The Main HQ - Experimental 2.0 Drug

Yangcong, the most reviled man in galactic history, the despoiler of worlds, the master of plots hatched in the dark, the great destron guru; these were all but a few of the monikers that the mad scientist hybrid went by. Throughout his years of destructive and insidious rapture, he had made quite a few enemies - the Arcosian Empire, the Saiyan Kingdom, and the Earth Government, to name a few.

To Yakito, it mattered little where the orders came from; money was money and someone wanted him to wreak havoc into a top secret underground facility belonging to the criminal bastard. Something about a old Tuffle cooperator of his who had a mole that infiltrated the secret base to leak out its location. It was located somewhere in the Destron Crags, one of the most hazardous locations not only Plant but in the galaxy as a whole. 

This was perfect; due to the inherent risks of the mission, Yakito haggled the reward to be a tad higher and killed two birds with one stone by also asking for a rebreather to protect him from destron gas and cover the lower half of his face that had been maimed by Zuqetta. Begrudgingly, his employer accepted before giving Yakito his newfound piece of gear: A half-mask rebreather with a single puce-colored scouter lens covering an eye. "Snazzy!" The androgynous fox chirped, surprised at how snuggly the Tuffle-made apparatus fitted his Zoan snout.

With a nod, the vulpine femboy turned to face his employer with a big grin hidden underneath his rebreather. "Let's do this!"

---

Yakito was dropped amidst the waste of the Destron Crags via a stealth jet with a cloaking device. Without a parachute to slow his fall, the Zoan martial artist landed near the base with a loud thud and a column of dust rising from his landing post. Almost immediately, a nearby drone sentinel who patrolled the area investigated the commotion. The staff member within the base responsible of monitoring the security and drone cameras only saw a bestial blur rushing from the cloud of sand before they lost connection to the drone's AI.

"Uh... sir..." The security agent beckoned his superior who looked at him with a sigh. "What is it?" The portly higher-up asked, twirling his mustache. "We're gonna have a problem." The security agent curtly said, pointing at the screen where several camera point of views were rapidly shutting down after catching that very same blur who originally took down the drone. "DAMMIT!" Knowing better than to postpone an emergency, the chubby Alien in charge of the department rushed toward a conspicuous red button that he slammed with gusto.

A loud blare began to echo out across the facility. Each room was filled by the flicker of a red light. The intercoms hummed to life to communicate the following: "THIS IS NOT AN EXERCISE. I REPEAT. THIS IS NOT AN EXERCISE; THE BASE IS UNDER ATTACK!" Chaos ensued as Yakito kept plowing through the halls of the secret base on all fours, homing toward the highest energy signature that belonged to Yangcong.
 

Yangcong watched as the tuffle awoken from their sleep. An alarm went off notifying to Yangcong that there was an intruder. He spoke in his scouter and spoke to his men.

"Handle that."

As the alarm was now turned off in the room, this would allow Tarine to keep his mind at ease for now. Yangcong looking over at Tarine and pulling out a device, scanning his entire body with it. As he went over Tarine's body the first time. He felt a weird reading on his scanner. Could it be broken? He checked it again, and again, a weird reading on his scanner. Now this was truly odd indeed... So Yangcong tested the scanner on his own body just to make sure, not once, but twice he went through with it. It was all normal with no other signs. So as he went through Tarine's body and scanning it not once, but twice again. The same weird reading was popping up. As Yangcong got another device to properly see what was inside of Tarine. Yangcong's jaw had slightly opened. The boy had a parasite inside of him.

"My name is Yangcong. My team had pulled you out of the crash site on Earth. Demons were around you and attacking. My team brought you to this planet known as Planet Plant. I can also see that you are tuffle as well. Very interesting. Now then.. are you aware that you are a parasite in your body?"

246

Tarine sighed in relief as the noises stopped, even though his ears still rung. Slowly he brought his hands away from the sides of his head, though before he could relax the elderly tuffle retrieved some sort of device and began running it over his body.

