New Age Chapter 34, 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

Time has a way of slowing down when you don`t want it to, speeding up when you want to relax and enjoy the moment and absolutely halting for miniature eternities at the worst moments possible. Time is not a very nice thing, and this was something that Jamie Hameros was learning firsthand from several thousand feet up in the air.

It was dead silent for once. His ears weren`t even registering the sound of the engine, his eyes were deadlocked to the scene about to play out on the ground below and his thoughts were his own. The Wild Eagle had yet to appear again, Jamie wondered if he had killed the other personality somehow, or if he was just lying in wait for the opportunity to strike back. Either way, it scarcely seemed to matter at the moment.

Finally, his deafened thoughts were broken from their nothingness as the sound of gunfire shot through the skies and the terrain below.

At first, Brad figured that things were even. Leyla was unpredictable, yes, but she wasn`t invincible. The Konig Wolf was tough, it was easily as durable as the Liger Zero`s base armor configuration, probably more so. It`s weapons were slow firing compared to the guns on the Fox and the Gunsniper, and the Scout Fox was easily faster and more agile by far. Unfortunately, she was also as skilled as Bit.

The Brad uncovered this fact a few seconds into the battle. He didn`t like learning about this fact, but he did anyway. This was mainly because the Scout Fox made one miss-step and the Konig was all over them both, tagging the smaller Zoid across the side with both guns after swinging it`s rifles forward, then clamping it`s jaws shut around the Fox`s neck.

From there, the Fox went airborn, flying through some two-hundred feet through the air before slamming back down on it`s opposite side, and at the same time, the Konig was rocked by a blistering hail of gattling gunfire. Leena had hung back, taking the smart route for once and allowing Brad to do the close-in work. She wasn`t the best by any means, but with her confidence back and tempered by an insecurity that knew few limits, as well as a mental condition that could easily be summed as being a trigger happy, gun slinging psychopath, she was improving drastically.

"Give up yet?" Leena asked, the Gunsniper`s stance widening a bit. The Konig Wolf lumbered back to it`s feet, several parts of it`s white armor blackened under the assault, even dinged up pretty harshly at some points. Leyla`s response made her blood boil, but it also steeled her resolve to win the match - on her own if that`s what it took.

The Konig turned to face the Gunsniper, growling gutturally before issuing out a loud roar, chilling Leena to the bone for a brief moment, just long enough to keep her from making what could`ve been a critical attack. At the same time, the show held Leyla and her Zoid in place long enough for Brad to get back into the thick of things, lunging forward and slamming the smaller Scout Fox shoulder-first into the larger Konig Wolf, knocking it off balance for all of a split second, just long enough to open fire with his main gun.

At point blank, she had dodged out of the way of a stream of plasma moving at least twice the speed of sound.

"Somehow, I don`t think we can win this," he concluded with a dry tone of voice as the Konig Wolf whipped around the smaller Scout Fox, skidding to a halt and then opening up with it`s sniper rifles, though Brad was just quick enough to jump out of the way, straight over the shots. Two small explosions sounded in the distance, the Fox landed and the Wolf howled, but the Gunsniper bristled and fired, sheathing the entire area in explosive mortar rockets capable of immolating a Zoid the size of an Elephander.

"I don`t see the freaking point in hanging back like this," Rayth Takahori growled to himself in though, circling around the battlefield`s edge at half-speed. "Hameros isn`t even trying to get involved, he won`t wear himself out at all at this rate."

Rayth Takahori was not a man prone to taking orders very easily. He wasn`t particularly fond of his employer either, for that matter, but money was enough to convince most people to ignore petty things like gut instinct, mistrust and a severe problem with authority, among other things.

Among other things, he had been promised a great deal of freedom in exchange for his services, and among those freedoms was the right to carry out his appointed tasks in whatever manner he preferred. If that meant he felt like killing a man from thirty miles away with a hijacked cruise missile or stabbing him in the face at point blank, he would do it and he would do it well. The problem with this was that he hadn`t been given that freedom, he had been little more than a pawn on the back burner, given minimal resources and told to do things the way that Rommel wanted them done.

