Reign of Chaos Chapter 18, a Zoids fanfic by Sh33p

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

A roar of VTOL thrusterfire, the silhouette of a Hammerhead II became obvious amid the background of the forest that surrounded the almost invisible log cabin, hidden from prying eyes by the innumerable trees that covered the entirety of the mountain it was situated on, leaving only sparse clearings here and there, this one was only barely big enough to accomodate for the Hammerhead, the cabin itself and the slight accessory that made it stick out like a sore thumb.

The still-recovering Razorwind Fury growled a neutral 'hello' to the newly arriving Zoid, stepping out from behind the cabin and holding it`s position, shimmering somewhat in the early morning light. It was obvious that it had been self-healing on it`s own, possessing only three of it`s six lasersaw arms and still bearing out a massive, if not shallow, crater across it`s chest.

Stump-like legs extended from the bottom of the small carrier, rooting it to the ground as it touched down, powerful shock absorbers yielding to the force of gravity for a few moments before springing back, moving the Zoid up and down by mere inches before it stopped, thrusters cutting out and a staircase automatically flipping down from it`s left side, just aft of the left hammer-section.

Almost a minute passed by before the door behind the stairs slid open, exposing a plain looking nerd of a man in his early twenties, dressed in the garb of a team mechanic, though the white jumpsuit he wore was zipped down a bit at the collar, exposing the top of the short sleeved, gray shirt he wore underneath. The remains of a metallic, blue insect were nonchalantly flung to the side before his ungloved hands tucked themselves into his jumpsuit`s hip pockets, leaving the man to idly step down to the ground, paying no actual attention to the huge mechanical creature that would`ve caused most people to turn yellow and run away.

"Yo! Vega!" He shouted out, spotting that one of the windows was open. Before he even finished speaking though, the door to the cabin swung open and a boy who looked somewhere between the age of eleven or twelve walked into view, dressed in a hawaiian-styled button-up T-shirt and a pair of shorts, no shoes though.

"I`ve been expecting you," he stated bluntly before continuing. "And next time you see a blue, mechanical insect, don`t kill it."

The initial words hadn`t caught Lars off-guard. The second string though, made him raise an eyebrow.

"Kat is-" "With her boyfriend, and Dana is at home. I know," Vega cut him off. "I`ll explain everything once we get inside, but before that, I`m going to give you a warning."

Pause. Lars didn`t move an inch, didn`t even speak since he feared that the boy would cut him off again.

"Step into that door, agree to do what I`m going to ask of you and I can`t guarantee your survival. There`s a very real possibility that you`ll die before the end of the month," Obscura warned, living up to his name in spades by the dozen, though next up, it was Lars who took the initiative, raising one finger up to push his glasses back into place with a bland smirk.

The swish of a door opening up to the bridge of the Empress Heart alerted Sarah to take her eyes off of the communications monitor, which was currently being seen to by one of the refugees they`d picked up out of Romeo, a good chunk of which happened to be at least partially skilled in the workings of civilian and military technologies to some degree. Given Leyon`s background in designing the whole Whale King from the frame inward, that came in handy, especially since he blended civilian and military technologies so much.

Simply put: A military communications officer would`ve been completely dumbfounded to handle all of the communications equipment on the Empress Heart. A civilian IT manager on the other hand...

"You called?" Came the half-tired reply from the bubblegum pink/red-haired girl who came partially stumbling into the room, still clad in her civilian clothes, like she had been for the past... Days. No one had really had the time to bathe too much and it was starting to show on almost everyone but Leena. It seemed, in her case, that a bit of grime couldn`t really put her looks down, at least not any further than they already were.

"They won`t let us go any closer to Champton without verification, and since none of them know your father, Brad, Bit and Jamie aren`t present, you will have to do."

"They didn`t know any of them, either. They don`t even know me," Leena sardonically pointed out, pushing an errant hair or two out of her face and yawning. The scars on her face...

"Do you think Harry gave them up-to-date information?" Sarah asked, almost immediately smacking herself for not remembering the obvious changes the scars caused to Leena`s appearance. She hadn`t ever known the girl before she`d been given the lightning bolt treatment by Kale, she didn`t know what she looked like before the scars, only that she`d dressed and acted far differently. If Harry hadn`t updated his people about her changes, then...

