Neko Fugitive 2[unedited]

Chapter 7: Seperating Forces (Part 2)

"Now what do we do!?" Pyro had to yell over the gunfire.
"We do what we came here for!" Getch said. As if he was simply thinking of what he wanted it to do, the glove shoot out a metal bar up his leg, carefully placing a small red target reticle a few centimeters over his eye. Getch shot a single bullet right out of his paw to one side of the wall, which exploded into a large cloud of smoke and was quickly drowned with enemy gunfire. Fortunately, the cats jumped out at the other end of the wall. Getch shot multiple bullets at the soldiers with great accuracy, hitting one in the head and another in the arm and heart before the rest could even react. They were quickly replaced by more soldiers from the interecting hall. Pyro and Trent fell back behind the wall after realizing that their powers were futile in a distanced fight, and Getch soon rejoined them as more and more soldiers joined the downhill battle "D***! How many sentients can they have!?"
-----
"Are you sure this will work?" Flash asked with concern.
"Sure, I see it all the time in movies. If I wear an enemy uniform where you can't see my face, then they'll think I'm one of them and I can sneak in" Meryll said, pulling on the full combat suit over the suit Getch gave her "And thanks to Flash, the uniform is still intact, so no-one should notice".
"Okay..." Flash said with some doubt "But then what about us?"
Meryll smiled "How 'bout another earthling pop culture trick?". Meryll stepped out of the room, right into plain sight, donning the uncomfortable, used, oversized disguise and holding the kittens right out in front of her as they pretended to sleep. The hallways were mostly empty, the genetic soldiers passing by every once in awhile were either too busy to ask about the kittens, or didn't care, assuming they were captured by the disguised Meryll.
"Hey! What are you doing!?" A guard with a gruff voice asked, approaching her.
Though Meryll's voice was a pretty high tone, she managed to clear her throat and sound somewhat like a guy "Uhh, I captured these two in the, umm, storeroom... uhh, I'm new, where do we keep the Nekos?"
"Well, we're supposed to seperate them, but all of the holding rooms are full, so just put them in with Project Saight, right down the hall, third door on your right, then..." the guard took a minute to explain a long series of directions, leading deep into the building. Half way through the directions, Meryll started to realize that she could never remember everything he said by the time he finished. "Got that? Go on before they wake up, these little guys are dangerous" He started walking past her without another word.
a few seconds after he was out of earshot, Meryll said "can you repeat that first part... and the rest after it..." she was pretending to still be talking to the guard now.
Geno whispered up to her, still faking unconciousness "He said to go down the hall to the third door on the-"
"Wait, you remembered that whole thing?" Meryll asked in surprise
"Yeah, I've always had pretty good memory." Geno said "Now it's the third door on the right down this hall."
"Okay, if you say so" Meryll said. They started going down the halls, following Geno's directions, and surprisingly, he remembered every step that the man told them. They swung open the last door and looked into the pure white room, in the center, sure enough, there was another kitten in the middle of a large glass cylinder.
It looked like it was asleep, but it's eyes quickly snapped open and it smiled at them "Hello, that was a good idea Meryll." The others just stared at him.
-----
"Now what!?" Trent was freaking out from fear "Maybe Meryll had the right idea here." Getch didn't respond, he didn't like admitting he was wrong.
"Now isn't the time to blame someone!" Pyro tried to come up with an idea "We have to do something..."
"I have a plan, I'm just waiting for the right time." Getch said with an air of certainty.
"The right time!?" Trent panicked again "This wall is falling apart! We can't have a plan when we're dead!"
"Just wait, you'll see..." Getch added patiently
-----
"How do you know my name?" Meryll asked curiously
"Easy, I'm omniscient." the cat said proudly "I'm Project Saight, I can project myself from my body to witness anything, anywhere."
"Wow, that must be fun." Flash said.
"Nah, not really, no-one can see me and I can't interact with anything while I'm out there, can you open this thing, I really prefer walking around." Saight pleaded.
"Yeah, sure thing." The group looked at the controls of the cylinder, soon Meryll pressed a button that raised the glass up. The kitten hit the floor and collapsed for a second, as he stretched out, the group heard his bones crack loudly.
"Ow..." He grunted "Wow, I haven't been back in my body for weeks."
"How did you live for weeks without food!?" asked a surprised Geno, wondering if Saight was telling the truth.
"My body goes into stasis without my conciousness, in short, my body is left in near-death comatose until I come back, so I don't need much food at all when I'm away." Saight said quickly, he then looked at everyone's confused face "Sorry, they used something on us here, it makes our minds stronger, we're really smart."
"More experiments..." Meryll said with scorn.
"Y'know I've been following you guys for awhile now," Saight said, deciding to change the subject so Meryll wouldn't get angry "Sorry about what you're going through Meryll."
