A/N: And here's part 3, aka the part where I discovered the pains of making everything sound natural while dropping minor hints. Have fun finding them though :))
***
Ice jerked back with a surprised yell. At the same time, Taufan and Yaya descended on them with chips flying through the air.
One chip drew everyone's eyes as it landed on Ice's neck.
"Gopal!" Solar shouted frantically, "Powers, now!"
"Food transformation!"
An ice wall appeared and promptly turned into hard candy, but the chip on Ice's neck remained untouched.
Blaze cursed and leapt out of the path of an icy arrow, "They were planning to ambush us!"
"As if I didn't know that already," Solar snapped as he teleported away from Yaya's punch, "We need to get to the spaceship!"
"But - Ice -" Blaze knew it was foolish, but he didn't want to leave his twin.
"Blaze, the only way to save him is at the source- Duri, look out!"
Duri cried out. Despite the danger, Blaze whipped around to see the younger boy on his knees, a hand on the side of his neck as one of Gopal's shots sailed just over his head.
The next moment, thorny vines were shooting towards Solar. Blaze knew Solar couldn't defend himself against them - after all, sunlight only made plants grow stronger - and was just about to burn them down when he felt something hit the back of his neck, the force making him stumble forward.
The next second his mind went blank, except for one voice, repeating itself over and over again, "Subdue all TAPOPS members... Subdue all TAPOPS members... Subdue all-"
"Food transformation!"
Suddenly, the voice disappeared. Blaze shook his head, disorientated, and then became aware of something sticking to the back of his neck. Reaching back, he discovered a piece of chewing gum.
"Thanks, Gopal!" Blaze had time to yell before he saw Solar leap at him. The first thought that entered his mind was that Solar had been hit too, and he readied a fireball - but then he realized that his brother's face was determined, not blank.
Solar grabbed his arm and reached for Gopal's. Before either of them could question him, he yanked them into the hallway, somehow managing to avoid all attacks, and shouted, "Solar Leap!"
And all three of them found themselves briefly at an intersection, and then at the end of another hallway. As soon as Solar released their arms, Gopal keeled over, panting and frantically fanning himself.
"Side effect?" Blaze raised an eyebrow at the larger boy.
"Yeah," Solar pulled Gopal back up and dragged him down empty hallways towards the hangars as quickly as possible, Blaze following, "You and I can both withstand heat, so we were fine. It should wear off for him in a moment."
They ran in silence for a moment before Gopal spoke up.
"Ice and Duri were our defenders. So... what do we do now?"
Solar and Blaze both tensed at the mention of their respective twins' predicament.
"We'll have to improvise," Solar said heavily, "I left the tablet behind too, so we're going in blind. Our best bet is to find the surveillance room - from what I remember, it's a floor up from the entrance - and try to find the computer through the camera feeds."
"Sounds easy enough," Blaze commented lightly, mostly to distract himself from the gravity of the situation.
"Meanwhile, Gopal, transform as many chips as you can. Blaze and I will do the fighting."
"Aye aye, leader!" Gopal did a mock salute.
***
The trio slowed down as they neared the hangars and peeked around the last corner. As Solar had predicted, there was the faint, nearly invisible outline of a walkway connected to one of the exits. Blaze probably would have missed it if he hadn't known what he was looking for.
Surprisingly, there was no one in sight.
"Whoever's behind this seems to have a lot of faith in their cloaking device," Solar commented.
Blaze grinned, "Too much faith. Let's go."
The three of them made their way to the near-invisible walkway, eyes scanning their surroundings for hidden traps. But except for TAPOPS's basic security measures, there were none.
Going through the walkway itself was a surreal experience. Blaze felt like he was floating in outer space (with a helmet, of course), yet still in complete control of his movement. But the most memorable moment was when they stepped out of the glimmering tube, and the view of outer space was suddenly obscured by layers of metal that seemed to have popped out of thin air.
"Woah," Gopal breathed as they stopped at the spaceship's entrance to take in their new surroundings.
Blaze couldn't blame him for his awe. The ship was easily twice the size of the MYS Kebenaran, and the hallway they were standing in alone seemed to go on forever.
After a moment, Solar shook his head and tugged on the other two's arms, "Come on. If I remember correctly, the surveillance room should be down this hallway, up a flight of stairs and to the right."
But no sooner had he taken a step into the ship's interior than his foot caught on a thin wire close to the ground, making him trip and fall on his face.
Immediately, panels along the walls snapped open to reveal shotguns, loaded with metallic chips and aimed at the group. As one, all of them fired. Blaze yelled and flung himself on the ground next to Solar; Gopal made to follow, but he wasn't fast enough.
A chip hit the large boy's neck. The rest rained down on the two brothers, though thankfully without enough force to make them stick.
Blaze pulled Solar to his feet just as Gopal picked up a fallen chip and threw it at them. The two sprinted down the hallway, the chip missing them by a millimeter.
"Is it just me, or has Gopal suddenly gotten a lot stronger?" Blaze huffed as Gopal chased them, hurling more chips.
"And faster," Solar added, noticing that the Indian boy wasn't falling behind in the least.
"Then why aren't you using your powers to get us away?!"
"Can't - teleporting other people takes a lot of energy and I used all mine up earlier."
Just then, Blaze stumbled over another tripwire. Without missing a beat, Solar pulled him down to the ground. It was then, on the floor, that Blaze belatedly thought to summon a wall of fire to slow Gopal down; unfortunately, the metal walls meant his flames wouldn't last for long.
