Not Alone

Hide and Seek (Part Two)

The speaker was careless and loud.

"Don't worry, Jerry, I'm sure everyone will give you a round of applause for finishing before the deadline."

"They'll all be clapping," giggled another unseen toilet.

Uninhibited cackling.

"ENOUGH!" came a much louder reply. "The next one to make that joke is getting stabbed!"

"You can't threaten us! We're essential employees! There's one qualified engineer for every ten thousand soldiers, you know!"

"I'll stab you in a non-vital place..."

Wait. That voice...

If Brown had any control over his body left, he would have been shaking.

The Parasite paid Brown's thoughts no attention and scampered to the open workshop door, dodging a security clone guard sweeping past in aviators and lasers.

They hid in the shadows until the guard toilet was gone, and the Parasite snuck into the outskirts of a huge factory room, huddling in the shadows and peering into the dark, warm depths beyond.

"I don't know why you're so grumpy. At least you finally got that brace off your neck. "

A Skibidi wearing a welding mask above his horsey smile loomed into sight.

Blade Strider?

No. This Skibidi may have been bigger than Brown, but he was only about seven meters tall. He floated on three jetpacks, and his shining metal toilet bore a heavyweight set of industrial claws, one gripping a welding torch.

"You're acting like being reassigned to a safe job with zero chance of dying in the war is some horrible punishment," the Welder Skibidi said to someone in the back of the room. "There's guys out there who would give anything to have that."

"You've never been a soldier, you can't understand," a deep angry mutter replied from the darkness. "I'm supposed to be a war machine, not a stupid factory worker. He wouldn't even let me join the kamikaze attack. He said my presence would demoralize everyone considering my history. He called me a walking disaster. Now I'm making treated sunglasses for soldiers. Sunglasses! A job a trained human could do!"

Jellybean craned Brown's camera forward, trying to see who was speaking while staying hidden.

The room beyond was full of machinery and hazy with smoke.

His body glitched forward. The Parasite hid them both, crouched and cramped, under a large and motionless conveyer belt.

What was he doing here?

An Engineer Skibidi bristling with buzzsaws, metal tentacles and other threatening limbs hovered past on a jetpack.

"Come on, Jerry, cheer up, you big, fat baby. Let's have a sing-along. If you're happy and you know it, CLAP YOUR HANDS!"

It wasn't a very clever joke, for the Engineer didn't have any limbs suitable for clapping, but it got another hysterical round of laughter from the Welder and the Forklift Skibidi.

CLANG.

Something struck the ground in front of Brown, cracking the stained concrete floor and barely missing the Engineer, who got out the way with a yelp of panic.

A long, sharp piece of metal, glowing white with a heat so intense Brown could feel its warmth.

The pointy end of a massive katana.

Jellybean jumped back with such force that the back of her little skull hit solid metal, nearly knocking her off Brown for the second time that day.

His body fell to his knees, the Parasite's squeaks drowned out by Skibidi shouting.

"Saint John of the Water Closet, did you just straight up try to kill him!?"

"I am not working with him any more!"

"That's it! You're getting reported, Mister Stabby! You really are a living disaster!"

The three worker Skibidis whooshed out on their jetpacks, not noticing a small Cameraman groveling on the floor with an even smaller Parasite struggling to regain control of its host.

Brown's camera spun as his body flailed, letting him finally get a glimpse of who that outsized sword was attached to.

Even with his long spindly legs tucked under his huge toilet, Blade Strider's body was so big Brown's mind could barely register him at first look. He was hunched over an enormous vat, stirring something with one of his four swords, his head forced to bow down even under the high ceiling.

He was staring mournfully in the direction the Welder and his friends had gone, and from what Brown could see of the Strider's face behind the welding mask, he looked indescribably miserable.

Oh look, it's the same one who found you, Jellybean thought groggily. He looks even bigger than in your memory.

I guess the Strider Bishop killed was someone else...

No kidding... Brown thought.

Was that a chain attached to the base Blade Strider's toilet?

What had he gone through since the Scientist brought him back to the base?

Just like Brown, Blade Strider was no longer really alive.

He looked like he was only surviving.

Brown struggled to take back control of his body while the Parasite was still mildly concussed, but Jellybean was having none of it.

Just let me look at him...

I didn't come here to look at some stupid blacksmith. I want to see weapons. There's nothing here but a loser making sunglasses.

The Parasite forced Brown to stand, staggering a little, and turned to leave.

"Wait..." a voice came from behind them.

The Parasite turned around. It could easily have glitched away, but it turned Brown's body back to look.

Whether its hesitation was motivated by curiosity or the desire not to look like a coward in front of the much larger Skibidi, the Parasite looked back at the Strider, who was lifting his welding mask up with one of the two swords that wasn't glowing white hot.

"So, you survived," he said, looking right at Brown. "I know that striped tie..."

His face looked so ordinary below the mask. He was paler than Brown remembered, and his eyes were ringed with shadows, tired and defeated.

There was such a strange expression on that massive face.

Pity.

"What have they done to you? You poor thing... I failed you, just like I failed everyone else."

The Parasite giggled, and glitched forward to stand on the Strider's toilet seat.

"You don't really care about that stupid robot, do you? Can't you see it's only a metal thing?"