"Eh, I'm taking it pretty well, kinda blew up on Getch when we first met when I had full control of my body." Meryll said "Kinda forgot I was attacking a cat for a minute, it was a little unfair..."
"You don't have to re-word it for me, you beat the crap out of him!" Saight laughed.
"Alright, well we have to go get the fighters in the group, so let's go!" Geno said impatiently.
"Not so fast, we need to save my sister, Ghost!" Saight said before the group started moving "She survived the transformation too!"
"Ghost? Why does this facility have so many of you?" Meryll asked
"This is the paranormal GeM research facility, which is why they make us smarter..." he added "we've been specifically designed with psychic abilities," Saight almost sounded proud of it "so they put us all into one area to compare research."
"Really? How many of you are there?" Meryll asked.
"There's three or four of us, not counting me." Saight said, unsure of it exactly "Never spent much time here to find out, it's boring in these buildings."
"Okay, so where's Ghost?" Flash asked.
-----
The gunfire halted just as fast as it had started, a small tattered white flag with a few wayward bullet holes in it wove above the nearly obliterated concrete wall, Soon afterwards flew out Getch's only weapon, the bioware glove, landing right in front of the group of soldiers. They started to move forward from the narrow hall, guns pointed toward the wall, ready to fire if they tried something. The glove flashed a few times and the hall was filled with the shrapnel of the self-destructing weapon and the walls and floors, bodies flew everywhere, the expressionless faces of the altered soldiers filled the halls with a huge gory mess. As the smoke cleared, the cats walked out from behind the wall cautiously and Getch said calmly "Told you I had a plan."

Chapter 8: Seperating Forces (Part 3)

"Can you tell us where your sister is?" Meryll asked Saight. They were walking down the hall aimlessly for a minute now. There were no guards around anymore, so Meryll had ditched the disguise, and was letting the kittens walk for themselves (except for Saight, who was still weak from being away from his body so long).
"Yeah, we're going the right way, I'll tell you if you take a wrong turn..." Saight let out a yawn, stretching out across Meryll's arms"Umm, I think it was a left here". They turned into a door, leading down another hallway, and another, and another, until Saight finally realized something "I'm lost".
"What!?" Flash complained "You can see anything, yet you're lost!?".
"Hang on, I'll look around" Saight sighed, then just collapsed in Meryll's arms.
"Geno..." Meryll started to ask, laying Saight's limp body down, sitting down next to it "You've known Getch longer than I have, why is he like that? He just wants to kill everything here, I only want to help you guys".
Geno paused to think if he should say what he was about to "Once, Getch told me he had lived as a sentient most of his life" Geno said "He was the oldest person to ever survive being turned into a neko..."Geno stopped for a minute to arrange the words in his head "His wife and children weren't so lucky"
"Getch had a family..." Meryll said in disbelief "He doesn't seem like a parent..."
"He doesn't care anything about himself, he doesn't even care that he became what he is." Geno said "He only wants to fight to make sure more people don't get hurt like him."
Saight suddenly burst awake "Umm, You guys are here to save us all, right? Because I found one closer to us..."
"Okay," Meryll said, she was still curious about Getch though and decided to try to talk to Saight about it "So, you were following us since I came with Getch?"
"Who, me?" Saight asked "Yeah, what about it?"
"What do you know about Getch?" she asked curiously, picking Saight back up.
"Not much more than you do, why?" They started to walk out, led by Saight.
"I dunno, he just seems so mysterious, it's hard to figure him out"
"You got that right," Saight laughed "I still haven't figured why he ever kept you... I mean you're good to have around and all, and everyone likes you, but he honestly could have just left you at home and let the government take you. So why did he save you?"
Saight and Geno looked at eachother for a few seconds, then started chanting "Getch likes Meryll!"
"Hey!" Meryll protested "We're not even the same species! What are you talking about!?" but the two kept chanting it and laughing right down the hall.
"Hey, whatever happened to being stealthy?" Meryll stopped and turned to see exactly what she had feared, Getch was walking down the hall toward them! The chanting had stopped at his appearance, but Pyro took the liberty of joining in, starting the whole thing over again.
"Umm, Getch, hello." Meryll laughed nervously.
"What's wrong Meryll?" he whispered to her, away from the taunting children "You can't honestly say you didn't expect this. I mean, I brought a person of the same age and opposite sex onto a small spaceship, they were bound to expect something."
"I guess you're right" she was just happy that Getch wasn't mad "Hey wait, you're my age?"
"Late teens, early twenties, close enough, why?"
