8 The Hunters Friendly Fire Incident

Nick has been waiting for a while, that had been expected though. It is just an odd amount of time that had him a bit worried. Nevertheless, it had arrived, caring the pilot and some shady other person. Either way, Nick enters the heli without delay.

"Surprised you survived that attack." The pilot chats to Nick.

"Yeah, I guess I'm just built differently." Nick jokes.

The shady person lets out an extremely exaggerated annoyed sigh.

"I'm sorry, but there is something wrong?" Nick asks.

The person does not respond and the helicopter takes off. They stopped chatting for also the reason that the blades of the heli would be too loud. They make their way to the location. They fly over a large group of soldiers.

"NOW!" The pilot shouts.

The shady individual pushes Nick out of the helicopter and into the soldiers. One promptly gets crushed by Nick. The soldiers point all their shotguns at Nick.

"You are under arrest for Regicide," An officer shouts. "Comply or there will be consequences!"

"Hold on Hold on!" Null says in Nick's voice.

Null raises its fist before an unheard of custom song gets played from Null. It is hard to tell what it is exactly, but it is dubstep.

"Now this," Null puts its fist down. "Is fighting music."

Null charges at the soldiers as they begin to fire. Most of the shots don't hit Null and hit other soldiers working with them. This caused some of them to purposely shoot each other leading to smoky chaos.

As Null uses the chaos to masquerade as one of the soldiers and slip out of the fire fight, Shipman hops out of the helicopter (which has now landed) and tries to stop the chaos. She runs up to one of the soldiers and snatches the shotgun out of their hands.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING!" Shipman shouts, throwing the weapon to the floor. "THEY ARE WORKING WITH US YOU NUTCASE!"

Before she could say anything else, one of the gunmen shot her in the side her efforts were useless. York sees it happen and rushes into the fighting in a blind rage.

Through all the gunfire and dirt flying everywhere, Null was able to move through with a faulty unfinished cloaking tech that barely works. This is to say, Null made a far from clean escape, getting shot multiple times.

When Null made it away from the gunfire, it looked at itself and saw how damaged it was. Null felt fear, but mainly hyped. It could no longer hear it's music. Null was going to continue on it's way when they got shouted at.

"OI PADDY!" Jack shouts at the wreaked machine.

"How bout we do this civilly," Null copies Jack's voice. "Maybe over a cup of tea?"

Jack rushes Null, grabbing Null's faceplate and slamming it into the ground. Null struggles out of the grab, barely getting out and being hit by a small object that Null doesn't pay mind to.

Now free, Null judo throws Jack into a nearby tree. Null runs up to her and starts to repeatedly punch her with varying strength. Jack kicks Null away and tries knocking Null closer to the beach. Each hit gets stronger and stronger. Jack finally tries punching Null into the ocean, but ends up breaking the faceplate and cutting herself on the blades on Null.

With her hand that isn't bleeding, Jack tries drowning Null, a robot. It still damages Null. While Jack is pushing Null under water, Causeway runs in for a dropkick and misses.

"Cause!" Jack shouts as she is still dealing with the struggling Null. "I'm a bit busy!"

"Not even a 'welcome back'?" Causeway annoyingly askes.

Jack does not respond to the complete opposite of a witty response. With that, Causeway kicks the back of Jack's head into the water. He pulls Null out of the water.

"You left me sleeping on a bench!" Causeway states to the very broken Null.

"Yes," Null blankly states in Aidan's voice. Null picks up Jack, who is gasping for air, and yeets* her back to the beach.

"I didn't like being, oh you know, LIED TO!" Causeway argues with Null.

"Man," Null choke holds Jack. "If only I cared."

"Whatever," Causeway cools down. "I still saved you."

"I had it under control." Null smashes one of the glass jars on Jack's suit.

Causeway sighs, pulls out a handgun from a coat he found while catching up with Null, and shoots Jack. Null tosses the body into the ocean.

"I hate you, John." Null honestly states it's opinion. "That kill was mine."

"Then I guess we're even." Causeway looks into the ocean.

Null lets out a light chuckle. "You don't know how lucky you are to be alive." Null tells him.

"You too." Causeway begins to walk. "Now let's get moving, you have a cult to meet."

Null begins the repairment program. It estimates that without intervention, Null will be back to peak performance in a couple days. Null begins walking, then running when it hears Loch shouting for Null to show themself.

York rushes into the gunfire when she sees that Shipman was shot. Meanwhile, Maria turns to Booth, who is asleep, and shakes him awake.

"Do you see Null?!" She asks furiously.

"Uh uh uh..." He looks around confused.

Booth sees Null in the distance and targets the tracker to land on him when he shoots. If he got this wrong and Null got away, they would be back to square one. With a stroke of luck, Jack was there to stop Null and Booth nailed Null in the arm. With that, Booth takes a breath before checking out how the others are doing then passing out.

Maria only saw the shot fly through the air and assumed it hit Null. She ran down the hill to run around the extremely out of hand conflict. While she attempts this, something catches her eye in the nearby woods. She turns her head to the forest and sees a bunch of men in war paint with rifles and strange looking eyes.

"Have you heard of the Mono-verse and why we should get revenge for Difemanim?" One of them whispered.

