Reign of Chaos Chapter 16, a Zoids fanfic by Sh33p

Sh33p Disclaimer: I don`t own Zoids. Consider this disclaimer valid for the whole damn story :P

Foreword: Pick something relatively low key/menacing when you hit the last scene, and use Linkin Park - Numb for the latter chunk of scene three. That`s my only advice.

Farentown. Far removed from the brutal fighting that was infrequently taking place around Romeo City, even further from the carnage that had decimated Garnhelm Base, this city had been remarkably spared from destruction thus far, proving a safe haven for hundreds upon thousands of people already. While it was true that Farentown had suffered tremendous damage during the night that had already come to be known simply as Endnight, it had still come through far less beaten down than it`s larger counterpart.

This was due, in no small part, to the exploits of the city`s ragtag defense force. Surviving local Zoids, visitors, notable semi-locals such as the Suicide Team, a surviving Guardian Force squad of mixed Zoids - two Command Wolves, a Gun Sniper, an Iron Kong and a Shield Liger - and headed up by one of the most impressive Zoid warriors in living memory, namely Harabec Davids. All things considered, the dozen or so lightly armed attacks thus far had been turned back with almost minimal effort, leaving the city the chance to organize itself.

Despite having no military experience, and despite lacking the natural talent for leadership possessed by Leon Tauros or Sarah Obscura, Harabec had been able to stabilize things, if not through his own actual leadership then through following advice from others and using his influence to make it happen. Despite being retired for ten years, he still had a lot of pull with people, apparently, something that was coming in more use by the day.

This wasn`t lost on one Paul Tsun, who had wisely avoided mentioning any of his talents in medicine or Zoid maintenance, choosing instead to keep close to his son and be left alone. It hadn`t been lost on the overworked looking young woman who was stumbling exhaustedly out of the Winston Hospital either, Abbie had spent close to thirty-six hours continuing her crash course in jury-rigged surgery, compromising supply shortages and dealing with irate families who`d just lost loved ones. All in all, she looked about as stressed and upset as she felt, holding herself up with one arm against a streetlamp and stopping short of throwing up onto the sidewalk.

It also wasn`t lost on the pair of sideswiping lunatics currently taking part in a minor skirmish just a mile outside the city. Marcus Harlock and Kyle Mazemia had been up, non-stop, for close to forty hours each, with all of two hours worth of fifteen minute power naps and only caffinated soda and junk food to keep them going. All things considered, the two could`ve passed themselves off as they`d been during the insanity-ridden week they`d come to know as the Suicide Days, though each was becoming increasingly annoyed at just about everything, and it was showing in their piloting. Case in point -

"WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU FUCKING FUCKERS?! HAVE YOU NO FUCKING DECENCY?! WHY THE FUCKING SHIT-FUCK CAN`T YOU JUST BE SMART, WALK-THE-FUCK-AWAY AND LEAVE THE GOD-FUCKING-DAMN CITY ALONE?! EH?!"

- right now, emphasised by the flying, newly beheaded Saber Tiger, which was promptly shot to ribbons by a stream of pulse lasers before the head landed somewhere on the ground and wound up stomped on by the Shadow Fox`s left forepaw, which was still glowing from having just taken the thing`s head off in the first place.

"Yanno, Newb, it kinda loses it`s meaning when you keep saying 'fuck' all the time," Kyle sardonically pointed out, idly landing in between a pair of Red Horns and opening up with his blasters. Both promptly let out groans and fell over, right as a green Rev Raptor went flying through the air, landed and wound him getting an energy scythe punched straight into it`s chest before having it`s head shot off, a second shot ringing out and flying right between the Ivory Blade Liger`s teeth before stabbing down the gun barrel of a Command Wolf, detonating it`s gun and blowing open it`s back as a result.

"You both need to stop dicking around," Harabec stated plainly, drawing his scythes back and leaving the other Rev Raptor to fall harmlessly to the ground, where a foot claw perfectly decapitated it a second later, leaving the pilot to climb out and try to run away. "These attacks are getting more and more frequent and it`s starting to worry me. They`re building up to something..."

"They`re probably just too scared to mount a full-on attack," Kyle replied, watching the Shadow Fox burst through the air and decapitate a second Rev Raptor with one swipe of it`s left claw, ending the battle as a result. No Rommel Zoids remained on the battlefield.

It had been fifty-to-three. The Suicide Team had taken down all of thirteen Zoids each, with great strain involved. Harabec had offed everything else without even looking as though he was putting effort into it.

"Can`t say I blame `em," the young Stigma Stoller-lookalike commented in a sarcastic mumble, swinging his blades back into neutral and yawning. Sleep deprivation tended to make he and Mark a bit more dangerous, but only for so long and only on so many occasions. Both lacked proper motivation right now, both needed to eat and both hadn`t bathed in three or four days. Their body odor alone probably could`ve knocked out half the enemy force if given the chance...

"You two, take a break," Harabec ordered, guiding his supposedly-obsolete Zoid around the burnt form of a Pteras and then coming to a slow stride towards the city. "Get some sleep, food, whatever - and if you have to use a fire hose to get that god damn stench offa you, do it. I can smell you from here..."

"You would smell me from there," Mark complained, the Shadow Fox letting out a dulled half-whine from all of the bitching and complaining it had born witness to over the past days. "Sure I would, but better me than you-know-who."

"If you even try to bring cotton candy into this, I will shoot you," Mark warned, swiveling his main gun around as a blithe growling conversation started between the Liger and the Fox. Apparently the two were getting increasingly humbled by the fact that an outdated Rev Raptor could do more damage than they could - even Zoids had egos after all. "Shoot at me, you mean," Harabec corrected boredly, unamused at his nephew`s antics.

"You think we`re bad? You should see the kid`s parents... Or Abbie`s entire extended family!"