"Well, I just always thought you were older, you even had a family, Geno told me"
Getch sighed "Yeah, that... well, our race know our mates earlier than on your planet" he was suddenly less cheerful at the mention of his family
"I'm sorry..." Meryll apologized "You probably didn't want to remember that"
"It's nothing, so you found one of them?" Getch tried to change the subject
"Yeah, that's Saight" she said "He told us he's 'omniscient'"
"Omniscient? Big word for a kid" he smiled again "So we have a neko that can see anything now? That could be useful next time we sneak in"
"Sneak in? What happened to 'run in and kill everyone'?"
"Maybe it's a little dangerous for the kids" Getch admitted "Maybe... we shouldn't split up the team anymore"
"You just have to be right don't you?" Meryll laughed
Saight approached Getch, Meryll, and Flash, who hadn't joined in on the chant, and said, still laughing a little "Hey, this door leads to the next neko, let's go!". The cheerful group of cats and Meryll followed Saight the rest of the way to the holding room. A slow clambering pile of armor soon came into the hall, following the group relaxedly.

Chapter 9: Dimensional Error

"Where am I?" Meryll asked, rubbing her head and standing up. Looking around, there were a long series of black staircases, doors, and geographically impossible platforms, all surrounded by some giant swirling darkness. "What happened? Wasn't I just in the holding room?" she asked herself.
"Oh no!" a child's voice said from above, a different Neko jumped right down in front of her, it was pure black with white undertone, it's eyes were a deep purple that would make anyone think she had had them altered when she became this way. "I'm so sorry! I thought you were one of the guards!"
"Who are you?" Meryll asked in a hurry "What is this place?"
"I'm Gaze, and this is your subconcious description of your own mind..."
'Are all the Nekos here really this smart?' she thought "What do you mean?"
"I can trap people in their own minds so I can control their body" Gaze said, Meryll blinked in confusion "I hypnotized you" she simplified it.
"What!? Why!?" Meryll asked loudly.
"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to!" she continued to apologize "You just... surprised me."
"Oh..." Meryll said "Well, can I have control back then?"
"That's why I'm apologizing!" she explained "I kind of... don't know how"
"What!?" Meryll shouted "So, I'm stuck here!?"
"Don't panic, it just wears off eventually" Gaze desperately tried to comfort her.
"Oh... okay... I understand... this isn't the first time I was attacked by you guys, y'know." She reached behind her head nervously, remembering the electric shock Flash had given her when they met.
"So... what are you doing here if you aren't a guard? You aren't going to do more to me are you?" She asked fearfully "And don't lie, I'm in your mind, I can tell!"
"No!" Meryll said defensively "Ironically, we're here to save you!"
"Wait, we? Those others were with you?" Gaze asked, Meryll nodded in response "Oops..." she started to jump away into the distance.
"Hey! Wait!" Meryll called after her, a little too late for the child to hear her. She sighed, looking over at a door with 'Memories' scratched into a metal plate with great care for detail "So these are my thoughts, then?" she asked herself, stepping over to look.
-----
"Hmm..." Getch hummed, he was looking into a single door in the middle of the beach he was so familiar with. Inside, there were rows and rows of screens showing things that he had only imagined "I'm somewhat curious now." he said.
Gaze came panting up onto the beach "Jeez, travelling between minds is tough!" she walked up to Getch, who had by this time turned to watch.
"Who are you?" he asked "Where am I?"
"Why is that the popular question today?" she asked rhetorically "Evidently, I'm the one you were trying to help..." she paused "and I accidentally hypnotized you and your friends, I'm sorry!" she added a quick apology to the end.
Getch stared at her blankly for a few seconds "You're kidding, right? how the h*** do you 'accidentally' hypnotize someone?" he asked more of curiousity than out of anger.
"I'm sorry, I panicked," Gaze said sheepishly "they usually come in wearing protection from me, I just thought you were military staff and just forgot, and it was my chance to get out..." she said quickly.
"Don't apologize, happens a lot, it's normal" Getch said "Just it's usually more of a physical attack than this... and can I get back to conciousness again any time soon?"
"'Fraid not." Gaze said sadly "You're going to be out for ten, fifteen minutes tops after I break the link, which I did about three minutes ago."
"Well this is just perfect," Getch said "what do I do until then?"
"Well, I have to put your regular conciousness somewhere when I put you under. You're 'standing' deep in your own subconcious" she then suggested "You might want to learn more about yourself..." she sighed "Meanwhile, I have five other kittens to explain what's going on to..."
"You might want to start with Flash, the white-furred girl." Getch said "She's easy to scare, don't want her to be too freaked out"
"umm, sure..." Gaze said, starting to walk away, still thinking Getch should have been more surprised about the whole thing. He turned away from the scene to look at a door ornately labelled "Emotion".
"What's this?" he clawed his way up the large wooden door, jumping onto the doorknob, sliding to his side to click it open.