"What... what are you doing?"

Flinching away from the unfamiliar tech on impulse, he blinked a couple of times while eyeing it with unease. Regardless if he received a better explanation for the examination, Tarine would continue to shy back slightly from whatever equipment was pointed at him while he remained seated and tried to regain his bearings. He was becoming increasingly aware of the gap in his knowledge regarding how he ended up in this location, and once the man seemed to find something on the second piece of tech that caught his interest Tarine couldn't hold back his thoughts any longer.

"Uh, why... where am I? Can you tell me what's going on- please?"

The man, revealing his name was Yangcong- the name sounded familiar, but the thought was quickly swept away as he proceeded to describe a strange series of events that apparently led to him being taken here...

...Something had happened on Earth-

He was on Plant!?

"Wait what happened to Earth!? Why would you bring me here-"

This short outburst was quickly halted by the declaration that Yangcong knew what he was, a fellow tuffle, a...

The look of shock turned serious, Tarine's jaw clenching as he flatly produced the next sentence.

"There's no parasite"

Yakito got out of that ambush with great success thanks to his instincts, but his mission was very far from over: A few more lines of resistance were waiting for him, but they were a bit scant thanks to the defenders not expecting for the fox to get that far. A few salvos of energy weapons were dodge by Yakito with rapid dashes and fancy aerial cartwheels.

"TAKE HIM DOWN, DAMMIT! WILL NOTHING LAND ON THIS ACCURSED CRITTER?!?!" A Tuffle manning a turret platform cried out, trying his best to follow the blinking foxling that zigzagged across the room. It was good fun for Yakito to circle around the dude, causing him to friendly fire his squad in a panic for his own survival. "NONONONO!" He realized his mistake too late; the fox turned into a blur, blinking out of existence to reappear behind the Tuffle soldier. Before he had the time to turn around, he felt a prickle through his neck. Just like that, the floor became upside down and his eyes fluttered shut; a swift chop administered against the back of his neck caused him to fall on the ground like a sack of potatoes. 

"Jeez Louise! That was easy and kinda anticlimactic, uh..." He expected a giant mecha to be guarding Yangcong's lab, but all he got were a few turret sentries and moderately-armed soldiers. Yakito pressed a button next to the single puce-colored scouter lens of his half-mask rebreather. The tinted lens hummed to life with yellow characters in the Tuffle language, scanning the arena before showing two power levels. "So one of these must be Yangcong, uh? Apparently, that Tuffle is a giant old fart, so should be easy to tell them apart from each other." Instead of barging in like a maniac, Yakito politely knocked at the reinforced door of the room where Tarine and Yangcong were currently having a deep conversation. 

"Knock knock! Hand over the data of your computers and vacate the premises: This base is getting wiped from existence whether you like it or not, Yangcong. An old cooperator of yours leaked the coordinates and want to see it gone; if it's not from me, it'll be someone else since its now public knowledge, so just make it easy for yourself and surrender it." Yakito stared at the back of his nails, not expecting the wanted criminal to cooperate with him one bit.

Attempted Exit

Yangcong had a knock at the door and that was when he heard a man's voice asking for the data. This was very unfortunate. He couldn't continue his research so instead he decided to bail. Yangcong rushing over to the other door and looking back at Tarine.

"Another day we will meet again... another day...."

Yangcong pulling down a lever and that lever dropping down destron gas inside the room that Tarine was in. Now leaving the room itself, the doors would automatically lock behind him as he quickly rushed over to one of his escape pods. Along with pressing down the lever, Yangcong had also looked at his tablet and pressed one of his buttons on it, it was during times like this that it was meant for escapes like this. The entire building started a countdown.

"Self Destruction in.... 10....9....8...."