"You don`t have much of a social life, do you?" Kyle asked bluntly, not really expecting a quick answer, and not really getting one either.

Explosions rang out, the battle that had been going on for all of ten minutes continued to rage with no sign of give on either side. The Liger Zero`s white armor had again been tarnished, but not by the relentless, hellish attacks of the Proto Breaker, which slipped around with all the grace of a ballet dancer on roller blades, literally thruster-skating on the side of the canyon wall and barely avoiding explosions from lava and the Liger`s only ranged gun in the process.

Marshall was a generalist, a well balanced pilot who always fought with his own survival held above everything else, including the mission. To him, victory would be attained whether he killed the Liger or not, he just had to escape if he couldn`t, while Bit`s case was far less easy to negotiate. He was a generalist too, a well balanced pilot who always fought with everything in mind but his goal above all else. Victory could only be attained, for him, if the Proto Breaker and it`s pilot took an early trip to the grave.

Cannonfire rang out, the Proto Breaker blazed off of the canyon wall and landed with a skid on one leg, whipping around sideways and spraying everything in the Liger`s general direction with it`s nose and shoulder guns, causing explosions and lines of flame to erupt with every single impact as crystal colored laser beams and solid white plasma fireballs tore through the air with enough firepower to level a Gojulas in under three seconds.

If Bit hadn`t figured out how to activate the Zero armor`s shielding system on his own, he would`ve been dead by the time he fully registered the amount of firepower that his enemy was throwing out. As it stood though, a golden halo shot from thin in front of the Liger, swiftly expanding shut just in time to block a plasma bolt, which hit the shield and rebounded right into a nearby crystal, causing it to explode and showering the narrow confines of the battlefield with several tons of highly explosive, jagged debris.

Again, if not for the Liger`s shield, Bit Cloud would`ve died instantly. The shards would`ve ripped through the cockpit armoring and either gutted him like a fish or it would`ve burnt him to a crisp, alive and screaming. The Liger Zero`s energy shield was a blessing indeed, because it prevented these things, allowing Bit the time to activate the booster units and take the otherwise suicidal risk of diving headlong through the Proto Breaker`s onslaught, with explosions tearing apart the ground to either side in the ensuing charge, which ended with the shield all but shattering on impact with the Breaker`s chest.

The combatants were thrown apart - Bit and the Liger stopped dead from the head-on collision, the Proto Breaker flying back several yards and coming to an unbalanced stop on both feet and the tip of it`s tail in response, promptly bending forward and roaring as Marshall pulled the trigger and fired off another salvo from his nose cannon.

Bit didn`t stay and take it this time, instead dodging to the right and firing his boosters back to life to again close the distance, swiping an uncharged, golden claw across the side of the mutant Geno Saurer`s head, though Davis was obviously more skillful than his personality would reveal, swinging his Zoid around with the impact and belting the smaller Liger all across it`s left flank, sending the white Zoid flying into the canyon wall with a thunderous impact and a dueling pair of roars to match, lightning striking in the background.

Thunder echoed, the frigid winds picked up and the Liger all but blasted out of the pile of debris that had hidden it from view after slamming into the side of the wall, it`s cry of battle matching the intensity of it`s pilot. Davis replied in kind with a murderous little smirk, flipping one of the added triggers that had taken up space in the firing controls of the Geno`s cockpit setup and then listening in what seemed almost like slow motion as the Proto Breaker`s left grappler hand split open between the top-knuckles, which slid down at ninety degree angles to reveal a telescroping barrel of some kind.

"Don`t`cha just love technology, you braindead fuckwit?!" He asked joyfully, maintaining his grip on the trigger as a thin bolt of charged particles rippled out from within, bylining through the torturous atmosphere in the canyon and heading straight for the Liger Zero`s lower jaw. Bit was an inkling faster than Marshall`s trigger finger though, jolting to a stop and then swinging awkwardly to the right and a manner that threw the Liger right off it`s feet and into a combat roll along the ground, firing off several shots from it`s dual impact cannon in the process before blazing back up to it`s feet.

The Proto Breaker rocked from the initial hits - it wasn`t very damaged, but it was thrown off balance, while the four rounds after missed entirely and instead plowed into obsidian-colored rock, sending exploding debris and acidic smoke out in plumes as a result. By the time that the blast had stopped though, the Liger had stabilized and closed the distance with the Breaker, which had already re-concealed it`s miniature charged particle gun, the jumpjet struts on it`s back suddenly swinging down to either side and pivoting to face the ground before blazing hot white, an action mirrored by the thrusters in the legs.

"Shit," the blonde growled out as the warped Geno dodged out of the way by inches, bolting through the air and landing almost like a spider on the canyon wall, only to rebound and repeat the pattern again, jumping it`s way out of the canyon as a result.

"You`re not gettin` away that easily," Bit muttered with determination, gunning the Liger`s boosters once again and literally running up the perfectly vertical walls of the canyon without pause, chasing his foe down like a lion going in for the kill.

"Anyone..." A pause. "An... Ergh... Anyone get the plate number o` that Gustav?" A haggard voice asked bluntly, dulled brown eyes sliding open to greet the ceiling as a familiar blue, reptillian head peeked into view.

101125. Didn`t hit you too hard, from the sound of things though, a voice to match stated, sounding off not in his ears, but in his thoughts. It was comforting, a bit exhausted and a great deal maternal, but above all, it set him at ease as he looked around, realizing that he was home. For the first time in what felt like years, but had only been months, Vega Obscura awoke to find that he was home. No groups of untrustworthy people, no murderous siblings, no military masterminds, no... No one but the only one who actually seemed to matter anymore.

"Specular," he said, as if just trying to practice with his own voice again. When he sat up, he finally realized that he was nude, no doubt a result of his caregiver having seen no need for them when she was putting him in bed in the first place. Still though, he did have his modesty to protect...

