New Age Chapter 20, a Zoids fanfic by Sh33p

Hats off to this fic. It tops most fics I've read....including most of the ones I posted here. Tim Seltzer, seltzer@seltzerbooks.com

Jamie let out a yawn while stumbling toward his bedroom. It was close to eleven now, he`d had a long day, basically come close to winning a battle, proven the currently silent Wild Eagle wrong and gotten a few cheap laughs at Brad`s expense on the way back to the base.

Speaking of Brad, he was currently off somewhere with Naomi. Again. Jamie didn`t care either way though, that meant he could have some relative peace at the base - which was still a freezer at night. Having spent the past three hours doing nothing but running combat simulations, he was mentally exhausted, cold and currently had his eyes only half opened at best.

Several steps into his bedroom, Jamie paused, turned around and slid the door shut, promptly locking it a few seconds later before continuing on to bed. "Time for sleep... Gneh..."

And with that, the teen flopped face-first into bed with a dull, muffled thump against the mattress, kicking his shoes off and crawling up to where his head was obscured by the two pillows on the bed, then just laying there and falling asleep. It had indeed been a long day, and while Jamie Hameros was going to obviously be getting some sleep, the same just couldn`t be said for someone else.

The Wild Eagle opened his eyes the moment he felt Jamie`s mind enter into a dreamlike state, sitting up after a few seconds and stretching his arms and legs out before standing up. "Sleep good, dink," he said aloud, stretching his back until a familiar pop sounded through the otherwise quiet room. Jamie may have had a long day, but the Wild Eagle - Will E. as he called himself at the clubs - was intent on having an equally long night.

"So, Stoller lets the kid do what he wants regardless then?" Doctor Tauros asked, leaning back a bit in the recliner that now bore an odd indentation in the general shape of his backside. Leena was still sleeping in the hospital bed, she`d be getting checked out the day after tomorrow but for now, it was only around 11:05 at night, and Steven was busy with a call to a certain someone.

"Yes. My guess is that Stigma has a certain affinity for him, but for the most part it`s probably just business sense. The Backdraft handled things with him about the same," the woman at the end of the line replied. Said woman was Sarah Obscura, Vega Obscura`s mother and currently on the fast track to being one of the only four people that Steven actually spoke to on a recurring basis who were close to or at his own age group. The others were Oscar and Maria Hameros, and Harabec Davids, who Steven had struck a relative acquaintance up with following the events of Kale`s attack.

"I see. So, for the most part, Vega is basically living by himself with a mechanic crew on call during his battles now," he surmised. "From what I saw yesterday, pretty much. Stigma still won`t talk to me and Vega probably doesn`t know my prison actually allows calls from certain people," she said with a sigh. "I think he`s still bitter over something or other."

"You never really told me about that," Steve said with a frown, though the fact they were talking on the phone meant expressions were pretty much useless.

"Stoller and I were pretty close friends once - nothing romantic, he isn`t my type and I`m not his. He introduced me to Vega and Kale`s father, a friend of his named Derrek. Stigma was there for our wedding, he was also there when both of our children were born, he even put off his last battle for close to nine years for an entire two days to be there when Derrek and I`s marriage started souring. He tried to keep us together but things didn`t go well and we split up."

"To both of their objections, I put Kale and Vega into the Five Kings program. I thought it would give them both a claim on the future of the Backdraft by providing them with the skills to handle themselves in a battle at an early age. Derrek disagreed and broke the terms of our divorce, suing for legal custody so-"

"So you had him killed," Steven deduced from what Stoller had told them all shortly after Kale`s assault.

"Yes. I had him killed because there were only two other options: Lose my boys to their father or lose my career in the Backdraft and then lose them anyway to child welfare services since I didn`t really have many other job skills at the time," Sarah explained with a dry tone. "With reasons like those, I actually don`t blame you," Steven replied with an equally dry tone. "Right. Well, you might agree, but Stigma didn`t. He dropped out of complete retirement then and there to try and take over the Five Kings program."