"I don`t know," Leena shrugged, crashing a bit of Sarah`s hope right off the bat before nonchalantly walking up and bending down to face the screen up close, nudging the man at the console out of the way in the process. Sarah moved a reasonably safe distance behind her with a sigh, thanking her lucky stars that Steven and Leyon weren`t present. Both were, more than likely, passed out somewhere after spending six hours arguing about the proper tools to use to screw or nail something into place.

She liked them both, Steven was a nice, smart guy with his fair share of quirks, Leyon was too smart for his own good and an easy target with his ego, but together? They grated on her. Badly.

"Mister Champ left a specific list of recognizable details, honey, and you don`t match up."

"... How so?" "Ten seconds... To core meltdown," Sarah muttered in dry thought, taking another step back and getting ready to plug her ears till it hurt.

"Let`s see..." A pause. The man brought up a three foot long sheet of copy paper, promptly going through them all. "You`re ugly, you don`t have the voice of an angel from heaven, you don`t have good fashion sense, your eyes don`t sparkle like the water on a moonlit night, your skin isn`t a blissfully pale ti-" "WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY, YOU LITTLE PENCIL NECKED DESK JOCKEY SON OF A BITCH?!"

There was a distinct *Whump* on the other end of the line, preceeding a yelp of abstract terror and shock. Afterward...

"Yeah, you`re her," he said in a near-squeak, the screen going blank a second later and leaving a blank eyed, dangerously psychotic looking Leena Tauros glaring at it, probably all of a tenth of a micron from frothing at the mouth and screeching like a deranged hyena.

"Did you hear that?" Sarah asked after a moment, yanking her fingers from her ears as if nothing had happened and then glancing at the small pop-up screen on the main monitor, apparently one of the only people not leveled by Leena`s outburst. It was a miracle that none of the Redler Interceptors or Pteras Bombers flying formation around the Empress Heart hadn`t dropped out of the sky.

"Yes, ma`am... You`re clear to land in port sixteen," the apparent squadron leader half-mumbled out in surrender, leading her Redlers away without another word.

"Note to self," Susan began, cautiously glancing at the still-irate looking girl leaning precariously at the main communications console, a helpless worker practically trapped next to her.

The roar of the wind, the dull hum of assisted regeneration and the gasp of hydraulics all filled his ears at once - while nothing short of putrid death wreaked into his nostrils, tainting his already fading sense of victory, even as several pounds of hot ash flaked onto his skin and clothing, initially soothed and then outdone by the frigid tingle of as many pounds of snow, leaving him disoriented in the extreme as the harness flipped up, which in turn left him to drunkenly falter out of the cockpit, falling down almost thirty feet into the rank, blackened mixture of ash and snow on the ground.

He sank in another foot and then stopped on contact with ground that felt like metal, so cold that it could pass for ice with minimal trouble. Almost robotically, he made his way back to his feet and forced his eyes open in a squint, hearing the voice of emotionless reprimand almost instantly.

"We`d`ve thought you would`ve gotten used to the climate by now. Apparently, we overestimated you."

"Shut up, damn you! I just went through Hell to get back here, Liger`s still hurting!" Bit retorted sharply, if not a bit weakly. He really was feeling his Zoid`s pain, and quite frankly, it hurt.

"If you went through Hell, why are you still standing there?" Came the only passingly-feminine voice in reply, followed by the source stepping a bit closer. If Madison`s voice were any deeper, and her face just a bit rougher, she could`ve passed as a man. Obviously, she hadn`t spent her childhood with dreams of playing Suzy Homemaker, if she`d even had dreams to begin with. As far as Bit could tell, the woman was little more than an extension of Roc`s will, at least that was how she acted. Maybe it was in reverse, he didn`t know.

It was hard to care when you were in so much pain from the very air you were breathing that you were starting to have trouble standing up.

"I guess I just went in one way and came back out the other end... Then fell right back in," he mumbled out defeatedly, feeling the now-instinctive urge to raise his guard.

She was too quick. Again. She was always too quick, the woman made Kale look like a freaking paraplegic slug for crying out loud.