"I think I figured that out already," he replied, turning sideways and dangling his thin legs off the side of the bed before stretching out in just about every direction at once. It felt good to be home, but there were still certain things to tend to, the first of which answered his question before he even thought to ask it as an ear splitting roar blew through the cabin, sounding ecstatic, thrilled - like a dog wagging it`s tail at the sight of it`s master returning from a lengthy trip. That was also about the time that Vega saw the enormous red screen shifting out from in front of the window, only to hear a repetition of the roar from a second earlier.

"Owny`s okay?" He asked with a smirk, standing up only to promptly fall back down onto his hind end and resume stretching until an audible *POP* sounded from his lower back, leading to a briefly morbid expression followed by a relieved sigh.

When this is all over, you`re going to see a chiropractor, Specular stated so factually that it left no room for arguing.

"When what is all over?" Vega asked, suddenly feeling tired all over again. He was one of the only people on Zi who didn`t know about the current Reign of Chaos that was wracking civilization, if only because he had been a bit occupied when it had started and hadn`t been awake at all until a few seconds ago.

It would take too long to explain. I hope you- ["World domination is for those who actually care. Consider this the kickstart of the apocalypse." "IT`S SHOWTIME, ZEKE!!!" "I knew Romeo would be one of their first targets."

"Why don`t you pick on someone your own size?" "DAMN YOU!!!" "Why do I get the feeling this is going to be one of those days?" "God forgive me for what I`m about to do..." "I don`t understand." "... Where am I?" "Now hold the damn line! Nothing get`s through, got that?!" "I`m not a monster..." "Ask him." "Get well soon, King." "Kale`s alive?" "Your worst nightmare. Just. Like. Me."

"Right now, I`d do anything to let the world know how fucking bad this past week or two`s been for me." "Shit."

"What the Hell is wrong with you? We`re being taken to god-knows-where and your only reaction is to pop off jokes?" "Bloody, filled with screaming, improvisional medical care at it`s best and more physical and mental trauma than you can imagine." "Come to finish me off?" "... Yes sir. Fleiheit and another woman - we believe it was Riese - killed themselves before we could take them alive." "Then why are we going to let them die?" "Well, aren`t you two just the miserable heroes of the day?" "I`m not hungry..."

"Impact in five... Four... Three... Two... --pact!" "You didn`t lose half your blood fighting a psychopath." "General Hauser has just sent an order to hold position." "Is your son`s name Leon, by any chance?" "Looks like they`ve stopped..." "Is it skipping ahead to a Fury?"

"Breaking?" "I also hate how quiet you`re being." "You`re leaving then?" "I know you`re there, Will." "What the heck are blabbing about?" "STOP RIGHT THERE!!!" "Exactly. We also have to arrange the deaths of her adoptive family..." "Which puts them right in the line of fire for the Hellwalker." "I`ll be free again..." "Kale..." "Kale!"

"Fire at will! Hose the bastard!" "What the hell is going on?!" "Welcome to the gateway, Bit Cloud..."

"Oh god..." "I won`t let that bastard kill anyone else!" "WHAT THE HE-" "WHE-" "IT`S ALREADY DOWNED THREE SQUADS?!" "I CAN`T SEE IT!!!" "Sir!" "We never knew what we were getting ourselves into, did we?" "Come to die?" "You bastard." "How the hell fast is he?!" "You were right. There`s nothing we can do..." "No escape." "Ohmygod..."

Vega almost passed out from the stress that the telepathic slideshow put on his brain. Every single sentence brought a flash of the scene it had taken place in, every single thought was captured perfectly and every single waking moment across the planet had flooded into him in a single instant of mind numbing clarity.

A lesser being would`ve crumpled into a vegetative heap or gone insane. Vega merely stood up and robotically walked over to the closet, opening it on instinctive auto-pilot as his almost-shattered mind threatened to buckle, held firm though, despite this fact, by his own will, and the support offered by the Organoid that had almost telepathically lobotomized him less than ten seconds earlier.

When he finished recollecting his thoughts, he found himself dressed in a Hawaiian-styled, buttoned t-shirt and gray khaki shorts, standing in the kitchen and in the midst of opening up the microwave, with Specular raggedly stumbling onto the couch and falling over the armrest, rattling the entire thing with all 850 pounds of her metallic body`s weight and issuing the mental equivelent of a sigh.

"Sleep, Specular. I`ll watch over you this time, but when you wake up, we`ve got work to do," he said, speaking the last part as little more than a soft whisper. Idly, he reached onto the counter and stroked an index finger across the back of one of the countless Micro Sworders that Specular had spread across the globe for more years than anyone currently on Zi had been alive and functioning.

"Keep your eyes and ears peeled though," he thought, though it wasn`t his usual voice. In another clarity-filled instant, control of the Micro Sworder hivemind had been wrestled away from the unconscious Organoid, laying now in the hands of a twelve year old who seemed to hold it to his will as if he had been born solely to reign over it.

Snoring filled the background quiet of what had formerly been Rev`s Diner, now known solely as 'the pit stop.' Only two people had bothered to come in for work anymore, and they didn`t do it for pay - the place had been effectively converted into the equivelent of a combination lounge, mess hall and, in a few cases, a bed and breakfast. Two such cases were Marcus Harlock and Kyle Mazemia, both of whom lay sprawled out across their respective sleeping spaces, with Kyle having claimed the couch that had been dragged down from Harabec`s upstairs apartment and Mark having taken up a spot on the floor, idly wrapped in the rug and using the seat cushions of a few chairs for a pillow, occasionally getting kicked or smacked upside the head from the silver haired young man sprawled out on the couch to his back.

Both had been able to take ten minute showers - just long enough to scrub the literal grit off their bodies - then gather a bite or two to eat before passing out wherever their bodies landed. Kyle had gone first, so naturally he was able to claim the couch while Mark was still upstairs taking a brillo pad to his armpits - and yes, he had needed a brillo pad. They were that dirty - and had also managed to get all of a half of a sloppily made cheeseburger crammed down his gullet before concing out. Mark had been in about the same way, taking a few seconds longer to gather a series of seat cushions and pile them up on the rug that had become his sleeping bag before passing out as well.