As the hidden panels closed up again, the two of them scrambled to their feet. However, there were many more chips on the ground than last time, to the point that there was significant danger of slipping. To make matters worse, Blaze's fire had already died down and Gopal was quickly catching up again; the latter was doing a surprisingly good job of staying upright on the chip-covered floor, while Blaze and Solar were slipping every other moment and relying on each other for balance.
Solar pointed at an opening up ahead that seemed to lead to a stairwell.
"Through there! There's supposed to be a door at the top - we'll close it and hopefully cut Gopal off." He glanced behind briefly.
Rounding the corner to the stairwell at high speeds, Blaze very nearly lost his footing. Behind him, Solar yelped as he, too, slipped. Currently in a rather bad position to turn back, Blaze simply shouted at Solar to hurry before racing up the stairs, taking several steps at a time.
Thankfully Gopal didn't hit him before he reached the next floor. Blaze raced through, paused a moment to find the right button and then punched it to close the door. Then, he leaned heavily against the metal, panting and closing his eyes in relief.
"That was a close one, huh?" He commented to Solar after a moment.
There was no reply.
Alarmed, Blaze's eyes snapped back open. The hallway he was standing in was empty.
"Solar?"
The hallway remained stubbornly void of his brother. If the situation weren't so serious, he would have suspected that Solar was getting back at him for all the pranks he had played - but Solar wasn't the type to goof off during missions.
Had Blaze accidently left him on the other side of the door? Except - no, that couldn't have been the case, because Solar probably still had enough energy to teleport himself if he was too far behind. He didn't dare open the door now because he was sure Gopal was waiting on the other side, but he needed to know what exactly had happened.
Suddenly he remembered Solar crying and stumbling as they rounded the corner into the stairwell. At the time he'd thought Solar had simply slipped like him, but then, Solar wasn't the type to cry out just because he lost his footing. What if...?
No, no jumping to conclusions. The surveillance room would have his answers... only, Solar had been in charge of finding it, and right now Solar was nowhere to be seen.
Blaze could feel a panic attack coming on. He had been relying on Solar to lead them to their goal, because whatever Blaze was, he was not a strategist. All he could do was entertain and follow orders, and without someone around to direct him the plan might as well be-
"Stop right there, hothead," Blaze muttered abruptly, slapping himself, "Focus. What would Solar do?"
What would Solar do? Blaze pictured him in his mind. In all likelihood, Solar would keep a cool head and improvise with what he had - in this case, Blaze. He would figure out how to use Blaze's attributes to their advantage. Let's see... Blaze was good at burning things and pranking. When he pranked, he often had to sneak around with Taufan and set traps with Duri. So... he could probably sneak his way to the computer they needed unnoticed. And then, hopefully, he could shut the system down.
Not bad for his first plan, actually. But first, he needed to locate the computer - where did Solar say the surveillance room was again?
"Down the hallway... up a flight of stairs - done that - and... to the right," Blaze muttered, "Got it."
He started off down the hallway. Not far away, there was a closed door. Readying himself for a fight, Blaze opened it.
The room was empty except for a mind-controlled guard by the door, who Blaze quickly and silently took down. However, it was definitely the room he was looking for; on the opposite wall, several camera feeds were playing on monitors.
"Alright," Blaze dropped into a chair in front of a control panel, "Let's hope this works."
Thankfully, the panel itself was fairly similar to the ones at TAPOPS (which, by the way, he only knew how to use because he needed to for a prank). Blaze fleetingly wondered if the module was popular in the galaxy.
He knew he should focus on looking for the computer, but he couldn't help himself. Second-guessing the entire time, he found the camera feed of the stairwell closest to the entrance and rewound it.
On the small screen, panels in the walls snapped open and the shotguns fired at an unseen point. Blaze watched as, soon after, he and Solar came sprinting into sight, Gopal hot on their heels. As Blaze rounded the corner into the stairwell, slipping and sliding, Gopal threw a chip at him. It missed, but instead hit Solar, who cried out in surprise as the force of the impact knocked him off his feet and-
Blaze quickly closed out of the feed before he could see any more, breathing heavily.
After a moment to recollect himself, he firmly pushed the memory out of his head, ignoring the urge to run straight back to the stairwell. Solar would have told him to focus on the mission first, so that was what he would do.
This time, Blaze scrolled through the feeds one by one, hoping to find something that resembled the picture he had briefly seen on Solar's tablet earlier (had it really been less than half an hour ago? It seemed like an eternity had passed since then).
He'd almost given up hope when, on the second-to-last feed, he found it.
A huge mass of wires and machines, all connected to a monitor in the center of the room. The monstrosity filled up the entire room, which was easily three times the size of his bedroom at TAPOPS. And - Blaze blinked in surprise - Sai and Shielda stood guard at the entrance. He'd yet to run into anyone he knew on the ship so far, and he'd half-forgotten that the rest of TAPOPS had also been pulled into this mess.
But considering he'd once singlehandedly beaten the twins with his first-tier powers, they wouldn't be much of a problem this time around.
The room wasn't too far from where he was now, but just in case, Blaze pried the cover off a vent in the corner and crawled in.
Standard precaution, Taufan's voice echoed in his head, You can never be sure you won't run into anyone when you're sneaking around.
Blaze just hoped this precaution was good enough to spare him from any more tripwires.
***
A/N: Part 4 most likely within the week, so keep an eye out! It will be the last part, where (typically) all the hero's allies are struck down and he must continue on to destroy his enemy's evil plot alone, along the way running into a most unexpected p- you know what, I'm going to stop right there.
Lola, signing off!