The Suite Life X

50 - Flight of the Navigator

In a humid cavern in the midst of a damp jungle...

To the naked eye, Alia supposed, she looked like she belonged here, from her professional, practiced strides to her weapon carefully holstered out of the way at her side.

Even her gaze belied the illusion of calm composure.

That illusion broke for just a moment as she cleared out the cluster of robotic bats swarming her.

Why was she even out here in the first place as opposed to...literally anyone else? Honestly, she was still asking herself that same question throughout her entire journey here.

It wasn't as if she couldn't have just had X and London come down here to check this out. They had been right on Base...

She knew the answer deep down.

Simply put, it was Gate.

She had known it from the second he'd gotten a message containing what was without a doubt his voice. The rational part of her mind was of course immediately skeptical of this.

The problem was, ever since Lucien had mentioned him and that incident with Wolfang, she hadn't been, especially after seeing him. She could mask her true feelings well enough to function (something that just had to be done in their line of work), but deep down she knew the truth.

Despite what she told herself and her comrades, she never truly got over the incident with Gate and how that played out. No matter how many times she went over the facts of the matter that her friend was lost the second that he was taken over by the Maverick Virus, deep down she knew she'd give anything to be able to rewrite history so that things played out differently.

That was why she was here. Irrational and emotionally driven as the decision to come here was, it was tied to her last shred of hope of going back to the good old days...

It's not like the others would know about this little  fit of insanity. She'd gone completely no contact for this little mission, a stunt which she would deal with the consequences for later.

All that mattered now, though, as she braced herself for the inevitable, was making her way to Gate...
---
She managed to pantomime her way through the usual platforming challenges. Those were little consequence to her given her training, even though she had less field experience than the boys. What made Alia raise an eyebrow was the realization that the usual bat, bird, and insect like bots were beginnng to fall away, only to be replaced slowly but surely by a bevy of disturbingly familiar faces.

Given her past experiences with returning foes, she was ashamed to say that she still did a double-take upon seeing the first of what she called "apparitions", this one being of a cowboy-themed Maverick by the name of Dynamo. She was so caught off guard that she attempted to roll to the side of some incoming plasma too late...

She did manage to return fire even with her now smoking leg, however. Instead of simply exploding like she had been prepared for, her enemy just...vanished. As if he'd never been there.

She lowered her gun slowly, but didn't have the time to dwell on it as that one was only a prelude to more blasts from the past. An older model of Vile, Magma Dragoon, and Storm Eagle were among the many that made appearances.

At some point in all this, she began to hear an amused chuckle seeming to reverberate off of and bounce around the very stalagtites.

"Huh?" She had no idea where the source was, so she didn't know where to aim.

"Quite curious, quite curious indeed," The voice had a droning quality to it, much like a clergyman, though with a touch of condescending mirth to it that brought a chill down the Navigator's spine.