-----
Meryll was doing the same in her own head, staring at the large wooden portal with intracately detailed words over it. She cracked her knuckles a few times, almost scared of what she would see in this room. She quickly grasped the knob and swung it open hard. Inside there was nothing but a sliver of light shining at the end of a black corridor. In a second, Getch stepped through the other side of the doorway. "Getch?" she asked in surprise.
"Meryll?" he responded in a similar tone. "What are you doing in my mind?" they both said at the same time. Meryll walked into the room first, making it over to Getch's door, as he watched, Meryll looked in his door to see the beach, she then opened it all the way and started to walk in. "Hey!" Getch protested "What are you doing!?"
"Your's looks better." Meryll smiled, confusing Getch beyond words, so he simply followed her back in.
She watched a few of the monitors for a minute. "Meryll, I don't mind you being here, but I would appreciate it if you stayed away from my memory." Getch said, thinking that people's thoughts seemed a little private.
"Huh, who's that?"she said, almost completely ignoring him "She kind of looks like me." The woman on the screen did look a lot like her, small with long black hair, but she was wearing small reading glasses and had large ears like some kind of animal's.
"That..." Getch said sadly "was my wife."
"Oh... I'm sorry... So, this is how your race looks?" Meryll tried to change the subject.
Getch nodded depressedly "The Kitsunemata, I was kidnapped right off of our world, and it was perfectly legal because our race knows about the rest of the universe." he slammed his paw against the screen nearest to him "Just because of what I was..."
Meryll could tell that she had hit another bad topic with him "So why not go back to your planet? You're free now."
Getch sighed "I won't be free until they all are. I tried to ignore the first one when I escaped, but I couldn't. I found I couldn't sleep, I kept seeing Pyro in my head, being tortured like I was once, I couldn't get it out of my head. After I met Pyro, I wanted to help them, but I'm forced to do it by this d***ed body. Once I get them away from that torture I'm fine, but..." he looked back out of the room to the beach "And my home would never take me back like this..."
Meryll hadn't meant to offend him, but it was obvious she had upset him. "Hey Getch... I'm sorry... do you want to see my memories?"
He looked up in surprise "Uhh, sure?" he didn't get why she was so ready to show him her most private thoughts, but he was curious and wanted to be left alone for the moment "Tell you what. We'll look at eachother's until we wake up." he thought he would at least get some time away from her if she agreed to that.
"Okay." Meryll responded briefly, but she really didn't want to pry any more, she was just going to enjoy the beach while she could.
"I'll see you up there then!" Getch called, already having started to walk the dark hallway, closing the door behind him as he entered her mind. He looked up at the inscription "Why does 'emotion' lead between us?" he asked himself, startled that the same door was on the other end of the hall. He immediately turned to look up at the monitors, but they had turned completely black. "Huh?" the whole room started to go black, within seconds, there was nothing...

Chapter 10: Fatality Swap

"Getch! Are you okay!?" Pyro made another attempt at waking the larger cat up.
"Why are they taking so long to wake up?" Trent wondered out loud.
"I dunno." Flash said "We woke up awhile ago, they SHOULD be up already." Meryll and Getch's still bodies were on the floor exactly where they had fallen under Gaze's spell.
"Hey everyone! Meryll's awake!" Geno said, looking right into her face.
"Geno, what are you doing?" she asked.
"What's wrong with your voice, Meryll?" Flash asked, she did sound different, her voice was deeper.
"Meryll?" she asked with confusion in the strange voice "Don't you mean-" she cut herself off as she glanced at her hand "-the h***!?" she yelled out. She tried to stand, but stumbled and landed on her face "Ow..."
"I thought you would be used to landing on your head by now." Pyro laughed, turning back to Getch "Hey! You're awake!"
Meryll turned her head toward him "Oh no, I get it... Meryll, we have a problem..."
Getch lifted his head "What?" he asked curiously, his voice very high. The cat tried to stand, but collapsed in much the same manner as Meryll "W-What's going on!?" The children were utterly oblivious to exactly what was going on, just standing by with confused looks on their faces.
"Meryll, we were in EACHOTHER'S minds when we woke up!" Meryll spoke with fear "We switched bodies!"
"What!?" everyone else let out a surprised shout.
"That's impossible!" Meryll yelled out from Getch's body.
"Meryll, you're looking at me in your body from my body!" Getch said angrily "You can't deny this! Now... Gaze, please put us back under so we can fix this." he waited for a response, but there was nothing "Gaze?" he glanced around for a moment.
"She's not here" Geno said "Her cage was open when we woke up and..."
"So I'm stuck like this!?" Meryll panicked.
"Meryll, calm down, we can figure this out." Getch said "I wouldn't mind so much, except that this is a woman's body."
"Oh yeah! You're a girl, I'm SO sorry for you!" Meryll said sarcastically "I'm a freaking cat!"
"So are we!" the kids said.