"He probably saved Vega`s sanity and kept Kale from going off the deep end for a good while longer than he would have otherwise. In the end though, membership of the program dropped... Two of the members died - Vega killed one of them himself in an accident during a battle," Sarah paused again before continuing. "When Stoller left the Group to try and fight Bit Cloud head on in an officially sanctioned battle, Kale lost his only major confident and friend aside from Rayth Takahori, who vanished not too long after that. With no one else left that he felt he could confide in about the stresses of the program, Kale went insane."

"And Stoller blames himself for it," Steven finished for her. "Mostly, yes. Kale, Vega and Rayth were all like sons to him, so were the other two, I think that`s the real reason he`s trying to keep away from Kale and Vega`s conflict right now," Sarah mused. "Sounds like it did a number on him then," Steve commented. "It did a number on everyone, Vega still refuses to live around groups of people from what Stigma has been willing to tell me. He even demanded his quarters to be distant from everyone else`s during the last days of the Five Kings program, and when we found the Berserk Fury..."

"Bit did the exact same thing when he first got his hands on the Liger - still does sometimes, in fact," he answered. "Anyway, you were saying?"

"Vega also started sleeping in the cockpit, he refused to be around group activities, even with kids his own age. As for Kale, he stole one of the Genosaurers we found with the Fury and fled. You know the rest from there, I assume?"

"Yeah. I`m guessing that Stoller blames you for most of the damage," Steven mused. "Exactly."

The desert, fifty-two miles South of Forintown. It was mostly empty, bar the occasional wild animal or two, and bar the even less frequent vehicle in the night. The most that could be seen was a certain black-and-blue Gustav, with another certain Zoid standing dimly on the one trailer that the Gustav would`ve been towing along were it moving. As it stood, both Zoids were sitting idle, a campfire set about ten feet away from the trailer, a sleeping bag a reasonable distance from that and a solitary figure eating what looked like the equivelent of a grilled cheeseburger on sandwhich bread.

Said figure was one Marcus Harlock, currently a little paranoid and not afraid to show it since his handgun was sitting on the ground within plain reach. The safety was also very obviously not in place.

Two days ago, Mark had bested an assassin who had developed an extremely unhealthy infatuation with his girlfriend, and an equally unhealthy(for Mark, anyway) infatuation with seeing him dead. The Shadow Fox had basically healed the damage to it`s cockpit by now, and Arihmanes` Khukri had been stabbed into the ground next to the sleeping bag. Mark had developed something of an affinity for the awkward looking weapon, if only because it could probably take someone`s head off in an instant if he ran out of bullets.

His thoughts were a bit distant, naturally, one tends to focus on more important things than the taste of their food whenever they realize they have a murderous assassin out for their heads, with said assassin also their significant other. In bed.

Really, there were actually more important things than Zoid battles for some people. Of course the Shadow Fox was a bit miffed by that revelation, but it would get over it with time.

However, the silence of the evening, and the relatively calm degree of reflection it awarded, was promptly snapped like a twig by the padding steps of something coming at a relaxed pace. Mark and the Fox both leered in the same direction at the same time, with the human of the two grabbing his gun and the Zoid swinging his AZ 30mm Laser Vulcan around to lock down the direction of the steps, which were coming from behind a fairly large looking rock.

They continued. Marcus bit into his cheek, but they still continued until several seconds of silence came into play.

The Ivory Blade Liger lumbered around the rockside, coming to stand across from the Gustav, the Fox and the aforementioned 'newbie.' Mark grit his teeth a bit and lowered his gun back down before taking another chomp out of his dinner without so much as a word, greeting the other pilot with the universally accepted medium for communication known simply as: the middle finger.

"Gee, swell to see you too," Kyle quipped as the Blade Liger`s cockpit swung open, allowing the former mechanic to stand straight up. "`M bufy ea`in`, guh wa`kuh," Mark replied with a mouth full of half-chewed food, gulping it down after a second while Kyle jumped down from the head of his Zoid, walking forward with his hands tucked into the pockets of his trowsers, absently noting the fact that Mark still had his gun in his lap.

The Fox and the Liger on the other hand, picked up where they had left off at their last encounter, promptly growling out what equated to insults of varying degrees at one another.