They hadn`t been the only ones either. A Helic Guardian Force private was laying haphazardly on a pool table with a his overshirt rolled up into a bundle under his head for a pillow and his arms slung over his eyes to shut out the lighting of the place, while a rookie Gunsniper pilot had literally fallen asleep where she`d sat down at the counter, using her arms as pillows and drooling onto the bartop while mumbling incoherently in her sleep.

The scenes were all repeated to varying degrees in several more places, bar those pilots and ordinary civil servants who were awake and merely eating or playing cardgames or the arcade to pass the time - local power had been one of the many places where Farentown was better off than Romeo. For one, half the buildings in the city ran independent of any centralized power supply, mainly because Farentown and every one of that half of it`s architecture dated back to the heady times of the Helic and Guylos Wars, where having centralized power meant that one swift air strike could screw an entire city into starvation or worse in a matter of minutes.

Only three people - who were conscious, anyway - had the knowledge that the diner had never quite been used in the capacity it was seeing now. Two were the faithful employees who`d shown up out of charity for the people defending the city, the other was a man in his late-middle ages who was currently sipping a shot of hard vodka mixed with coffee from a re-filled water cantine.

Harabec Davids had never been one for routine. He had initially been kicked out of three of the first four teams he had joined as a result of his fighting style or his failure to follow logical orders that he could see holes through when blindfolded. The fourth had been a team he had formed, and it had been himself, his younger sister, her boyfriend, an old friend by the name of Michael Summers and another young woman by the name of Janet Tansas.

Eventually, Tansas became Mrs. Janet Summers, his sister took on the last name of Harlock and three kids between the four of them followed. The first was a natural rebel and a flirt by the name of Pierce - she seemed more a combination of her father`s wild side and her mother`s quasi-apathetically-humorous side than anything else - and then a boy by the name of Marcus, less than two years later - who just so happened to be a combination of his mother`s slightly introverted sense of individuality and his father`s utterly warped sense of humor - and then a girl named Abigail a month or two after that, who seemed to be, more or less, the sane one who had her mother`s natural aptitude for machinery and medical care.

That had all been roughly twenty-two years ago. That thought, spurned on by a bit of alchohol and caffine-fueled reverie, was enough to bring something to Harabec`s mind as he continued musing things through for no other reason than to keep his mind off of the present. What did it bring to his mind, you ask? Simple.

And with that, the former Revered Raptor downed another shot, doing his best to ignore the burning sensation that trailed down his throat all the way to his stomach, where it continued to churn for a little while longer before the feeling faded out and left him a bit lightheaded, though that too cleared up with continued musings over the past, which in turn was halted right when he got to the good part about a certain reporter who`d begun hounding him right after he`d taken on the whole personna that had become his trademark after the Davids Team disbanded only to reform a few months later as the Summers Team.

"Anyone in the shower`s gettin` flung out a window," came a relatively petite sounding voice that sounded utterly uncharacteristic and somewhat slurred with exhaustion, even possessing a certain twang to it that was usually covered up quite perfectly as Abbie stumbled into the diner, practically dragging along a rucksack of clothing that she had either collected from Mark`s Gustav or raided from her dorm, which was probably looted at some point during her time away from the campus.

"Nice to see you`re feelin` well," Harabec commented dryly with a smirk at his adoptive niece, watching her uncharacteristic swagger across the floor, the even more uncharacteristic pause, then finally...

"Ahscrewit," she grumbled, stumbling over to where Mark was by what was probably a mixture of observation and instinct before plopping down on the hard wood next to him and somehow worming into the rug-turned-sleeping bag like she owned the thing - and him for that matter - fitting in and setting her head next to Mark`s as if he`d been intentionally saving space for her the entire eight minutes he had been asleep. The two literally fit together with her back to his stomach and his arms snaked around her midsection automatically, while Kyle was left to absently kick Mark in the head from where he was sleeping on the couch.

"Yep," Harabec thought aloud to himself, noting that no one in the diner even batted an eye at the antics of the three of them. "I`m ge-" "Is there a Kyle Mazemia here?"

He was interrupted. Again. In almost the same way as before, no less, as a young woman entered the diner. This time, Harabec wasn`t the only one taking a look at the source of the voice, as at least two of the nearby card players - one who resembled the stereotypical college football player who`d gone into the military and his even more stereotypical military-girlfriend-with-a-death-glare who only gave the new arrival one glance and then narrowed her eyes at her apparent boyfriend - bothered to note her arrival as well.

Where Abbie was short, tanned and had dark green hair and a body type matching her older sister`s - albeit compressed into a smaller, girl-next-door kind of package - the new arrival was tall for a woman, with her shoulderblade-length, slightly silky brown hair held in a high ponytail, wearing a white jumpsuit that marked her as a crewmember for both "Fury Team" and "Vega Team," even though both were actually the same team with a different name. Where Abbie had the girl-next-door look down to a tee, this one looked more like she could`ve been either a female model or a female basketball player if she put on the necessary muscle to do so, with gray eyes and an expression that could melt titanium like ice cream in the mid-day desert sun.

"Katherine Takahori, I`m guessing?" Harabec idly asked. The woman gave a nod as a geeky looking young man followed her in, looking more occupied with a blue, metallic insect of some kind than anything around him. He was dressed similarly but had a far more disheveled look about him, as if he was one of those people who could naturally find his way around in the dark in a natural disaster area, with thin glasses, maroon eyes and an O'Connelesque hairstyle to boot, though his was black rather than being naturally or unnaturally green.