Instead of asking or talking with them at all, Maria starts to speed walk, then sprint. The strange armed men run out of the forest and start firing into the group of confused soldiers. Maria doesn't get off track and continues her march toward Null.

When she finally makes it after what felt like forever, she sees Causeway, Null, and Loch, but not Jack. Jack and Loch were supposed to detain Null if things went wrong (which this seems to be happening) but Maria has different plans. Still out of breath, she runs up to the group.

"NULL!" Maria shouts at it as it runs away.

Loch and Maria start chasing after Causeway and Null as they run away. Maria is still confused about what is happening, but she only cares about destroying Null. Causeway put's his finger to his head and thinks up a plan. He starts creating a clone and chucks the unfinished clone at the other two.

The Clone sticks out his arm and the two pursuers crash into it, getting stopped.

"Lochy Ness! Polish lady!" The Clone talks in a causal way. "Take a seat! I got some jokes to pass the ti-"

Loch punches the clone and the inside of its ear starts bleeding.

"Not... Cool." The clone falls.

It was a short distraction, but it gave enough time for the two scoundrels to escape into the woods.

Null and Causeway were able to escape due to Causeway's abilities, but Null still needs to remember where they are moving next to get closer to the group Causeway was talking about. Out of nowhere, a bunch of men with war paint stop the duo from continuing forward.

"¡Identifícate!" One of the men shouted.

"One in the same." Causeway responds.

"It's the Shard." another man says. "Come on, dude, we gotta go!"

Null doesn't question it. The men lead Null and Causeway to a speedboat past the trees and they make their way to the rebellion's base. Some of the men looked extremely uncomfortable with Null.

After a while, they made it to the base at sunset. Base is a strong word, it is more like a couple of huts and a man-made hill. On the hill is a corpse and a lady who is adjusting said corpse. The body looks aged, but not completely deteriorated.

The men shove Causeway toward the hill and he signals to Null to follow him. The Woman turns around and looks at the two. She looks confused then a bit upset.

"John," She exhales. "The hell where you?!"

"Mina I can expla-'' Causeway says, then notices the body. "Is... is... is that Cartone?"

"Yes, now explain yourself." Mina says nonchalantly.

"Okay, okay." Causeway prepares himself. "You know Null right?"

Mina glances at Null who glances back. Mina pulls out a large book and searches through it.

"Now is not the time for your stupid cult book!" Causeway knocks the book out of her hands. "Null here, he's the future of combat!"

Both Mina and Null show looks of suppressed anger.

"What does a beat up, fuerte looking robot improve the battlefield with?" Mina asks while picking her book, which says "El Mono-Verso Romántico y Todos Sus Secretos".

"Well let me show you!" Causeway exclaims. He points his finger and waits for a clone to show. It doesn't show up. Causeway shakes his hand, trying desperately to shake a clone off his hand.

"El leopardo ataca a los engreídos." Mina recites from the book she has.

"It can't be," stutters Causeway. "Not now, not so soon."

The group stands in silence.

"If you aren't going to help, I'll just leave." Null imitates Mina's voice.

"John here is going to die very soon." Mina tells Null.

"I forgot when that was my problem." Null started to walk off.

"WAIT NULL!" John shouts at the machine. "Mina, give him Difemanim! We came here for Difemanim!"

"If I could, I wouldn't." Mina says. "This body I have someone we dressed as Cartone and killed in honor of him. The real Cartone is buried in New Zealand. If it is true, Difemanim should be attached to his body."

"Then I guess we are on our way!" John wheezes, grabbing Null's arm.

"Don't you dare!" Mina pulls a gun on John. "Difemanim is not to be meddled with!"

Null, having all the information they need, sprints into the ocean before anyone could react. Mina glances at John.

"It isn't too late to conjoin your eyes." She advises.

"Never," John lets out a nervous laugh. "We need to attack the Brits while they are weak."

"You choose this." Mina frowns.

A group of soldiers with shotguns arrive at their location. There are only 5 and Loc is leading them.

"Nessy!" John tries to act cheery. "Long time no see!"

"John J. Johnson and Marry 'Mina' Yosef." Loc ignores John. "You are under arrest. Any resistance will be met with a painful death. We will read out your sentence once we get there."

John looks at Mina.

"¡Gloria a Difeanim!" She shouts raising her fist in the air. A soldier shoots her and the men that lead John to Mina begin attacking back. During the chaos, John tries to slip out, but Loc grabs his arm.

"I will find it that I am the last living member of the team!" Loc declares.

"Wel-" Before John could finish, he was grabbed by Loc, shaking by his powers, and then promptly thrown into a tree.

"I guess I have to resort to dirty means." Murmurs John. "I think now's the time to switch scenes, eh?"

What? No! You're in the middle of a fight!

"But don't you wanna know, like, what's going on with the daycares or whatever?" John proposes.

We can't skip this, Shard.

"Fine!" Pouted John.

"What the fu-" Loc tried to say before he got sucker punched by John.

"It worked!" John smiled. "Oh yeah." John grabs Loc and checks if he is alive. Loc's heart is still beating, but his eyes are closed. John thought about sparing his former colleague, but then promptly threw him into the ocean and walked away. He walked into gunfire and died. You happy now, Shard?