"Fox has a white Liger phobia now," Mark stated dryly, downing what was left of the burger without even chewing it before watching Kyle plop down across from where he was sitting on the opposite side of the fire. "So what can I shoot you for?" He asked lazily. "Nothing actually... Markie," Kyle replied with a snicker. "Only one person gets away with calling me that," Mark shot back, raising the gun again before lowering his aim.

And stopping at just the right level so that the barrel of the weapon was tilted in a direction that corresponded rather obviously with the general location of Kyle`s groin. "Just so we`re clear on that," Mark said. "Point taken. Anyway," Kyle shifted subjects, almost as if he wasn`t intimidated by the .45 caliber handgun presently aimed in such a manner that it threatened to permanently raise his voice up by about thirteen decibels. "I`m here to make an offer to ya..."

"I don`t buy girlscout cookies. Especially not when the girlscout could stab me to death with his chin."

"I`m solo," Mark shot back, finally lowering the gun back down to the ground again. "So am I, this would only be temporary. An off-and-on sorta thing, get my drift?" Kyle asked blandly, leering over at the Ivory Blade Liger. "Will you stop teasing him?" He demanded. The Zoid growled out and then settled down onto it`s belly. The Fox on the other hand shrieked out the equivelent of an insult to something along the lines of the other Zoid`s paint job, which brought the Ivory right back up with a roar.

"Do you honestly think those two are gonna work together?" Mark asked sarcastically, simply pointing at the two howling Zoids with his thumb. "Sure I do. Besides, it`d put you into Class A, one closer to Class S, and that means you`d get more intense battles."

"I`m not really in this for battles, I`m mainly in this to help pay for Abbie`s college education," Mark retorted plainly.

"We`d be on a timetable though. Four days to get to Class A," Kyle explained dryly. "... It takes 20 wins straight to get into Class A from Class B, 35 from C," Mark replied with the same tone. "Five matches daily. Can you handle that?" Kyle asked. "... Eh... I think you`re insane."

"What would the team name be?" Marcus asked after several seconds, listening to how the Fox and the Blade Liger were still throwing insults at each other. "The Suicide Team, of course," Kyle replied with a slightly insane little glint in his eyes. "The Suicide Team?" Mark asked in an unbelievably cynical tone. "Yep."

The Rendosa Dance Club, 11:48 PM on the dot. Like every night, the place was packed to capacity, and probably beyond, and like every night, the place was blaring music, filled with an atmosphere of more designer-styled hallucinogens than you could shake a stick at, and like every night it was home to close to four hundred and fifty people with ages ranging from 19 to 28, along with the occasional exception of someone who looked old enough and had the proper amount of skill with forging identities and the like.

The Wild Eagle, also known as both Jamie Hameros and Will E.(Edgars) depending on the time, setting and personality, was one of these exceptions. How he had gotten his identification was a simple matter of properly made laminated cardboard and plastic with a picture of himself, fake address, age and the like, and his false name, William Edgars. The end result was that he was now able to get into a club which generally only allowed 18 and up admissions.

Several seconds passed, and the Wild Eagle nonchalantly stepped inside, ducking past a man on his way out who had obviously had just a bit much to drink. As evidenced by the fact that he promptly threw up on himself after exiting the club.

"The sweet smell of fun to be had," he said to himself, casually hopping out of the way of a random clubber, who was obviously about as wasted as the first person he had dodged away from. The action allowed him to do something he tended to do every night that he came to this place: The chance to dive over the safety railing and drop ten feet down to the dance floor.

With two flips and a corkscrew followed by a floor clearing twist on his head, fluidly breakdancing to his feet at the end, that was exactly what the Wild Eagle did, springing back up to his feet and joining everyone else after several seconds. Given that it was routine, nobody was really bothered in the least by it, but one person still caught his eye.

She was about a half-a-head shorter than he was, slightly on the thinnish side, tanned and had extremely light, bluish-silver hair. To boot, she was looking right at him with a pair of strangely familiar-yet-different green eyes.