"He`s passed out on the couch," the former champion pointed out blithely, taking another sip of his coffee-and-vodka concoction and then watching the two visitors part with little more than a 'nice knowing you' spoken by the girl, while the fairly nerdy looking young man promptly swivelled around on one heel and departed with nothing but a backhanded wave, still intent on picking apart the blue insect he had gotten a hold of somewhere along the way.

"You are," one of the remaining pair of employees commented as he walked by, vanishing into the kitchen some time later and leaving Harabec to resume his buzzed reflections without further interruption, even as a Hammerhead II departed the city a few minutes later. He didn`t bother to pay anymore attention to the girl, or anything else for that matter.

A triple bolt of gold shot through the darkened sky as all Hell continued to break loose on perhaps the only place on the planet where it couldn`t have possibly been more appropriate. The bolt carried through the skies for several seconds before crashing into the ground and causing a fierce explosion of brutalized rock and crystal, sending shards of ice flying in the middle of melting into water and evaporating into steam only to snow back down all of a half a second later, leaving the Liger Zero to tear it`s claw back out of the ground and roar angrily at the Proto Breaker, which touched down with a skid not too far away.

"What kinda fucking lunatic are you?" Marshall asked angrily, having expected nothing more than a quick series of shots. He didn`t know why he wasn`t getting any back-up, either, he had put in over a dozen such calls back to the base and never once heard so much as a single answer, it was as if they were ignoring him when he needed them the most.

"The kind that Mommy told you to run away from when you were a little boy," Bit replied in an unexpectedly Kale-like fashion, though he lacked the inherent malice and villainy in his voice to make it sound quite as intimidating as his more dangerous counterpart.

"... Why do I even bother?" Bit asked himself, having apparently broken the mood of high intensity in favor of what seemed almost perversely casual, leaving him to dodge and zig-zag in between a dozen or so attacks before stopping and throwing his shield up, just as the Breaker halted it`s assault entirely. Davis was planning something - that or he was just too pissed off to pick a gun to shoot with, though not the charged particle cannon. That would`ve left him immobile, and a lack of mobility when dealing with an opponent that had the speed and agility of the Liger Zero was almost like signing your own death warrant.

"You`re an annoying son of a bitch, you know that?" Davis asked, obviously feeling the way he was speaking. Bit only replied with a cheeky grin, suddenly dropping his shield and pulling the trigger on his dual impact cannon. "Pissing people off is half the fun!" He exclaimed, even as the rounds blew into the outer layers of armor on the suarian Zoid, rocking it around from momentum but causing no actual damage, creating just the gap that the blonde was looking for.

A second blast of thrusterfire, a crash at less than halfway, one Zoid yielding to the other. Bit screamed his dismay as the Proto Breaker rammed the Liger Zero in mid-stride, catching himself and Zeke off guard in the process and shoving them both straight into the air, with the Liger practically wrapped around the from of the mutant Geno Saurer`s body, held in place by bladed fingers that threatened to stab into it at a moment`s notice.

"Fuckya, Blondie!" Davis shouted, having apparently recognized the Liger Zero and it`s pilot from news vids at some point during their confrontation, ascending the Geno high into the air before cutting his thrusters with one last burst from the stub-wings on the Zoid`s back, turning the two into a half-flip before they came to a stop, still floating upward on prior momentum until they came to what seemed like a dead-stop in their climb, held aloft by dying inertia against the whims of gravity.

It felt like an eternity, but it ended all too soon for Bit`s tastes, leaving the Proto Breaker sprawled out in the air, almost clinging to the flailing Liger Zero from above as the two fighting machines began to fall towards the ground, where the Breaker`s heavier weight would probably crush the Liger into a tin can if he didn`t act fast.

Marshall was cackling obscenely, Bit was irately banging his head into the back of the flight chair and everything seemed to be screwed until Zeke cut into the blonde`s thoughts with a single image and a single pair of words to accompany it.

His body reacted before his conscious mind finished slapping itself for being so oblivious, and the Liger Zero roared as it`s pilot took control, swinging open the back boosters from their hiding place and then igniting them with a warrior`s cry, forcing the two Zoids to flip again before breaking apart, the Geno`s claws raking down the Liger`s chest and stomach and gouging out shallow trails in the process, but the Zero`s right claw remaining embedded in the side of the Proto Breaker`s head all the way down.

"WHO`S SCREWED NOW, ASSWIPE?!" Bit demanded triumphantly as the two Zoids fell down into the black depths of another canyon - with the Liger Zero pulling down and into the lead of the Proto Breaker, which was howling it`s contempt and rage all the way down, though Marshall never got the chance to answer.

A loud *BOOM* echoed out of the canyon, which promptly seemed to vomit out thousands of pounds of dust, vaporizing snow and sharding crystals, a golden glow permeating every last one before a lava geyser shot out from the center, also glowing golden at points as it reached for the skies like a spurt of blood from a gunshot.

Jamie Hameros had done a few crazed things in his life, most of which could be attributed to his secondary personality, but while diving into a missile barrage, crashing into the mouth of a Whale King and diving out of a suicide bombing Pteras Bomber were all nuts to every degree imaginable, for some reason, they all paled in comparison to what he was doing now.

That was probably because all of those things had been perpetrated, more or less, by that same secondary personality, but this was being done by him. Consciously, intentionally - albeit obviously somewhat reluctantly, but still. Most teens would`ve had better things to do when they were stuck alone with their only available loved one, but Jamie?

Somehow, dangling upside down and scurrying along a series of pipes seemed very strangely relaxing to him. Leyla wasn`t too far up ahead, but she was obviously going a bit slower than she would have otherwise to allow him to keep up with her - Jamie`s body seemed to change with his personality. While the Wild Eagle could turn it into a killing machine, Jamie himself had trouble doing more than running two miles under ideal conditions and could barely bench press a hundred-and-fifty pounds when he poured all of his effort into it. The only reason he hadn`t fallen to his death was that fear was one of the best motivators in existence.