There was a loud *CRACK* that Bit could clearly identify as the sound of the club he had nicknamed Thor`s Hammer smashing across the side of his head with enough force to turn the average human being`s brain into a sloppy mush that could pass as scrambled eggs, leaving him to fly through the air and crash into the snow. On his head.

It was a testimate to his thick skull that he wasn`t killed instantly, far from it in fact. With a solemn curse under his breath, he slowly began to get up from lying on his stomach, his vision blurred and his head throbbing, just like the rest of him was.

"You`re getting better," Madison observed, just loudly enough that he could hear it. There was no pride in her voice, hell, there was nothing in her voice but the facts, which left Bit to come to a rather annoying conclusion of his own a second later.

"If I get good enough, I`m`a crack yer fuckin` head open and spray yer brains out on thuh snow..."

And with that rather drunken sounding comment, Bit Cloud passed out. He landed with a thump on the snow and didn`t budge an inch further. That was when Roc interjected, having been somewhat stirred by the blonde`s comment.

A bit of madness is cherished by even the wisest, Zeke. You would do well to partake of it.

A skidding stop, dirt shifted under feet that weighed three or four times as much as an ordinary minivan, and even through that, the only true sound was that of the thrusters kicking off. Footsteps followed suit seconds later, heavy but quiet, even somewhat light, as if the creature were trying to keep from alerting any defenses in the area.

With precision uncanny for such a large construct, the beast virtually tip-toed it`s way up the side of the hill, treading with caution where most would`ve foolishly flung themselves over the peak and been detected instantly as a result. It was strange, seeing something of that size hunched over, carefully sneaking about, as if it had the foreknowledge that Champton`s defense grid didn`t extend to the side of the hill it stood on.

["What happened?" He asked slowly, his speech slurred. It was a hospital bed, again, just like it had been when he`d first woken up with no recollection of who he was. The perverted old coot of a scientist was sitting in the chair next to his bed, an adult magazine hidden in his Scientific Weekly Journal.

He felt violated for some reason - in his mind, even though he didn`t even know what had happened after that first scream.

"The doctors say you`ll be just fine after a bit o` rest," Dee stated, shutting his 'paper' and nodding. Thomas - the name seemed to fit now - took a passing glance at him, almost instantly feeling worry.

"You need to get your breathing checked," he ordered immediately, causing the older man to raise a brow. "Eh?"

"It`s a bit too shallow," Thomas informed him, sitting up and scooting back in the bed, his movements bearing an eerie precision to them. "And your right elbow may need to be checked out too," he added, leaning back against the pillows.

There it stood, frozen in place, waiting. It`s tail, thick and lengthy, ideal for balance and attack at the same time, trailed down by almost the length of it`s body, holding steady and lying on the ground. An ancient growl echoed, and then...

[Before he could answer, the door slipped open again, and Thomas` heart dropped down into his stomach in an instant as two people entered. One was a short man, aged to about twenty, perhaps a bit older, his hair kept mostly in a tight ponytail at the back, with a face that instinctively made Thomas want to punch something.

Then there was her. She was a bit shorter than her companion, and whereas he made Thomas want to punch something, her very presence made him want to scream his eyes out.

"How`re you feeling?" She asked, practically draped across the brown haired man`s arm. Instantly, Thomas found himself able to see something was wrong with the man.

"Van," he began, not really sure if that was even the guy`s name. He didn`t finish though, looking as if he was at something of an impass.

"What?" The one he`d guessed was named Van asked in reply, his free hand hanging at his side, though his other arm was draped around the blonde woman`s waist. "Something wrong?"

"... No. Nothing`s wrong," came the answer, even if he was lying. There`d been a weakness in the brunette man, Thomas could practically smell it. That armored shirt he wore, it didn`t offer an ounce of protection for the stomach, or the bottom of the rib cage, and his legs seemed a bit weak in the knees.

Anyone else, Thomas would`ve told them, he was sure of it. For some reason here though, he didn`t say anything.

"I`d like to be alone, please," he asked, looking a bit older almost instantly. Everyone else in the room seemed a bit taken aback, but Doctor Dee, at least, had no trouble with complying, standing up and promptly dragging the other two out without another word.]