"You failed," a fairly threatening voice rang through the ears of one Rayth Takahori. He was presently flying several hundred feet in front of a fast moving Whale King, knowledgeable of the key fact that every forward firing gun on the massive airship - including a BFG-sized Charged Particle Cannon - was presently aimed at his smoking Stormsworder.

"He caught me off guard," he responded after several seconds, remaining unphased at his employer`s icy glare. "I`m beginning to question whether or not you truly have what it takes to be in this organization for much longer," the other stated grimly. "I have what it takes, I was caught unprepared. Hameros had just switched out of the Wild Eagle, I thought he would be weaker."

"But instead, you thought wrong. Extraordinarily careless for someone with a record like your`s. I almost have to wonder if Kale is as incompetent..."

"Just like you refuse to work with other Rommel warriors... What is this with you 'Kings of the Battlefield,' anyway? Are you too good to work with anyone else?" The green eyed man asked, gingerly running a hand over the head of the green Organoid, which rested it`s chin on his right knee like a gigantic dog, leering ominously at Rayth with murderously golden eyes. "Yes. We are. Send anyone to work with me and I`ll shoot them down myself," Rayth growled back.

"Well then, I`ll give you two more chances. If you fail to bring down Hameros and kill him, I`ll assign you to something else... Something you can`t screw up."

"... Don`t take me lightly Rommel. I may be at less than full capacity right now but I can still cripple your Whale King and every Zabat, Stormsworder, Griffin, Raynos, Pteras or Redler you send at me. At once," Rayth threatened in the same tone. "And I`m also smart enough not to make stupid mistakes like you... Handing off a Scout Fox to a member of the Blitz Team."

"Not that it matters much. I just wanted to test out the design after all," Rommel shrugged. "Then you could have done better than you did... By far," Rayth spat. "I do what I want, when I want. Now go and make yourself useful somehow, Rommel out."

The screen blipped off and the Whale King`s gunports slid shut once again, just as the enormous carrier Zoid banked gently off to the side, heading into the distance of the evening. Rayth only popped his jaw several times and continued hobbling along. This wasn`t what he had been offered, not at all. At least in the Backdraft, they treated him with respect.

And speaking of a certain elder heir to the Obscura family name, Kale was presently seated in the cockpit of his Genosaurer. He was also presently staring dangerously ahead, occasionally glancing off to either side but generally just staring ahead, because ahead was where most of the firepower would probably come from.

"Surrender, Kale Obscura. We have you surrounded!" The leader of the group of Command Wolves stated. It was obvious that they were Guardian Force operated Zoids, they had the symbol of the Helic Republic crossed with the Guylos Empire with a globe of Zi in the background marked on either shoulder of each Zoid. "You people must have a death wish," Kale stated blandly. "Surrender now! You`re wanted for the Massacre at Raven Heights, as well as over 88 other individual and group murders, not to mention all the property damage you`ve caused in your little spree."

"... Yes. You all have one hell of a death wish," Kale repeated. The Genosaurer cracked it`s neck to either side with a low, menacing growl.

"To be a sport, I`ll give you all as long as it takes to make peace with your gods. After that, I`m going to kill you. One. By. One."

"We`re not afraid of you," one of the pilots stated, the Command Wolf he was in promptly bristling somewhat. "Then something is obviously wrong with your heads," Kale replied. "I`ve had just about enough of you," the commander stated. "Really? And I care why? You`re going to be dead in a matter of minutes anyway..."

"Three..." He said again, practically not hearing anything at all. "Have it your way... Fire at will!"

The Genosaurer vanished in a burst of flame from the backs of it`s lower legs, just as the ground it had been standing on exploded in a blaze of firepower from the entire task force of close to fifteen Command Wolves. "And here I was giving you a grace period," Kale chided, even as the claws of the Genosaurer found their mark in the cockpit of the lead Zoid...

"You`re payin` for your own trailer," Mark stated, climbing into his sleeping back and pausing long enough to glance up at the howling Shadow Fox with an annoyed glint. "SHUT THE HELL UP ALREADY, WILL YA?!" He screamed, causing the Zoid to turn it`s howling on him for several seconds.

