faking being stupid. "They wear something else. Say they want us die. They kill good grunts. Me run from bad elite and grunts."
"Me run, too," Pel added. I looked over to him, and he was trying not to laugh.
The elite wearing white nodded. "That makes sense." He turned to the other elites. "They've had their implants. We can just send them to their training session." The other elites nodded in agreement.
Eventually, we came to another door in the hallway. I could hear grunts yelling and plasma weapons firing on the other side of it. The door was lit in red, and the elite wearing white walked up to it. After a couple of seconds, the lights on the door switched to green, and it slid open. The elite ducked, and a ball of green light zoomed over his head. "In there! GO!" he yelled.
I carefully walked over to the door, and peered around the corner, then walked in. The room was extremely large. It was dimly lit, and there was long grass covering the floor with trees everywhere. I couldn't see the room's other walls through the leaves. The floor even sloped down towards the other side and there were rocks of all different sizes scattered around the room. I walked away from the door, and stopped. Pel stood beside me, and the door closed behind us.
Four grunts emerged from behind a cluster of trees. They were holding something that looked like a plasma rifle, but it was smaller and glowed green instead of blue. They were all wearing some sort of metal, similar to what the elites wore. Theirs was all yellow.
"There!" a grunt yelled. He ran out from behind an enormous rock, along with five other grunts. They were all wearing red. They were all holding the same weapons as the yellow grunts. Both groups of grunts aimed at each other, and they started to fire. These weapons shot green bolts of plasma, and they illuminated the room slightly with each shot. The grunts were ducking behind rocks and trees for cover.
One of the grunts on the yellow team was hit by one of the green orbs. A red light lit up from the back of his air tank. "Aw! You killed me!" he yelled. He quickly ran off to the side, around another cluster of tree's and out of my view.
"What's going on here?" Pel asked.
"Probably combat training," I answered. I couldn't think of anything else that this could be. Maybe a game, but I didn't think the elites would let any grunt play a game that involves any work on their part.
A loud buzzer echoed through the room. The plasma weapons stopped firing. The grunts were still trying to shoot, but they wouldn't work. The room lit up, and the equipment that the grunts were wearing slowly turned to an yellow-orange colour. More grunts emerged from the farther reaches of this forest room, and all of them were wearing yellow. I counted a total of twenty-six of them.
Four elites walked into sight. "It seems like you're starting to get a hang of the plasma pistols," one of them said. "After a few more rounds we'll bring out the big guns."
"But they're all fake!" one of the grunts piped up.
"QUIET!" one of the elites yelled. The grunt cowardly shrunk into a small space in between a tree and a rock.
"But first, my squad has two new additions to replace... Well, to deal with the aftermath of the boom from a while back," one of the other elites said. The three other elites gave out a stifled laugh. "Squad leader, get those grunts some armour and a weapon!"
One of the grunts, apparently the squad leader, proceeded over to me. After he got closer, I recognized him immediately. It was Atay!