Another thing of note was that Rayth was a man who carried his vendettas for a very long time, and among those vendettas was one with Kyle Mazemia, one that he desperately wanted to resolve. Jamie Hameros also fit into that bill, and he wanted desperately to resolve that vendetta too, but he couldn`t do it the way he wanted because his superiors had ordered him not to.

"Are you even awake?" Jamie asked. It felt rather... Empty? Yes, empty to be without the Wild Eagle. For once, he actually missed the annoyance, the lack of privacy, if only because it meant that he could actually hate himself without hating himself. It was a strange circle, but in a sense, it fit the bill. A unique dependence by one on the other, even though both of the two personalities utterly despised each other.

Still no answer. Jamie was starting to wonder if he had actually killed his alter-ego or not.

"Good job so far," a rugged voice chimed in as the Scout Fox flew through the air once again, erupting from the smoke like a rocket that`d just been fired accidentally. Leyla tore out after it, her Zoid charred black but still otherwise unscathed, clamping it`s jaws down on the gut of the smaller Fox and then dragging it back to the hard packed desert terrain below.

A howl of pain echoed from the Fox, the Konig let go, having slammed it`s smaller opponent right into the ground from at least fifty feet straight up, coming down at a sickening angle. Brad was screaming out random bursts of profanity and something along the lines of a challenge was being issued by Leena, but the pilot of the Konig Wolf failed to listen to any of it.

Her father`s voice. That was about the only soothing thing right now. Her head was throbbing, she was starting to hear things and her entire body was holding somewhere between numbness and a static electric tingle that made every hair on the back of her neck furiously stand on end.

"Thanks," Leyla grit out finally, drawing away from the Scout Fox and turning towards the Gunsniper, only to dodge out of the way of a blistering hail of two pound slugs a few seconds later. Leena was on the warpath. Again.

Hundreds of miles away, near the newly born Geno Breaker, Bill Chapman wearily noticed the utter lack of coherent speech from his old partner. It unnerved him to no end, enough that he almost timidly reached out to stroke the top of the creature`s nuzzle, seeking to comfort it.

"What the hell?" Bill asked aloud, his voice little more than a low whisper in the emptiness of the hangar. Only Spectacle remained, and the green Organoid seemed far too amused to do anything at all.

"Eh?" Bill asked, hearing Spectacle`s words. Even if he had no Zoidian blood in him at all, Chapman was gifted with a natural talent for hearing things.

Bill`s attention snapped to Borealis, who had literally flung himself to his feet in an irate cry of some emotion or other that humans just couldn`t understand. The closest thing to equate it to was a mixture of desire, love, obsession and battle frenzy.

"Partner?" Bill asked hesitantly, standing up and reaching out to the seemingly insane Organoid, which had started to glow a feral mixture of blue, red and black.

That glow turned into a burning nova, and Chapman soon went flying into a wall hard enough to make his back pop from the impact, the force carrying throughout the hangar with such strength that it even rocked the tremendous bulk of the Geno Breaker. The flash faded to reveal nothing but a vaguely dragon-shaped outline of black shaded in blue and red, which immediately became a comet of unbelievable speed, blurring into a wide angling arch over the Geno Breaker, circling around for several seconds and then -

- sheering right through the portion of the hangar wall that the unfortunate Bill Chapman was leaned against, heedless of the fact that a decade-long friend was almost killed instantly as a result. Metal screeched and howled, and then, the multi-colored bullet of energy tore out of the side of the Whale King`s enormous lower jaw, blowing a five yard wide hole in one of the gigantic carrier`s teeth in the process.

Borealis vanished into the clouds, bylining for a destination that only he seemed to know. Bill was left to get sucked right out of the hangar and fall to his death from ten thousand feet - or get sucked into one of the colossal jet engines of the huge beast.

He stopped though, hanging on by a shred as the Organoid he`d thought of like an adoptive brother for ten years vanished into the distance, leaving him to die there.