Until it saw the bloodshot look in his eyes. The Fox finally silenced from there, as did the Liger, both Zoids settling down wherever they were as Kyle unrolled his own sleeping bag across from Marcus on the opposite end of the campfire. "You`re still towing it though, right?" Kyle asked. "Gee, brainiac, I`m the one who owns a Gustav, you do the math..."

And these two were somehow honestly expected to work together? For four whole days? Let alone anything after that?

Morning. Jamie figured it to be about 10:30, he usually woke up around then if his alarm clock wasn`t working right. Apparently, this morning that was just the case. "Need to buy a space heater," he noted tiredly to himself, if only because the Blitz Team base really was a virtual freezer at night. It had been more so given the fact that Jamie didn`t actually know where the temperature controls for the base were, it seemed only Steven did.

With a languid yawn, the teen leaned up in bed, only then realizing that he wasn`t wearing a shirt. "Must`ve yanked it off somehow last night," he guessed at himself with another yawn, finally wiping the sleep out of his eyes enough to realize that this wasn`t his bedroom. This was a motel room.

With a twitch, Jamie lifted the covers just enough and then dropped them back down, promptly glaring around for his clothes at the realization that he was naked, until slightly delayed logic hit him:

With a slight twitch, the teen glanced to the other side of the bed and then promptly yelped in shock, stirring the other occupant with a similar reaction as the two toppled off of the bed with a pair of matching thuds on the roughly carpeted floor, yanking the blankets into a tug of war until Jamie got his hands on the undersheet and gave a solid yank, leaving whoever the other person was to claim the comforter.

"How the hell did I get here?!" Both of them asked, both promptly going silent in an instant.

"... Ah crap..." Jamie thought, wrapping the sheet around himself like a toga and then slowly standing up as the other person followed suit, both exchanging mortified glances at each other.

Author`s Note: Eheh... Heh heh... Poor Jamie >_>; Now you know why Brad saw "Jamie" leaving at night on the security cameras. And yes, Kyle and Mark ARE going to effectively take over the starring role, along with the other OCs and probably Jamie(and Brad if I can cram him in somehow) for the next few chapters. And yes, they will fight through twenty battles in four days. The real question is whether or not they`ll kill one another in the process.

Vile21x: With any luck I`ll be able to avoid turning this into a romance story all together. I prefer keeping the love stories on the side, otherwise they get in the way of everything else, yanno? And yeah, this won`t be a B/L. If anything, you can probably expect Harry to be the one to try and lay the moves on her. When he shows up again, anyway.

Zinou: *Gets out the life support.* You`ll be needing this if you were freaked by the action from before... The next four chapters will focus very heavily on action :P As for Brad and Bram... I dunno, to me Brad seems the type who would be innately hostile to any man with the same sort of personality as him, especially someone who`s going to prove as similar to him as Bram is.

EndlessAdventure: Closer to Riese`s actually, I`ve never seen the crystal saurer or whatever it is. As for the Organoids... Borealis is actually going to have a bit of a story of his own if I get the chance to put Bill into the story a bit more. He isn`t any sort of weirdo offspring of Ambient and Specular, and he isn`t related to Shadow and Zeke, and he has a slight... Connection to a few others in the story. I think I`ll leave it at that, eh?

And that`s all for now. Sorry to leave ya hangin` folks but I won`t be able to update for a little while, since I need to write down the next few parts of New Age. See you in a week or two!

New Age by Sh33p

Best Fanfics on the Web, selected by Tim

Tim Seltzer's page www.seltzerbooks.com/tim.html

Discuss books at Blogging about Books http://www.seltzerbooks.com/blog/
Other book reviews by Richard Seltzer
Opus authors -- contemporary writers whose entire work is great
The Readers' Corner and Writers Showcase

This site is published by Samizdat Express, 213 Deerfield Lane, West Roxbury, MA 02132-002. (203) 553-9925 seltzer@seltzerbooks.com

Book collections on CD and DVD. A library for the price of a book.
Limited time offer: 2 for the price of 1

Return to Samizdat Express


	Webseltzerbooks.com

New Age

Chapter 20

Wild Child