The Fifth Guardian

        The sounds of gunfire and rustling foliage were all Ciel heard as her and the Resistance sprinted for their lives. The rogue robots where hounding them as they sprinted through an uncharted portion of the forest in an attempt to lose their opposition. However, the Resistance was unable to run for very long, as the chasing robots were remarkably faster than them, and their combined gunfire was unable to take out even just one of their hundreds of forces. Eventually, the enemy summoned one of their laser drones, which took out the Resistance even faster.

        Ceil was barely able to run long enough to escape, and eventually stumbled across a massive metallic door. " A dead end?" Ciel stuttered out between breaths.

        Ceil's Cyber-Elf partner Passy replied, "No, I feel a strong energy reading inside. This MUST be the place."

        "Leave this to me, Ciel!" One of the remaining Resistance members, named Milan, assured. "Stay back, Ciel." He then proceeded to latch a mine onto the door, exploding it.

        "Go. I'll hold them off the best I can." Milan offered.

        Ciel didn't need to walk for very long, as she immediately saw a rusted stasis chamber in the middle of the room. Walking up to it, she could swear she saw a familiar form within the capsule. "Is this what I think it is...?" Ciel mused aloud to herself. She ran her hand along the capsule, only for it to promptly unseal, scattering dust everywhere.

        Recovering from her coughing fit, Ciel took another glimpse at the capsule's contents, confirming her suspicions. "I knew it," she breathed to herself. "This is the legendary Maverick Hunter, Zero. This could be just what we need." Ceil and Passy walked up to Zero's inactive frame to find a way to wake him up, only for an invisible barrier to give them quite the shock.

        "HEY! Nobody touches Daddy until I can confirm you're the good guys!" A young, childish voice piped up from inside the capsule.

        "Who said that?" Ciel and Passy chorused.

        A brown colt appeared from behind Zero's form, got on the Maverick Hunter's chest, and examined Ciel. "I can't really trust you yet, so I'm gonna go back into stasi-"

        *BOOM!*

        A massive explosion shook the entire room, causing Ciel to lose her footing and the colt to faceplant onto the ground below the capsule. Unknown to both of them, Zero had groggily awoken from his slumber, but still lacked the necessary power to move. Milan piped up, "There's too many! We've been cornered!" as he ran over towards Ciel's location. Ciel watched as one of the last remaining Resistance members was turned into metallic Swiss Cheese in front of her.

        "Ciel! Use my powers!" Passy offered.

        "But... If I do... then..."

        "Don't worry about me!" Passy interjected. "People are more concerned for your return!"

        Meanwhile, the colt saw what was going down, and decided that they were the good guys. He decided that Daddy would likely help them, and as such, routed all the capsule's power into him. He unfortunately underestimated the amount of power in the capsule, and as such, Zero was in for a really abrupt and painful wake-up call. Combined with Passy having been used by Ciel to break the barrier around Zero...

        "OW! WHAT THE HELL, TURNER?!!?" Zero hollered as the electric overload shocked him out of his slumber.

        The foal gestured towards Ciel, no longer accompanied by Passy. Ciel then pointed at the array of blue robots chasing after them. “Alright…” Zero sighed. “I’ve been itching for a fight anyway.”

        A gun came flying towards Zero’s face, and he caught it without even looking at it. “Thanks, Turner.” he acknowledged.

        After Zero ran off to combat the Maverick forces, Ciel decided to stay behind and get to know the colt more. “So, your name is Turner?” She asked.

        “Well, I go by both Time Turner and Doctor Whooves, but, honestly, any nickname stemming from those two is perfectly fine.” His voice was strangely reminiscent of some country Ciel couldn’t remember the name of for the life of her, but she knew it was just beyond the atlantic.

        “How exactly did you get into the capsule?”

        “I don’t know either. If I’m being entirely fair, I don’t remember anything before you opened the chamber. Aside from my name of course.”

        “Don’t sweat it, Doc. Hibernation sickness can happen to robots and living beings alike.”

       “We should probably get going. If I know Daddy he’s blazing through the forces as we speak.” Ciel didn’t get to ask him what he meant by Daddy, as he went dashing off in the direction Zero took to. And similarly to Zero, left after-images behind.

After a few minutes, Turner and Ciel eventually reached Zero, standing in front of a metallic platform. “Oh, great, a dead end?” Ciel groaned. She walked onto the platform towards the wall to see if there was any way around it. Unfortunately, there wasn’t and the platform collapsed under her.

Zero was able to react fast enough to dash to her, and hold her as he slid down the wall, and Turner did the same a few meters above them. After reaching the ground about 30 seconds later, Ciel pushed herself out of Zero’s arms.

“Thank you… for saving my life.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Zero said. “Sweat THAT.” He pointed at the passage where Ciel entered from, only it was completely caved in.

“Well now what?” Ciel sighed.

“Allow me.” Turner said. He trotted up to the rubble blocking their escape and pulled out a strange looking device from his mane. He pointed a light at the rubble from the device, however, one particular area caught his interest.

“STAY BACK!” He hollered. “There’s an enemy behind this rubble, and he’s more than capable of-” Turner was interrupted by a hand destroying the rubble and grabbing him. Another hand came out and grabbed Ciel.

Zero took the initiative and chased after whatever grabbed Turner and Ciel, only to find a massive robot clutching Ciel and Turner. After shooting at it for a few, Zero found that his buster wasn’t doing a damned thing to the Golem, and everything seemed bleak.

“ZERO…” A voice said from a nearby computer. “ZERO, TAKE THIS.” Said computer then spat out a metallic rod, which then showed its function as a beam saber and landed point-down next to Zero.

Zero didn’t bother with questions, and just destroyed the Golem with a single slice. “Was it just me, or is that voice ridiculously familiar?” He asked Ceil and Turner upon approaching them.

“... Nothing.” Doc said after a few seconds of hard thought.

“No, not really.” Ciel answered. “There should be a Trans Server in the next room. We’ll be able to head back to base from there.” Zero then proceeded to walk through the door, Doc following closely behind.