"You did your best," Madison replied drearily from her perch, seated high atop the crested, feathered head of the enormous Organoid, Roc. "It was inevitable."

Indeed. Even the elders of this generation fall to the oncoming darkness. I can only sense two who have not, yet I fear that they will both be put to the flame far too soon to be of any aid. The others have all long since gone to the shadows.

"Disappointing," she stated simply, not one to lengthen her words out. Madison was a particularly blunt person, even more so now that her memories had returned. "What next?"

... I... Do not know. Fate will have to be our guide for now, Roc stated, his ancient wisdom falling a step short for one of the few times since his Birth. Even the First Born had his limitations, after all. Madison only voiced something thoughtful and leaned back against the highest standing feather on top of Roc`s head, speaking no further.

Leyla grit her teeth for the umpteenth time, dodging up and over the now-battle scarred Scout Fox, twisting in mid-jumpt avoid the streaks of gunfire from the distant Gunsniper. She had yet to even get the chance to make a close-in attack on Leena, let alone try and snipe her. Brad was too persistent, too stubborn to stay down long enough for her to pick off the other member of the Blitz Team, or at least the one that was actually fighting.

Jamie sighed heavily to himself. The silence in the cockpit was nerve wracking in and of itself, but after several minutes of trying to think of something - broken frequently by random checks on whether or not the Wild Eagle was alive, dead or unconcious - he had made his choice. In either case, the choice wasn`t an easy one. He was effectively breaking the trust of either of the people he chose to fire upon, at least, that`s how he felt.

In truth he would`ve been fine to fire on Leyla. She wouldn`t have minded at all, it was a Zoid battle after all. His mistake was the silent treatment. It was like everything was hinging on his shoulders, his choice.

"Warning! Warning! Unauthorized personnel have entered the battlefield, exit immediately!"

"Huh?!" Jamie yelped in surprise, relief washing over him in an instant. The Raynos pulled up from it`s dive with a snap turn, just as a familiar black outline appeared in the distance.

The action on the ground paused, Leyla twitched, Brad grimaced and Leena cursed her luck, shifting aim in under a second to try and draw a bead on the incoming target, only to find Jamie in her sights instead. The Raynos was moving on an intercept course for the Black Stormsworder, but it wasn`t quick enough this time...

Rayth swooped in low to the ground, almost suicidally low, flying in and kicking up a massive half-tunnel of dust and dirt as he broke the sound barrier, the blades on his wings extending forward with an ethereal, intense orange glow.

One pass and the decapitated head of the Judge went flying through the air, landing with a loud thud. The Stormsworder`s wing sliced through the back of the Judge Capsule instantly, streaking back up into the air with the agility of something utterly unnatural in make.

"That rotten, limey bastard," Leena growled out irately, watching the Stormsworder swiftly pass through a salvo of shots from Jamie overhead, entering into a wide angled turn.

"Hold still," Jamie ordered annoyedly, falling back to his usual behavior as a result. The other Zoid and it`s pilot practically laughed at him in response, breaking into an insane zig-zag through the skies, breaking and bursting at complete random while the Raynos turned in a wide circle, trying to keep up, or at least fluke a hit or two.

The last time Jamie Hameros had done battle with Rayth Takahori, he`d had the element of surprise and obscurity on his side. This time, Rayth was more than prepared for him.

On the ground though, Leyla Tsun was on the verge of hyperventilating. She couldn`t figure out why, she truly didn`t have a clue what was going on.

The truth of the matter was that Leyla happened to be undergoing a critical period of development, her three personalities where on the verge of fusing together, or completely, permanently remaining in the shattered state they`d been in when she 'woke up.'

"Is that the best you can do, Hameros?!" Rayth demanded hotly, twisting through another volley of gunfire from the the Raynos, only to dive down and corkscrew out of the way of a volley of gunfire from the Scout Fox a second later.