"A sentient turned into a Neko... that's exactly what we are, deal with it." Getch said, leaving Meryll feeling a little guilty "Now, we need to get to Gaze and fix this, why would she abandon us?" he wondered out loud. Meryll and Getch tried to stand again in the way they were accustomed to, only to stumble and fall back down again.
"I don't even think you can make it out of the room like this" Pyro complained.
"Well we have to try!" Getch said "Our bodies might start rejecting eachother, we'll both die if we don't fix this."
The kittens watched as the two struggled futily to make some kind of remote sense of their new bodies' structures. The kids turned towards eachother and nodded "We'll get Gaze." Trent spoke for the group.
"No, I don't want you running around here without us." Getch argued.
The kids started to walk out of the room anyway. Pyro turned to look at the other two "Try and stop us!" he grinned widely and left the room with the others, the door sliding shut behind him.
Meryll and Getch stared silently at the door "They're... kind of rebellious today, aren't they?" Meryll asked rhetorically.
Getch wasn't used to being ignored and said under his breath "Son of a-"
"So where do we look first?" Flash asked.
"I dunno..." Pyro said "Should we split up?"
"No way!" Trent shouted right at Pyro, everyone gave an odd look, as the child backed down "I-I mean not without the adults..."
"You got a point," Pyro responded, unaware of what had just happened "let's just go look around then." he hopped in front of everyone and started to lead them all through the halls.
"Hey Trent, what was that all about?" Flash asked.
"Umm, I don't know" Trent blushed "I just didn't want to leave Pyro alone..."
Flash arched her eyebrow in confused face "You are one weird guy, Trent."
"Huh?" now Trent was confused "What do you-? oh, the name... it's a little misleading, they apparently don't give us names by gender..."
she stopped "Wait, so you're a girl!?" Flash asked loudly enough for everyone to hear.
"Yeah, you didn't know?" Geno asked calmly "Oh that's right, you weren't with us that long."
Pyro turned around to look "Trent's a girl?"
"Not the best memory, eh Pyro?" Saight said, taking the temporary stop as an oppourtunity to stretch out, still sore from being away from his body for so long.
"Well this is news to me..." Pyro said.
Trent was blushing again "B-But... you really couldn't tell!? I mean my voice is really high!" she seemed even more flustered that Pyro couldn't tell than anyone else.
"So is mine." Saight said "We're different, but we're still kids..."
Trent sighed, responding disappointedly "Fine, I don't care, we still need to find Gaze."
Flash turned away, sorry she brought the whole thing up. As she walked into the next turn of the hallway she froze and fell unconcious instantly, the rest of the group heard "Ooh, not again!" in a familiar voice, they dashed around the corner in a hurry to see Gaze being carried along in a small clear cylinder by a very large man.
"Gaze!" Pyro yelled, causing the man to look behind him then clumsily swing himself around to face them, revealing an unmasked smiling face with messy black hair and an evil grin on his face, his eyes covered by large welding mask goggles. More importantly though, his large build had previously hidden the rather large gatling gun he had mounted under his arm.
"Oh that was genius, Pyro" Saight said flatly.
-----
Meryll had backed herself up against Getch's side, if they were remotely near the same size, they would have backed up against eachother. They were both panting heavily, and were trying to keep eachother awake.
"Meryll... we're not going to make it..." Getch said "Our bodies... are starting to... reject eachother..."
"Don't give up... the kids can... get Gaze..." Meryll responded with equal exhaustion "Just remember... we can't go... they need us..."
"Meryll... thank you..." he said, falling back "We need to... keep eachother... awake... Ask me something..."
"Right... What was... your wife like?"
Getch sat silently at this question 'why did you have to ask that?' he thought.
"Getch?"
He sighed "She was nice... but a sometimes... very challenging" Getch laughed weakly "She always... spoke her mind... she didn't care... what anyone... thought of her... as long as she was... right..."
"A real rebel..." Meryll smiled "She rubbed off... on you..."
"You're... a lot... like her..." Getch's breath was getting even shorter.
"Getch?... Are the kids..." she hesitated to say it for a second "Are the kids right... about you and me?" no-one said anything for a minute "Getch?... Getch!?"
-----
The kids ran around the corner, Geno pushing Flash's limp body as heavy gunfire sprayed the wall behind them. Geno nudged Flash a few times "Flash, what's wrong!?" he had to yell over the large rounds hitting the concrete.
"I would guess Gaze accidentally hypnotized her again!" Saight sighed "It's Meto! He's leading the GeM military projects!"
"How are we supposed to get by that monster!?" Trent yelled.
Saight looked around for a second, clicking his paw against the ground "Hmm, be right back!" his body fell limp again, his projection flying through the wall, unseen by the others. Within seconds he flew back "Flash! Shoot your lightning right above the first dooway on the right!"