"You`d probably be better off without me," he announced bluntly, avoiding the obviously fatalistic urge to glance down at the engineering section they dangled over. The main power generator was in the same room that they were, all they had to do was keep scurrying along and they`d eventually hit another vent and possibly make it to a supply room of some sort - aside from raiding a washroom sink and finding an out-of-place crate of snack foods, neither had eaten or drank anything over the past day or two, surviving only by their wits and endurance, both mental and physical.

"Stop talking like that," came a slightly reassuring voice that he`d come to unknowingly rely on to keep him grounded. Jamie was still the strategist here, he had picked the times and places where they`d leave the safety of the ventillation system, but Leyla was the glue holding him together. He just wasn`t meant for playing cat and mouse games where losing meant dying, and she wasn`t either for that matter, but with memories of an apocalyptic past coming back in spades, she didn`t really find it quite as terrifying as it had been.

"I`m serious," he retorted defeatedly, pausing and taking one hand from the piping to crack his knuckles, then repeating the process with his other hand and making very sure that he was rooted each time he did it.

"So am I," she replied firmly, pausing in her own movements almost as if she had known what he was stopping to do without even looking back to see. Psychic awareness was another thing that she was awakening to find herself capable of, and not just hearing the thoughts of so many people on the Whale King either. There were certain minds that stood out, certain people whose presence she could almost lock onto and monitor, and right now, they were unknowingly - in Jamie`s case, anyway - heading right for one of them.

"Not serious enough," Jamie shot back, scooting along a bit more from where he hung to the pipes like a possum, shuffling uneasily towards a goal he couldn`t even see anymore.

"Stop bitching and keep moving," Will cut in annoyedly, giving the subconscious equivelent to a smack upside the head. His avatar - what Jamie saw when he thought of the other personality - was still bandaged around the head from where the door had been slammed shut on his skull, another grim reminder of one-too-many failings.

"Keep outta this," Leyla cut back in, shooting a telepathic glare into Jamie`s thoughts and effectively silencing all three of them awkwardly.

Knowing that your girlfriend could potentially shut down your mind if she wanted while you had a second personality that always picked at you was enough to put anyone on edge.

For Jamie Hameros - hanging upside down, practically boiling in his own fluids, wearing days-worn clothing, dealing with both of them at once and feeling increasingly useless as he was - it was business as usual. The hard part was deciding which aspect of that train of thought disturbed him more, that he was surrounded by people who could easily take him out - Will, Leyla, hundreds of Rommel employed guards and more than a few Zoid warriors whom he hadn`t spoken to in almost a week or longer - or that he thought it was too normal to actually realize it until now.

Kyle Mazemia was a man of many things. Fine taste, very clean, lazy on the weekends but dedicated the rest of the time, able to endure massive amounts of sleep deprivation and possessed of an appearance that made most people think one of three things, depending on who was thinking it: The first was his uncanny resemblance to a younger, livelier Stigma Stoller with silver hair and red eyes. The second was the view of the average fangirl: 'OMFG OMFG OMFG!!!! HOTT!11!' And the third, and final, was the view of Marcus Harlock: Trusty cannon fodder.

All of these things applied to certain degrees, but most people didn`t quite see him as a rag doll for the annoyed rantings of a certain, pony-tailed young woman who had the distinction of calling herself his fiancee. Or the distinction of calling him her bitch. Whichever you preferred, both worked about the same when it came to describing their relationship sometimes.

"WHY DIDN`T YOU CALL ME, YA LOUSY BUM?! AND WHY THE HELL DIDN`T YOU WAKE UP?! I COME ALL THE WAY OUT HERE TO MAKE SURE YOU`RE ALRIGHT AND YOU`RE SLEEPING, IF I DIDN`T KNOW ANY BETTER I`D SAY YOU WERE IGNORING ME ALL WEEK LONG!"

To this, Kyle`s only response - whilst being flung around by the straps of his overalls, half-awake and utterly terrified - was to gargle out excuses unintelligibly while recieving brain damage by the truckload. Finally though, in his dazed, shellshocked stupor, he managed to form a relatively coherent sentence or two.

"Well-" A yelp. "-maybe-" A choke. "-if you`d-" A sound that vaguely resembled Santa Claus in a blender. "-stop shaking me-" Halt. "- then I could explain..." He finally managed to finish, though his eyes were now rolling about completely independent of one another.

"Will you two please shut up?" Asked a voice from the floor as the rug unfolded and Mark sat up, followed by an easily annoyed looking Abbie. She had been asleep for all of two precious minutes, comfortable and reassured, able to rest after spending a day and a half tending to massively injured hospital patients. Needless to say, she looked about as angry as Kyle looked disoriented, and an angry Abbie was not something to take lightly...

"We`re busy, you nosy little buzz headed snot!" She shot down at him, and Mark automatically felt the air in the room shift several times over. "Ya shouldn`t`ve done that," he commented bluntly, sliding out of the way as Katherine practically dropped Kyle back onto the sofa, his head hanging lopsided as Abbie rose to her feet, one eyelid slightly twitching. Katherine was all of a head taller than Abbie, which put her near eye level with Kyle, who in turn was roughly the same height as Bit Cloud, which left the conveniently escaping Mark as the tallest in the group.

"What. Did. You. Call. Him?" Abbie asked, every word stopped short of the one after it. Anyone with even passing experience of being around her would`ve known that such a tone meant that it was time to give up and apologize. Kat lacked that experience.

Eyes narrowed. One could almost see lightning passing between the two before Kyle spoke up.

Far removed from this titanic clash of the PMSing girlfriends-of-absolute-psychopaths, Harabec stood near the door of the diner, having long since run out of his coffee-vodka mixture, chugging the last of it down at around the time that Katherine had begun to shake the living daylights out of her boyfriend. Conflicts of that nature rarely interested him after all, so he`d excused himself to pay attention to the small skirmish taking place outside the city.