"No, it isn`t," Jamie growled out, breaking into a slow turn and allowing Rayth to finish his manuever, biding his time for the course of several seconds, and then erupting forward with every ounce of power in the engines at once. The result was that Takahori was caught off guard, and had to fold his wings into the body of the Stormsworder, cut his engines and all away or get cut in half by the razor edge of the Raynos` wings, but it also left them both exposed still: Rayth to Jamie`s tailguns and Jamie to Rayth`s missiles.

Both shifted for better aim, and both opened fire at once. Jamie`s gunshots blasted Rayth`s missiles, they were at a sheer impasse.

"Crap," Paul muttered to himself, promptly shoving Drake down into the foot of the Gustav cockpit, making sure to keep the overly-excited boy covered for the time being. A second later, he put the gears into reverse and frantically began to reverse, at the same time opening up a channel to the HoverCargo.

"It`s too complex to explain, just get out of the area. Your team may be safe but you are a big, fat, utterly exposed, slow moving target right about now!"

With that, the HoverCargo`s engines started. Steven Tauros normally didn`t take warnings to heart most of the time, unless the warnings were spoken with fear, anxiety and panic going for them. This warning, had all three at once.

Three minds vied for control of one body. Three minds with various goals to be reached after taking control.

The first was Leyla. Her goal was to just stay the dominant personality and not get eradicated. The second was Eliza, who`s only real goal was survival and remembrance. The third was Connie, who just wanted freedom at any cost. They were three minds, locked away in one body, and right now, they were all fighting for both survival and control with everything they had.

The changes of the mind however, reflected changes of the body, and the changes of the body reflected changes of the Zoid, all of it directly interlinked with one true cause.

There was a blinding flash of light within the cockpit, but it stopped soon after it was born. The flash obscured the change of the body, which reflected a change of the mind.

The irises of the body`s eyes had turned a solid red, the hair had turned a solid blue and the lips were now completely black. Three distinguishing features for three different personalities.

There was another blinding flash of light, but this one was from the outside of the cockpit. Brad, Jamie, Rayth and Leena all took notice of it, a streaking bullet of red, black and blue, echoed by a chorus of Voices, dozens strong. The streak of energy corkscrewed between Jamie and Rayth, up in the sky, turning at a sharp right angle and -

- diving straight down into the back of the Konig Wolf, drawing out an insane howl as the sniper rifles literally detonated, hiding the Zoid briefly in a flaring black cloud of flame and smoke.

"What in the hell?" Brad muttered at the sight of it. It was the Konig Wolf, but not.

The Konig Wolf now had three heads, where before, there was one. Each head held different color eyes, black to one side, red to the other and blue sitting between. It had gotten a bit larger now, the damage was gone, as were it`s smoke bomb launchers. Ice white armor covered this new creation, and in it`s cockpit lay a young woman enshrouded in cables that had launched from panels and the seating, all over her body and head.

His head hurt from the mere sound of the Voice that had issued from the changed Konig Wolf, his mind literally tingled with pain. Rayth had only briefly stopped his onslaught though, and before Jamie knew it, he was dodging gunfire again, missiles streaking at random, blades slinging through the air at mach one. And these were the least of the troubles taking place right now...

The Scout Fox went flying again, blasted from the ground by what looked like no less than three furious charged particle beams at once, each of which continued on, almost hitting the small, now brutalized Zoid again, only to stop a second later. It stopped for a simple reason, of course.

Leyla/Eliza/Connie had finally remembered Leena. The target that Leyla wasn`t given the chance to hit earlier.

Slowly, the newly born Cerberus lumbered around, turning to face the smaller Gunsniper in the distance. Leena met the psychotic stare of the Zoid with nothing but trigger pulling, sending off every single ounce of ammunition she had left in under a second at the distant Cerberus, vaguely confident that the other, larger Zoid couldn`t cover the distance to her quickly enough to dodge.

Seconds later, after the Cerberus had ripped the the Gunsniper`s forearms off and bit a sizable chunk out of it`s throat, Leena had changed her mind quite a bit.