"Saight!" Geno complained, gesturing at Flash's body.
"Oh... yeah..." Saight said embarassedly "Well, we have to help, Getch and Meryll are in trouble!"
"Wait, what would they do?" Pyro said, the kittens looked at eachother and smiled. Pyro ran down the hall they were hiding in, Trent following close behind. They zig-zagged through the halls erratically, trying to quickly find the correct route. They went left, turned right and made another left, an immediate right afterwards, a long hallway and a left, more halls, a left... the halls seemed like a blur as they dashed through them in a seemingly random pattern, and they could still here the gunfire. "Are we still going the right way?" Pyro asked.
"Yeah, just down here." They slid around the corner and saw Meto's back, he was firing the gatling gun and laughing maniacally as if he were enjoying it. Pyro dashed up behind him silently, looking at the long ammo belt that was far from exhausted, he placed his paw on the back of a single shell, instantly flattening it out by melting it. Pyro and Trent flew out behind Meto, serpentining past eachother, surprising the large man. He pulled the trigger again angrily and a few rounds hit the wall, the fourth one caused a crash in the gun's machinery, a column of smoke erupting from it. The man coughed and started to step forward casually and slowly, cursing at the gun.
"What is he doing?" Saight asked as he and Geno stepped around the safety of the corner wall.
The man burst out of the smoke, glaring at them "You are a menace." he said.
"Yeah, and we're good at it." Pyro smirked. Meto let out a warcry and surprised everyone by swinging the huge gatling gun with ease, as if he were holding a sword. He swung it straight down at Pyro, who ducked, but Meto immediately pulled it to the side, throwing the kitten hard against the wall, knocking him out immediately.
Trent ran back to the others, determined to help Pyro. As the man approached slowly, Trent said "Saight! Are there water pipes in the walls?" Saight nodded, confused and terrified at the behemoth approaching them. Trent stared at the man in concentration 'Gotta save Pyro!' kept running through her head. She rammedthe wall and let out a cry of pain as she overloaded her power and caused a water pipe to shoot out of the wall, drenching the man in cool water, Trent stood up with some effort and ran at Meto while he was distracted, starting to claw and bite furiously at his legs.
"Oh that was a perfect plan." Geno said, he looked at the, now VERY frightened, Gaze in the container. He ran up to the fight, Meto being distracted by trying to get Trent off, as the gatling gun was too long to hit something on his body. Geno jumped onto Meto, clawing his way up the man's massive body. He made a kind of signal at Gaze and hoped she understood what it meant as he went up past her. He managed to climb to Meto's head while Trent distracted him, and put his claw to the head, slashing across and jumping down. "Everyone look away from Gaze!"
Now she got the idea, she started to focus deeply on Meto's eyes as the sliced goggle strap fell to the floor. In a second, Meto followed suit, stopped struggling and hit the floor with a crash. "Alright! We win!" Saight yelled "We can beat up a military general with a huge weapon!"
"Yeah, if he's a huge idiot psycho." Trent said, climbing down off his legs and rushing to Pyro's side "Are you okay!?" he was out cold, but he was still breathing.
Geno stood back a little ways and tried to headbutt the container with no results "Ow!"
"Hit the button genius." she sighed as Saight did so. "I'm sorry, I stepped out for a minute and he grabbed me, and I was trying to use my powers on him when Flash sawme... Where's the other two?"
Saight gasped "Getch and Meryll! C'mon, they need you to put them under again! I'll explain on the way!" he dashed off, practically dragging Gaze with one paw. Trent ran past Geno with Pyro on her back as he tried to do the same with Flash.
Saight and Gaze burst through the doors of the holding chamber to see the two collapsed on the floor "No!" Saight let go of Gaze and ran over to see them "I can't believe it! We're too late! They're dead!"
Gaze walked over to look "Hmm, do 'you' snore when you're dead?" she asked.
Saight didn't say anything beyond "Oh..."
"So what's the problem?"
"They somehow switched bodies last time..."
"Wow! That means they're linked!"
"What's that-? Y'know what, just please fix them!"
"Umm, okay." she stood on top of each of their heads in turn, prying their eyes open, and staring into them...
-----
Meryll rushed to the door, away from the beach, flinging it open. Getch was on the other end of the hall, they ran toward eachother, passing right by. "Wait, Meryll!" Getch said panting, she turned to see him looking at her "You were about to ask me something before..."
"Don't worry about that, I was delusional" she said, turning around toward her mind again.
"Right." He ran to his and shut the door behind him, panting from physical and mental exhaustion, he sighed "Right..."

Chapter 11: The Alpha Formula

Meryll and Getch yawned, slowly pulling back to conciousness. They looked up at eachother, happy to see eachother's faces, rather than their own. Flash was still in the process of getting up too, as Geno went into details on the fight she missed. Trent was watching Pyro's unconcious body intently. She glanced up at the rising adults and turned back to Pyro "Oh, you're up... I think Pyro's done for now."