The countdown was going down and Yangcong entering his escape pod and pressing the button. The escape pod firing into the sky and Yangcong attempting his escape in the process. The entire base was about to blow up and high levels of destron specially underground was a death sentence to anyone who chooses to stay behind....

“Huh? Wait where-”

Whoever showed up outside that door clearly had an effect on the old man, but by the time Tarine had registered the sound of feet pounding against the floor, he’d already made it to the other end of the room. Tarine could only continue to stare in in the very “fish out of water” way that he was growing accustomed to over the course of this discussion- What did he mean he was leaving? Wasn’t he…

Until he pulled that lever. The sudden flood of dark mist into the room combined caught the redhead by surprise and the instinctive gesture to jump up and cover his mouth was all Yangcong needed to slip out unimpeded. But following that up with the clear sound of a lock snapping shut and the sudden warning of impending doom sent his already addled brain into a panic.

“W-what??”

Tarine’s first impulse was to jolt towards the locked door in the hope he hadn’t just been left in a death trap for no discernible reason, though his path was halted as slab of metal shot past his face and slammed into something that had probably been important before it was reduced to sparks and smoking components. The absurdity of the culprit being a miniature foxman was lost on him in the sheer terror of being at ground zero in a certain death scenario and Yakito might have been able to tell by the deer-in-headlights look being turned his way.

Once the mask was thrown, the not-Tuffle was snapped out of his stupor long enough to fumble the object into a solid grip before his braincells sparked to life and got a glimmer of recognition out of him. With his skin now tingling as the mist curled against there was more than enough convincing to awkwardly shove the mask against his face. But with little time to spare, there was no opportunity to check how secure it was before he was being hurried along by fox to grab hold of them before they presumably left him in the dust while they fled the oncoming devastation. So holding onto the mask in the hope it would stay attached, Tarine hurried over to the smaller fellow and briefly fought against the short-circuit brought on by the implication he would have to climb onto a much smaller man’s back before impulsively attempting to jam his hand into theirs and be dragged along that way.

Presuming that worked- if it hadn’t something really terrible would probably be happening to him soon- Tarine would’ve yelped in shock as he was yanked along with enough force to almost rip his arm out of his socket. What was a blur to Yakito would be damn, near incomprehensible to Tarine, colours streaking past before he could even recognise the shapes that made up the path of destruction his saviour left. Perhaps it was better to be blind to it, with the only thing connecting him to this place being his haphazardly flailing and kicking against the ground in an attempt to keep himself righted before being flung around the next corner.

The sensation of air being sucked down as a wave of searing heat crept closer was enough to make Tarine remember he was just as much a participant in this as the other guy, and his adrenaline-fueled kicks turned into something more tangible as bursts of ki shot out in an attempt to propel him away from the inferno faster. Granted, his skills were rusty and being ragdolled around were hardly good for precise action. But whether the minor boost in speed either helped or hindered Yakito, he’d managed to throw himself clear of the final detonation as the base collapsed under them, most likely taking a number of Yangcong’s people with it. Without natural instincts guiding his landing, Tarine hit the ground hard nearby, not so much groaning from the impact as he was from his shoulder feeling like it would explode from the muscles pulled out of place and the nausea creeping in from what could only be described as rapid-onset motion sickness.

Eventually, he’d be able to drag himself to his feet, and with the toxic air only getting thicker outside of his small supply of filtered air. The only way to remove himself from this toxic wasteland before the protection of his natural energy reservoir wore off and his skin started peeling was to follow in the same direction of the fox.

Should they have waited, Tarine would’ve had more questions than he had answers on the way back to civilisation- most likely skirting around any direct admittal of accepting Yangcong’s crimes as fact in the process and not being able to offer much in return considering as far as he knew, he really had been on Earth before he’d blacked out and found himself on an operating table. Lingering disorientation might’ve helped what he said then and in even later Tuffle custody pass as denial out of shock rather than the zealous defence of a Tuffle he could have mustered otherwise.