The Gunsniper toppled over, dead for the time being. Every system was frozen, but at least it hadn`t come with an electrical shock comparable to a lightning bolt this time. Leena sighed, but only until the actual recognition of her current situation hit her: She was down, her Zoid couldn`t function - that meant the cockpit was probably unable to open - and a hellhound was currently towering over her with ruthless intent.

"Where`s your skill and wit now, huh?!" Rayth demanded, spraying off shots at Jamie with little care as to exactly where all of his missed rounds hit. The two were dueling at mach two in the clouds above what had been an officially sanctioned battlefield, what was now just a potential bloodbath as an entity born of an Ancient Zoidian and an Organoid gone mad was threatening to kill everything in sight.

Jamie rattled in the cockpit, twisting out of the way of Rayth`s blades at the last second and corkscrewing back down through the clouds. Long range sights were the only way for him to see that the Cerberus was about to smash in the Gunsniper`s cockpit.

"Leyla?" He asked, slowing down and hoping to try and talk his way out of it, even as Rayth took up a chase position behind the Raynos, coming down with his blades set to tear off the faster Zoid`s engines, though Jamie didn`t even notice him this time.

The mutated Konig made ready to strike, and Rayth continued coming in, intent on making the kill.

A pause. The Cerberus paused from making it`s intended kill, stepping back as all three heads leered up dangerously to the skies. In the cockpit, the teen inside twitched and growled, bits of red tears falling down every now and then. Rayth came closer.

Jamie yelped in shock, and Rayth immediately dove down, while the Raynos swiftly rolled to the left, a charged particle beam from one of the Konig-heads tearing through the skies where he`d just been. That was when he`d realized how mistaken he`d been to try and talk to her, and when he realized that Rayth was now perfectly lined up to make a killing blow with his blades.

An audible crack, like a baseball bat nailing that winning homerun in utter silence.

His eyes blanked for an instant, his cheek looked bruised in the imprint of the sole of his own sneakers, but his mind was elsewhere, tumbling to ground that didn`t even exist, jarred out of control by a surprise attack from somewhere else.

His eyes returned to their normal color, but their shape changed a bit, the same for his cheek, and his hair became the familiar, streaked-back pattern it had been so many times before.

- and found out the hard way that the Wild Eagle was as dangerous an opponent as anyone else, corkscrewing up and over the Black Stormsworder before leveling off again. Instantly, with such speed that even a battle tested veteran like Rayth Takahori was caught off guard, a shower of pulse gunfire tore through the air, nailing the other Zoid right in each engine, surgically disabling it with the precision of a Gunsniper at mach two.

"I hate this crap," he finally growled out, even as the Stormsworderwent down in flames.

More charged particle beams scythed through the air, three this time. The Wild Eagle expertly dove between each and every one of them, coming down to where he could clearly pick out the Konig Cerberus, though the other Zoid still hung close to the downed Gunsniper. That was when 'Will' realized something.

Three heads meant that the Konig had completely mutated to match the personalities of it`s pilot, likely representing each one with each head. The problem was that Will didn`t know which head was which personality, and he didn`t know what it would do if he simply blew one off. He wasn`t willing to risk hitting the body because that probably had a major symbolism to it as well, enough that it would probably injure the pilot.

In short: The Wild Eagle realized that for the first time in his existence, he needed Jamie`s help on something.

"Yeah, I know that. But you can do anything I can`t, and I can`t pick out a freaking target here..."

"If you don`t help me, Leena will probably get killed, along with Brad, and probably the Doc too."

Silence. The Wild Eagle continued dodging through charged particle beams with the same relentlessness as the one being shown in firing them.

"Well?" Will asked with a bit of a frantic tone, becoming increasingly unwilling to just sit by and dodge through attempts to kill him. Really, there was only so far kindness and loyalty could go before survival instinct kicked in.

"Alright. My guess isn`t really that informed-" "I don`t care if it`s in the know or not, it`s better than anything I`ve got right now," the Wild Eagle interrupted, corkscrewing around another beam and then almost coming to a dead stop in mid-air to avoid the one that shot into his path after that.