"Helcats," he mused, picking out the attackers by the sounds of their guns alone, and also picking out that they were losing badly by the distinct sounds of the specific types of armor that made up their outer hulls being crushed. Zoid battles were loud after all, and as a veteran, Davids had something like thirty or more years of getting used to the sounds of combat, he could`ve fought half-asleep and blind if he wanted to and he would`ve still been dangerous.

"Sleepers or at least AIs, too," he judged. Real pilots didn`t keep running into the same places that their allies kept blowing up in. Sleepers and normal AI setups had pre-programmed destinations, and though they could deviate the patterns with which they arrived to them, they always had a tendency to move directly to them without failure, unless in chase mode and that wasn`t very effective for dealing with area battles where the unit in question was dealing with multiple targets.

It was early evening in Farentown. That made the explosions in the distance stand out a bit more and light up the night sky, though Harabec, in his musings, wasn`t able to fully appreciate them, nor was he able to even notice the sound of a Gustav pulling up nearby. "I still don`t get why they`d use such a large force for cannon fodder though. Doesn`t make sense, unless they`re just trying to wear us all down with drawn out combat and no real gains," he thought to himself, leaning away from the frame of the front door and standing straight on the sidewalk.

Something wasn`t right about this. Even when you consider that the entire world had fallen to near anarchy from the surgical manner of the Rommel Blitzkrieg, something still wasn`t right. It was as if someone was dangling a half-truth in front of his face and letting him know it was a half-truth to begin with, but hiding the rest of it behind some immovable, impassible object.

"I don`t like this, not one damn bit," he concluded bluntly, tucking his hands into the front pockets of the brown leather jacket he had been wearing on-and-off for two days now, finding it a bit less comfortable than his vest since it was more restrictive. Harabec only ever liked having sleeves on his shirts, after all.

A loud hum and a scream brought him out of his thoughts all over again with a jerk, reflexively whipping around in time to spot the singed remains of a dead body flying through the air, and the lightspeed damage of a heavy battle laser discharge against the front wall of a building at the end of the street, melting it into a slagged hole in all of a split second. The remains landed on the concrete with a thud, and the boy, who had narrowly avoided getting turned into a cloud of bloody vapor, landed awkwardly on his backside as if pushed out of the way at the last second.

"Shit," Beck muttered after a few seconds, glaring in the direction the shot had come from and quickly coming to the realization that it hadn`t been intended. "Friendly fire, isn`t," he reminded himself, fighting the urge to personally gun down whoever had fired into the city - accidental or not. Experience stopped him though, that and sheer logic born out of the desperate situation that he and everyone else in Farentown had to contend with. Attrition had already taken enough of a toll on the defenders of the city, it wouldn`t do too well for morale, teamwork or survival if they started gunning each other down, instead of the enemy.

Besides, any potential weakness couldn`t be revealed to an enemy. Most military planners - be they good or just plain evil - were sticklers for details, and if they weren`t, their subordinate analysts were. They`d notice something like a local Zoid that had originally survived the last battle somehow turning up in ruins before the next, then come to the conclusion that all they had to do would be to get past the front line skirmishing and get their backs to the city.

The cries of the survivor though, roused him back out of his considerations, and with grit teeth, he looked back over his shoulder at the kid, who promptly seemed to fall into a silent, traumatized haze in a matter of seconds, never once even looking Harabec`s way.

"This is gonna be a long night," he finally sighed out in resignation, sympathetically ignoring the kid for a moment or two before his own instincts kicked back into play and forced him to grab the boy before running back into the diner. It didn`t offer any real protection, not if it was hit by anything above an assault rifle in firepower, but it was situated in front of a private hangar and between two other buildings, each of which stood at least a floor higher. That had to count for something...

Silence. It was dull. Brad normally liked the quiet of the base, when the only racket was the sound of the overpowered air conditioner units rumbling along and turning practically every room but his own into a virtual freezer, when the only things he had to do were think to himself, study his performance in battle, read over papers concerning the Command Wolf - and later, the Shadow and Scout Foxes - and occasionally clean out his small collection of high powered handguns.
Brad owned seven of them. Ranging from a 'matchbox special' - a miniature, one shot pistol so small that it had to be held with the middle and index finger and fired by pushing an unguarded trigger on the side of the barrel with the thumb - to a custom six shooter that could fire a .365 Magnum round with enough force to blow a man off his feet while simultaneously removing the upper half of his face in the process. He even slept with a handgun under his pillow at night - the same .45 caliber handgun that he`d been stripped of when he was captured.

Brad owned those guns for a number of reasons. Chief among them being that he was more than a little paranoid, and paranoia didn`t always mean that people weren`t out to get you. Brad had enemies, ranging from a few gangs in his hometown to former members of the Backdraft Group - and he still counted Doctor Leyon among his risks no matter how pseudo-friendly the man had become. He didn`t trust any of them to pick a good time and being within even vaguely close proximity to them set him on edge, which was why he`d always kept at least one of his guns on his person at all times.

Being without those guns made him feel naked. Being without his coffee made him feel tired. Being without the quiet rumbling hum of the air conditioning, the bland reading provided by portfolios, accounts and score tests, or the footage of his battles to study left him feeling bland.

The silence was dull. It was so dull that it was starting to wear away on his usually knife-like ability to think in a straight line, he was now starting to ramble in his head, among other things.

Across from him still sat the straining ex-member of the now-dead Thunder Team, Bill Chapman, whose eyes had continued to eerily glow all through the past... How long? Five minutes? Ten? Twenty? An hour?

Telling time was rather difficult when you were locked up with a vacant-looking weirdo who only spoke when he was mumbling out curses to himself or telling you to shut up so he could concentrate further. Not like he needed to, but still.