"Okay, what happened?" Getch asked impatiently. All the concious kittens except Trent and Gaze immediately stopped what they were doing to try and explain the whole fight from their perspective, trying to exagerate their accomplishments. It eventually led to all of them fighting over who had the most important role in the fight, starting to tackle eachother playfully, which they quickly regarded as a game.
"Can Nekos get ADD?" Meryll asked humorously.
"Remind me not to ask what happened any more." said Getch. All they could do was watch the playful children until they ended up in a pile on top of eachother, exhausted from their impromptu game. "Hey kids, there'll be plenty of time for that at home. Behind enemy lines isn't the place." Getch said calmly.
"Okay!" they all said excitedly. They found themselves walking the same familiar hallways, Meryll carrying Pyro's limp body. All of the sudden, Trent yawned "Are we going home again soon?"
"Yeah, I don't think I can keep this up constantly." Meryll complained "How often do we do these rescues?"
"Not very often" Trent responded "Pyro, Getch, and I were home for two tiers before picking up Geno..."
"Hmm..." Meryll thought "And how long is a 'tier'?"
"A little less than two years on your planet." Getch said "We picked you up on the way back from Geno's prison, and we've been very busy since then."
"Wow. Staying in one spot for four years..." she put her hands behind her head relaxedly "I can deal with that."
"Got a surprise at home for all of you, so don't go dying out there."
"Right." Meryll said enthusiastically "So Saight, where's your sister?"
"Oh yeah, follow me!" he dashed almost all the way down the hall and turned into a doorway on his right. The rest of the group followed in haste, soon passing where the fight had taken place. Gaze noticed something. Meto was gone. She almot let out a cry ofsurprise, but stopped herself. 'He's gone, we'll probably never see him again.' she thought to herself 'No need to concern anyone else about it.' she dismissed the frightening soldier from her thoughts, figuring for hope rather than logic.
"Okay, I think that it's through here" Saight said, turning into one last room. There it was, the room that had made Pyro run from the last station, a thousand-fold larger. There were bodies sitting in the liquid graves in every direction, except for a catwalk placed eerily over the wide chasm. These tanks could literally be seen up to the end of their vision, even downwards.
"Holy..." Getch let out, everyone stared in horror at the scene, a mechanical crane with another tube flew across the room, placing it into an empty slot a few floors below them.
"This is..." Gaze paused "What is this?... What the h*** is this!?" she yelled.
"This..." Getch paused for emphasis "Is what we're fighting for. To stop this whole mess. They choose us because our races are different from their's... we're insignificant, unimportant to them, so they do this..." everyone was silent as Getch had made his point once again. "I don't want to deal with this place." He started across the catwalk, Meryll following solemnly, the kids sticking close to her in fear.
They stepped through another door after a few minutes over the chasm, they were now in a large, circular room with glass on the inside wall, looking in on a kind of operating room. "Hello? Who's there?" a voice whimpered from below.
"Ghost?"Meryll called down.
"No, who's there? And what did you do with Beta!?" they could hear soft crying start below them.
"Getch, it looks like there might be another couple Nekos down there." Meryll said.
"I didn't think this place would be this big!" Getch sounded surprised "Let's get down there." He looked around, running around the circle once "There..." he hopped up and kicked a wall panel, it fell with a small crash, revealing a dark vent. He jumped in, followed by the kittens and then Meryll, who, if it weren't for her unusually small stature, wouldn't have fit through. Meryll landed on her feet, stumbling through the grate into a roll and ending up on her back, briefly followed by Getch and the rest of the cats, who had stepped to the side of the shaft. "Hey Meryll, thanks for opening that."
She cursed under her breath at him and pushed herself up with her hands to see a large room with electric blue bars dividing it in half, however there wasn't a Neko in sight. "Where are you? We're here to help, there's no need to hide." Meryll tried to reassure the child.
"You're here to help?" a voice called over them, a boy fell from above onto all fours, he looked like a cross between a cat and a human. He had claws that clicked when he hit the ground, a long tail, large cat ears, and whiskers on his face, but the rest of him was human in appearance. As he looked up, his ears twitched "You... You're not wearing their uniforms..." he said in an astonished voice "It's true then!? You're here to help me!?" he was excited.
"I thought they tried to transform sentients immediately, not keep them imprisoned." Getch said curiously.
"Oh, I'm not going to be one of you, I'm what they're using to make you!" the boy said, leaving everyone stunned "My name is Alpha, and you need to get me out of here!" he pleaded.

Chapter 12: Sinking Feeling

"My parents were interspecies. I'm the result of a sentient being with an animal-type." Alpha started
"How does that even work?" Meryll asked.