"Take off any two of the heads. I`m guessing the middle one is Leyla, the one on the left is Eliza and the one on the right is Connie," Jamie advised a bit dryly. Obviously, his brief powertrip over the Wild Eagle had ended, as had his small burst of confidence and decisiveness.

The Raynos suddenly broke away, dodging through another hail of charged particle beams, then going into a wide, angling turn back towards the Cerberus, dodging through more and more beams every single second. It made aiming next to impossible, but the Wild Eagle was known for doing the impossible, and he did it again this time.

A squeeze of the trigger, and a howl of pain broke out as the first head - the one to the left - went down in a blaze of gunfire. With the head that had black eyes now gone, Leyla`s body twitched violently, and Eliza either died or went comatose as a result. Borealis screeched with matching pain. Only two beams fired this time, and both soon halted completely as the Zoid gave in to the pain experienced by both pilot and Organoid, leaving it exposed.

The question of where Jamie`s loyalties lied had yet to be answered, but the question of the Wild Eagle`s loyalties -

- was answered as the head representing Connie went flying loose, cleanly severed at the neck in one pass by the Raynos` wing. The Konig Wolf howled, falling to it`s stomach and ceasing all movement, while Borealis - still a mixture of blue, red and black - exploded out of the side, landing with a loud impact in the dirt before his bulged gut split open, allowing Leyla to tumble out to the ground a second later.

"You can have it," Will commented, letting go as Jamie took the reigns again, bringing the Raynos around for a landing pass near the dying, fossilizing Konig Wolf. He didn`t feel concern for the dejected way that the Wild Eagle had given control back to him, in truth, Jamie didn`t really care.

The cockpit flipped open and the teen jumped over the side, tumbling at least twenty feet through the air before landing with a shock through his legs, already taking off into a run for the downed figure of a young woman with blood dripping from her shoulders, lying next to an unconcious Organoid.

In a bleakly lit cell in the middle of a now-landed Whale King, Bill Chapman sat, utterly alone. His right forearm was still bleeding from how Spectacle had literally yanked him back in with his claws. There wasn`t even a window, the setting was so claustrophobic that he felt like puking.

On top of that, Bill Chapman had no one to confide in. His best friend of ten years had essentially betrayed him, and he knew it. Borealis had gone and picked someone else over the guy that had given him a home.

He`d broken contact with his family to be a Zoid Warrior - just like Bit Cloud did. His team mates were all dead. His best friend - and only emotional support in his current conditions - had stranded him in hostile territory and his freedom had been stolen, replaced by the threat of an exquisitely painful series of punishments, concluding in an instant death by having his head blown off.

Bill Chapman grimaced to himself, leaning back against the uncomfortable steel wall of his cell, elbows resting on his knees, legs pulled up close to his body.

A near audible snap could be vaguely registered as he shut his eyes - increasingly less carefree - and opened them again - cold and angry.

"I`ll get you for this," he swore to himself under his breath, making the vow to kill Borealis - and Vilhelm Rommel at any cost.

A roar of thunder punctuated the sound of thrusters igniting. Stigma Stoller uneasily stood alone, the half-crumpled sheet of paper authorizing the deputization of the Fury Team in one hand, both arms crossed over his chest. His brows were furrowed in a deep frown, his eyes set on the rising form of the newly dubbed 'Foe Hammer,' which now sported a fairly stand-out looking insignia across either of it`s sides. It was that of the Guardian Force.

Vega, along with the Fury and it`s three current armor systems, was on the modified midget carrier Zoid. It was night time at the base, rain was starting to fall and he`d been ordering the complete evacuation under the orders of General Otto Schubaltz, who`d gone off of advice from Vega himself. Technically, Stigma didn`t have to follow the orders of the General, he was a civilian after all, but for the sake of being prudent, he had done so. Everyone but the Fury Team was being put on suspended leave with pay, their Zoids being packed away in a Guardian Force Whale King, the Elvea Varya, excluding his own Zoid.