With a bit of resignation to his current problem, Brad finally reached up and put a fist to his cheek, leaning with his elbow against the flat, hard surface of the bed that half-hung next to him. "One Mississippi... Two Mississippi... Three Mississippi..." He began to count away, if only to occupy himself.

Somewhere, a refrigerator popped open to the quiet - but not noiseless - backdrop of a kitchen. In a mundane task, a gloved hand reached within and drew out the first soda in sight. Disgust followed, it was a diet drink and was promptly flung aside, landing somewhere on the floor, it`s contents fizzling about within as a result. The hand went back in, finding a non-diet drink and then pulling it out.

"All work and no play makes Shadow a royal pain in the ass," came the reply, though the intended listener wasn`t even anywhere in sight. Steps were taken, the young mass murderer nonchalantly exited the kitchen and stepped into a silver, polished looking hallway. Rommel`s people had been sloppy enough to miss this place, he knew.

More walking. Then a stop. A door slipped open on seeming automatic, he peeked inside and promptly resisted the urge to snicker at the pile of normally somewhat revealing clothing - skirts, sleeveless tanktops cut away towards the neck and bust line, halter tops, things of that nature - collecting actual dust in the corner of the room, with over a dozen pictures ripped up and formed into an almost obsessively neat pile on the computer desk.
At that, he turned away and the door slid shut behind him. A few steps across the hallway and he was in another room, this one a bit smaller and by far cleaner. It was also, comparitively, much blander, save for a small group of eye catching decorations held on wall mounts within an arms reach of the bed and desk. Guns, four of them, ranging from a plain Colt to a clunky six shooter that looked like it weighed as much as an average portable stereo. If he didn`t know any better, he would`ve thought of it as a customized sawed off.

A snort, a mental note and he turned away again, walking across the hallway and finding that this time, the room he entered was actually quite clean. Almost obsessively so, bar the smashed remains of an alarm clock, which was also somewhat stained by a bit of dried blood - not even an ounce-worth, but still. Several dozen Zoid model kits of varying size - all of them aerial types - almost covered one of the shelves across from the computer desk, while a small television sat on a table to the opposite side of the room, hooked up to a gaming console with a single Zoid flight simulator plugged into it, the controller neatly placed out of the way on the floor.

An odd thought coming out of someone like him. Again, he exited the room, turning across the hallway and entering another, only to find it empty except for a single-sized bed and a desk. No computer, no personal effects, nothing of that nature. The next room was even stranger than the one before that, with three shelves literally crammed with Zoid collector`s items ranging from comic books to toys to unopened video game boxes, with one of the other walls mounting a flatscreen television and another after that being the place where a computer desk and a laptop sat. The bed was a single, the nightstand next to it had an old family picture and there was a small refrigerator sitting on the opposite side, within arms reach of the desk.

A snort. He left that room too, feeling a bit annoyed until finally opening the last bedroom door and cracking a mirth-filled smile. It fit his liking quite nicely - if not for the fact that it seemed a bit more 'cheerful' than he would have preferred. A single, plain bed, an open closet filled with twelve pairs of blue jeans and another two pairs of red pants, a pair of swimming trunks, underwear stacked sloppily into twin piles of of briefs and boxers, shirts hung haphazardly in no particular order - though a black-and-blue zip-up jacket did catch his eye.

After that, the room had a few posters for popular music bands, a pin-up or two stapled to the ceiling above the bed, and beside the computer on the desk, there sat the trophy of a golden Blade Liger, standing atop a typical, golden trophy cup, with a name stamped onto a metal plate on the wooden base, the emblem of the Zoid Battle Commission to either side.

"Goody two shoes," he muttered sardonically, walking back down the hallway and eventually arriving in the living room with his drink still in hand, the television blaring static on all channels and a familiar, black Organoid sitting in a corner, dark blue eyes looking narrowed for a few seconds.

Pick one already, Shadow ordered annoyedly, obviously having no need or desire for this supposed rest that was being imposed on him. Almost absently though, to the background roar of the anxious Zoid currently occupying the otherwise empty hangar, the other walked by a dart board and plucked one of the sharpened objects out.

Raven made that mistake with Van. He let him live. I made that mistake with Van and Zeke. I let them live. I died because of it, Shadow pointed out haughtily, having learned from past mistakes. Standing up on both legs and again seeming to narrow his eyes, he waited for a response. The other only sighed and chucked the dart to the side without even looking at where it would land. If you`re so adament about torturing him, you should get it over with now so that he doesn`t come back stronger!

"Who`d the dart land on?" The other asked, nonchalantly plopping into the recliner that sat across from the couch, crossing one leg over the other with the ankle on the knee and waiting for an answer while sipping his drink.

A sideways glance at the picture on the wall. A brow quirked and Kale Obscura grinned almost sheepishly at the sight before him, leering back at Shadow without a word for a long, tense moment. Theirs was the kind of alliance that could quickly snap into a bid to kill one another, after all, even if they had become something vaguely akin to confident in each others support after the Geno Saurer`s evolution into the Geno Maxis.

"Think you`re up for a fox hunt?" Kale asked, finally breaking the back of the static-based silence between them. At that, Shadow finally spared a look at the picture on the wall, his 'expression' seeming to narrow a bit in annoyance at not knowing the name of whoever the dart had landed on.

Long, light brown hair. Blue eyes. Mild tan and a stripe tattooed onto either arm.

Brad Hunter had just been singled out, against all odds, by one of the single most unrelenting, homicidal - perhaps genocidal - maniacs in all of history.

Kale grinned a bit wider. Several hundred miles away, Naomi Fluegel put down her lukewarm, untouched coffee and felt her heart skip a beat for no apparent reason.

Illidan: Don`t expect the next chap any time soon. I`ve been needing to slow down like Hell, I`m only just now realizing it :/

Reign of Chaos by Sh33p

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36

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Reign of Chaos

Chapter 16

Crashing Reverence