The Quest

Chapter 17: A Bitter Rivalry

Crocker had heard a faint noise in the distance once again. It sounded like an explosion. He ran towards the source of the noise, hoping to get some information out of the Valve soldiers.

Two Valve speeder bikes came speeding through the corridor. Crocker shot one's bike with his phaser rifle, and smashed the other with his fairy catching net. He then ran through the corridor, headed towards the Mountain Dew Tower, the source of the noise.

After a few minutes of running, Crocker had finally made it back to the Mountain Dew Tower. All of the Dew had been drained from the crevasse, leaving a large stretch of ground.

Nearby, he found a lot of abandoned Valve speeder bikes. He got on one, and rode off.

"It's not theft if you're stealing from Valve!" he said while riding.

He rode across the stretch of land, and made it to an abandoned shuttle tunnel.

He had realized that he was being followed.

"Oz? I'm gonna need you to get to the abandoned shuttle tunnel east of the Mountain Dew Tower ASAP," Crocker said to his transceiver.

A Valve armored shuttle came down the corridor opposite of him, and the doors shut. The shuttle had many various cannons on it, but it had two main cannons in the front that he had to avoid.

Crocker made his bike go to a halt, and switched it into sideways mode.

"I'm moving sideways now? Must be FAIRIES!"

The armored shuttle shot out missiles, all of which Crocker dodged with precision.

A much bigger missile than the last ones was loaded, and Crocker needed to get out of the way. He hit a button, and his bike went into gravitational switching mode.

"FAIRIES!" he shouted.

He then rode onto the walls in order to avoid the huge explosion.

The floor was shot, and a huge crevasse was left in the missile's wake.

He noticed that his bike had a smaller, blue interface. It could only be one thing, he thought.

He pressed the button, and as he thought, it was a missile launching function. Depth charges rolled out from the bottom of the bike and flew, hitting the armored shuttle. It sustained minimal damage, despite a crack in the front, below the two missiles.

Crocker knew what he had to do. He had been through Valve's training program, which included shuttles.

He pulled out his phaser, and began to shoot the crack, until it caused the explosion of the armored shuttle. As he thought, it had all worked out.

"Yeah! That'll show them!" Crocker shouted.

But it wasn't over just yet. Valve still had more cards up their sleeve.

From the same direction as the armored shuttle came a heavily armored masked man. He had huge cannons on his shoulders. Crocker had never seen this man throughout the time he had been in Valve.

"W-Who is this man?!" said Crocker.

He took aim at Crocker, and detached one of the cannons from his shoulders. He shot heavily condensed Dorito rounds out of his cannons.

Metal shrapnel from the explosion went everywhere, which damaged Crocker's bike. He also had smaller cannons on his arms, and the corridor was slowly being destroyed.

Crocker had only one option.

Crocker frantically ran out of the shuttle corridor as the masked man quickly pursued him. The masked man kept on shooting rounds at Crocker, but they narrowly missed him.

Crocker finally made it to the rendezvous point with Oz. The masked man was getting closer and closer, and so were his Dorito rounds, but the port door opened, and Oz flew in on his ship.

The bottom of the ship opened, and Crocker quickly got in. The masked man attempted to shoot the ship down, but to no avail.

The masked man yelled to the ship in his Kermit-like voice, "You're going down, son."