"What do you mean?" the boy asked.
"I mean how did they-?"
"Umm, Meryll... just stop there, okay?" Getch warned.
"Oh right, sorry." she apologized, still a little curious "Carry on."
"I was abducted as a child like most of you, but unlike you guys, I was born this way." He said "They infused me with the high intelligence gene, like the Nekos at this base. They need me as part of a 'formula' of hybrids like me to start the transformation for a sentient into a Neko. Beta was the first battery of the operation, they need her to even attempt the operation. I'm Alpha, I'm what you might call the 'debugged' version, and they've told me that I've matured enough to use. So if Beta and I are used, it fixes the low probability of success! They will stop dying... but at the cost of freedom... GeM will succeed in their plan."
"Plan?" Getch asked "I thought the Neko project was strictly research."
"Well they weren't researching for nothing!" Alpha said "They want total control over all races, not just sentients. They just want to keep the majority populace in check, so they made us the bad guys so it seems like they're trying to stop an enemy..."
"B******s..." Getch muttered under his breath.
"And they're trying to find two more batteries. It's unlikely they'll ever get them though, hybrids are rarer than sentients, and most of us don't survive birth..." Alpha said "They need batteries for the two things they haven't mastered, free will and a cure...
"A cure!?" Getch spurted out immediately "Y-You mean there's a way to fix this!?" he shouted, astonished and excited.
"Highly unlikely..." Alpha said sadly.
"Oh..." Getch mutterred disappointedly.
"Sorry, but as I was saying, the third battery is to fix free will... They need to be in full control of their mind, all the Nekos are uncontrollable children, the third battery will fix that..."
"What!?" Getch yelled "I didn't think what they were doing could get any worse but... what the h*** is wrong with these people!?"
"They don't care... but listen, you need to let me out of here, without me they can't perfect the process!"
"I've heard enough, we need to help him." Meryll said, she started to look around for something like a switch to open the cell.
"Thank you..." Alpha said "but what are you doing here anyway... don't you realize how impossible it is to fight them?"
"Someone has to do something." Getch said "Luck ultimately brought us all together, you can't say that it hasn't got something special planned out for us. Meryll, what are you doing? The switch is up there."
There was indeed a large lever mounted to the wall next to the cell, labelled 'cell release'. "I knew that..." she said defensively. She walked to the switch and pulled it down, falling to the floor as she had not expected it would be so easy to pull.
A glass screen raised over the opening as the bars disappeared "The h***?" Getch said. There was a loud crash, and the inside of the cell seemed to be sinking "No! That meant it released the cell from the facility!"
"Hey! Help me! I can't survive in a vacuum!" Alpha cried, slightly drowned out by the glass.
Getch acted quickly "Pyro! Burn through that!" he gestured to the glass.
"Right!" Pyro responded, he put his paw to the glass, melting through it almost instantly. There was a long screeching noise of Alpha's claws sliding down the smooth side of the room as he tried to cling on for his life.
Getch jumped down into the room through the hole "Saight! Where's an access panel!?"
Saight fell over unconcious to go to his omniscient form as Meryll struggled trying to push the switch back into place even though it had latched itself up. Getch ran into the walls, desperately trying to find an escape as soon as possible. Alpha continued to try and scale the wall, trying to grab onto the hole Pyro made.
The rest of the kittens watched from the top of the room, making countless useless suggestions "Maybe Flash can zap it off?" "No, you'll hurt them! I'll make a staircase out of water pipes!" "Yeah, but the water will make the floor go faster!" they continued to argue incoherently as Saight jolted up.
"Getch! Three panels over to your left, about five feet down!" he had to yell since it had sunk so far already. "And space is only a few feet below that!" he added.
"D***!" Getch yelled, preparing to kick open the hatch when the slowly descending platform went past it.
"I don't wanna die!" Alpha cried out, sliding down the wall again.
"Get over here! You're going to be fine!" he saw the seperate pattern of the panel rise up and tried to kick it open, but it was stuck.
"C'mon!" Alpha yelled desperately, he struck the panel with his claw, leaving five small holes, which he quickly scratched into a long, torn off strip of metal on the floor.
Getch stared in amazement as the child destroyed the access panel with his bare hands "Umm, alright let's go!" he said, suddenly regaining his composure. They ran through the vents quickly, turning a corner as the air of the gigantic room was pulled into the vacuum. A blast door soon closed over the gaping hole, leaving them both panting for breath in the secluded shaft. Getch looked out the vent, looking first down at the clear glass doors, then up at the control room far above him. He sighed, then yelled up "We're fine! We'll meet up later on!" but he was thinking 'Great, we have to split up again'
"Okay!" Meryll called down, even though Getch had left. She was having the same idea about splitting up.