Invaded (IN NEED OF REVISING)

Chapter VI

Jackson

Music: Heavy Blow from Gradius ReBirth

My wake-up call the next morning was a shake by Heath, then a, "Get up. It's time."

I stood up out of bed, and asked, "Okay, so I have no idea what I'm doing. I've never done anything like this before. Can someone explain what our plan is?"

Sam walked into my room just then, followed by Mackenzie. "We went over the game plan last night," Sam explained. "Right now, we have no idea what we're looking for, so our goal is to search downtown and see if there's anything suspicious to find, or if there's any information we can get."

"That's it?" I sighed.

"Hey, you get used to it after sometime," Mackenzie laughed.

After we all got dressed and ready, we exited the hotel and set out. We walked through the sidewalks of the streets for probably the third time, examining the buildings, alleyways, and such.

Eventually, we ventured into a forest behind some of the buildings, and Sam and Heath took me aside. "It's time we teach you a little something, Jack," Heath told me.

"Alright. Throw it at me," I said.

"Well, Jack, we're probably going to have to deal with combat a few times. It happens every single time," Sam explained to me, walking around me in a circle. "And since Luke moved away a while back, well..."

"Just get to the point," I sighed.

"Heath and I are skilled shooters, but it would help if we had a third," Sam said, getting right to the point. "So we're going to train you and get you started."

I raised an eyebrow at Sam and Heath, but it was quite obvious that they had the intent on training me to be good with guns. Man, I never thought I'd say those words...

---

Only about half an hour later, I was actually getting the hang of it. So far, I have been taught how to quickdraw and aim precisely all at once. Now, I was practicing my shots using small targets Sam and Heath had brought with them.

"Alright, Jack. You've been doing great so far," Heath said, smiling at me. "If you can hit this last one with a quickdraw, you'll be set for now."

Sam nailed the target to a tree, a good 10 feet or so away from me. I was instructed to turn my back to the target, and then Heath counted me down from three. On "go", I quickly turned around, grabbed the gun from my pocket, and shot at the target. I was barely off dead center.

"Nice work," Sam told me, walking up to me and giving me a pat on the back. "I think you'll be good for the time being. We'll definitely keep working on it."

Before I could reply, Elle, Julianna, Mackenzie, and Eghosa found us. "Hey, so we were searching around in here, and we found a factory of some variety. Think we should check?" Elle asked.

"Sure," all three of us said at once.

So we followed the girls to a clearing in the forest, and sure enough, right in the middle was a large building. The front doors were wide open, so we walked inside to get a better look.

Mackenzie

Music: "Please, Help Me!" from Sexy Parodius

Our first look at the main room of the factory was not quite what we expected. Immediately, we saw hoards of people (most of them girls, which gave us the impression that mostly girls worked here) running around frantically. Some were pacing, some were muttering to themselves. Whatever was going on, one thing was certain:

"Something big must've happened here. What we need to know is what," I muttered. Everyone else nodded.

A man then passed by us, mumbling to himself, "God, where are those damn things..." Julianna called for him and asked, "Excuse me, sir. What happened here?"

"Oh, nothing to be worried about, dear," the man replied. "We're just looking for something. Or, some things, rather."

"What things? We're good at finding things," Sam said, sounding interested.

A girl wearing glasses and carrying a checklist and a pen walked by. She must've overheard us, because she told us, "We're in charge of guarding five very powerful crystal orbs, and they have all gone missing."

"How powerful are these orbs?" I asked, not expecting an answer. But instead, the girl told me, "We actually don't know. All we know is that if they fall into the wrong hands, it could mean grave danger."

"We could search for them," Elle suggested. "We've found many people before. Finding orbs would be a piece of cake."

"Oh, thank you," the man said, breathing a sigh of relief. I actually kinda forgot he was there. "If you could find those orbs and return them to us, that would be most appreciated."

"No problem. We'll get right to it," Sam smiled, and we began walking off. Then the girl asked us, "Hey.... did you just arrive here? We've never seen you before."

"Oh, we just got here last night," Eghosa said. I saw the girl look down at her paper and mutter, "That's about when the orbs were reported to be missing... hmm..."

Music: Big Boss from Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island SNES

She then whispered something to the man, who I could now see was the boss of the place. Then he motioned for us to come over to him, and sternly said, "Kids, we're going to need to ask you a few questions."

All seven of us froze dead in our tracks instantly, and we looked at each other, knowing what this meant.

They were thinking WE stole the orbs.

Sam

We all turned around to see the boss, and we now saw that a couple other men had joined him. They slowly walked towards us, and we slowly backed up. "You, uh... you don't think WE took the orbs, do you?" Jack asked.

"We have to assume all possible options," the boss growled.

"But we OFFERED to find them for you! That must mean to you that we didn't take them!" Elle exclaimed.

"We can't really believe you right now," the boss said. Then he motioned to the two men by his sides. "Guards? Take them away."

That was when we began our sprint. The three men began chasing us through the hallways of the factory. One of them got out a whistle and used it to attract more attention. After a few turns, we were blocked off by five more security guards (and again, they looked just like what you'd see on Earth).

"Kids, just come with us, and we won't have to take this any further," one of them said. Behind us, the boss and the two guards following him were closing in on us. I looked at Heath and we both shrugged. Realizing we had no other choice, we both quickdrew and shot right through two of the guards preventing our progress (our guns were set to "stun" and not "kill", just btw). Then the seven of us proceeded through the gap that was created as a result.

Luckily, we were able to gain quite a bit of distance between us and the guards, and we left the building way ahead of them. I whispered to the group, "Follow me," and we proceeded to run to the back of the building; the last place I expected the guards to look.

"Well, I never thought we'd ever be falsely accused of theft," Mackenzie laughed when we stopped, sounding out of breath.

"We've gotta find these orbs, or else we're gonna get arrested," Heath muttered.

I sighed, hating myself for what I was about to suggest. I said, "Well, this might be a bad idea, and I'll regret this later, but we need to split up to make this go by faster. Let's search around town and see where we can find these orbs."

And after some discussion, we came up with these groups: Elle, Julianna, and I would be one group, Jack and Mackenzie would be the second, and Eghosa and Heath were the third group.

Once our groups were assembled, I told everyone to move out, and we did. Elle, Julianna, and I started our search in the forest.

I actually have 2 chapters done for this week, and I will post them both tonight (note that I still need to have one chapter done for next week).