Stigma Stoller was not a man who trusted authority anymore. He hadn`t trusted any authority since the Five Kings project, and he`d become increasingly more so since he left the Backdraft Group, just prior to it`s downfall. As such, the Elephander was staying with him, along with several other Zoids owned by members of his teams who had a similar distrust. Most of them were staying behind with him, at least until Stigma`s own private Whale King, the Blackwater Ironside, was ready to go. It wasn`t as large as the type used by the Guardian Force, or even some other private organizations, but it got the job done.

"They spotted Kale just a few miles from the Garnhelm base, near the Kravenoft Ruins. We think he might be readying to attack, but we`re not sure and it`s the best lead we`ve got."

"He`s the only man available for the job, civilian." "That`s just it, he`s not a man, he`s a fucking kid!"

"You`re the one who trained him," Otto Schubaltz stated dryly after handing over the sheets of paper authorizing Vega`s draft into the Guardian Force. "Unless you haven`t got a better idea, I suggest you keep your mouth shut."]

With a disgruntled sigh that sounded more like a growling, infuriated wolf, Stoller turned around and walked back into the hangar. He was sopping wet from the neck up due to the make of his trench coat, the sheet of paper had been laminated completely, even if it was half-crumpled. The only reason he was holding onto it with such a death grip was because he didn`t trust an authority-type to honor his own words, and the draft was set to become null as soon as the issue with Kale was ended. Vega was still a boy after all, and the militaries of the past had adopted children and turned them into fighting machines before.

Otto, on the other hand, remained out in the rain, hands held together behind his back. He was still getting drenched but that didn`t quite matter at all. A hardened military man like his ancestor, Karl Schubaltz, Otto was hellbent on upholding a specific tradition, dating back several hundred years to the no-longer spoken of time when Van Fleiheit and his Blade Liger became a Zoid-sized bullet against the second Death Saurer.

The tradition was that when a unit was sent on a specifically dangerous mission - usually a suicide mission - their superiors, inferiors and equals would all stay at the point of departure long enough to give a stern show of respect, even if that meant getting drenched in rain or shot at by an enemy sniper. That said, Otto waited until the Foe Hammer had turned to face him before raising one hand in a stiff military salute, never knowing that the four-part crew of the carrier Zoid each returned it in kind, even Kat, who was arguably the most disgruntled person on Zi after learning that her first bit of bonding time with Kyle in months had been cut off so that she could go get killed.

Lightning struck in the distance, the roar of thunder briefly obscured the sound of the main engines blaring to life. From there, the Hammerhead II was gone, heading to the Southwest, towards Kravenoft Ruins.

"You just stay here, I`ll get the luggage," Abbie ordered sternly, immediately taking off in a light jog towards the unloading area. Kyle raised a brow. "Is she always that protective of you when you`re hurt?"

"Usually more so," Mark answered with a twitch, grumbling something under his breath as the other moved to stand next to him. "I brought the Zoids, by the way," Kyle commented as an afterthought before continuing. He`d only heard the extreme tail end of what his partner had muttered out.

Kyle blinked. "... Abbie Spea... k... Ohhhh... Damn, that`s some screwed up lingo there..."

"You`re not the one on the receiving end. She`s been doing this ever since I became a Zoid Warrior... 'Nuuu cotton candy if you`re hurt!'"

Silence. Kyle smirked. The smirk became a grin. The grin began to become a snicker.

"FUCK! YOUR NOSE STABBED MY HAND! AGAIN!" Mark yelped in pain, holding his now-bruised hand as if it actually had been stabbed.

"NEVER HIT A BISHOUNEN IN THE FACE!" Kyle cackled from the floor, even as his admittedly sharp looking nose started to bruise a bit.

Rhade: I think we just dispelled any beliefs of ol` Markie being lucky, yes? XD *Cackles malignantly.*

EndlessAdventure: Close, but no cigar. You`ll find out next chapter :P As for Jamie... I intend on having quite a bit of fun at his expense the next times he takes center stage *Dr Evil laugh.* And yes, you`re quite a corrupting influence... In a good way, of course >_>

New Age by Sh33p

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New Age

Chapter 34

In The End