A few seconds ticked by, and green eyes shifted around, settling on a stack of neatly folded clothing in the corner, a dark green jumpsuit, thick brown gloves, black combat boots, a utility belt and a heavy looking trench coat with no sleeves. He instinctively knew his boxers were hidden in the pile too, all of which combined to make his mind up for him.

"I have to go back," he thought, almost regretting that he ever even heard himself think it. "I have to get back into that thing. I have to find out how it changed me and I have to find out if it really is the key to my past," he reasoned, not even knowing how these thoughts were making themselves known to him now, rather than before. It was like a thousand flashes below the surface, an intense feeling of self-awareness, and awareness of others, that he hadn`t ever felt before.

All of it had a purpose though, and as he got to his feet and got dressed, he understood that.

His purpose was simple, explained to him in the subconscious by the mental flash of a blue haired woman, visible for all of a nanosecond before his brain shut the image down, lest it threaten to shatter his already fragile psyche. She was the real key, but to get to her, he would need to get to others. The list of objectives was clear now, he knew that much.

"I just wish I knew how," he thought, pulling his last glove on and turning towards the door. They were still standing there, talking. Oh well, he`d just have to wait then.]

And with a jolt, he did just that. The atmosphere still stung just as bitterly as ever, his eyelids felt like lead weights and his skin felt like an agonizing mixture of frigidly wet and painfully hot dryness, leaving his clothes to weigh heavily on him with the added mass of snow and ash that had collected in the threads. His T-shirt and the armored shirt over it were both stiff, half-wet and half-dry, and his pants didn`t feel much better.

Awkwardly, he forced himself back up to his feet, teeth chattering together, the Handleblade`s hilt poking lightly at his back, and yet...

He was alone. The area around him felt like a deep pit, almost, running at a few feet above his own head and continuing along until he realized that it wasn`t a pit, but a trench. The ground was smooth beneath the snow, and when he moved to take a step, he realized that it was pitch black and prone to cracking with little real trouble. After a few seconds though, the blonde shifted onto one foot and shook himself off, though it was only good enough for him to move around a bit more easily.

"Time for what?" He demanded, turning towards the source of the first voice and finding that Madison was standing at the edge of the trench, outside of it but perilously close to falling in. To either side of her stood two hulking figures, one seeming eternally majestic, like the disgusting winds couldn`t even touch it, towering over the other two with an innate grace that seemed to make it look like a deity in some long forgotten pantheon.

"Zeke?" Bit asked, taking a step towards the edge of the trench and finding that he couldn`t move any further.

"What? What the hell is this?" Bit demanded, raising an arm up to shield his eyes from the glare of the eternally setting sun, not to mention the sudden gust of torturous snow and ash that blew down from above.

"Because I said yes! Happy?!" Bit answered annoyedly, suddenly shifting his eyes on an almost instinctive reflex to the red and orange glow visible in the distance, some ways down the trench he was currently stuck in.

"I don`t know!" Bit yelled with authority this time, taking a step back and finding that he could only move in a straight line. Forward or back, he couldn`t move in any other directions. The glow became brighter, he could hear fire churning in the distance, so dangerously close to being in his sights.

"I told you," He growled out, fear turning into contempt and a sideways glance being thrown at the towering Organoid who stood nearby on Madison`s flank. He couldn`t see the Liger Zero anymore, he didn`t dare to turn his head to do so.

And at that moment, the glow stopped being just a light he could barely see, slopping around the corner ahead of him as a lava flow, fire belching out from above, moving at a near water-like speed. "Oh shit..."

Every instinct, every single ounce of self-preservation in his body screamed to turn and run.

Instead of doing what he should have and making a futile run for his life, Bit Cloud stood his ground and grit his teeth until it hurt. The heat from the lava itched at his flesh, flaking away ash and melting the snow from him, and yet he stood there. The answer was clear to him.

"Well?" Madison asked calmly, willing to let him die where he stood without so much as an inkling of remorse.

"For them," Bit muttered to himself, even as the lava whipped towards him, time speeding back up in a blur of motion that would`ve made his head spin. Without regret, he closed his eyes and braced himself, throwing his arms up to his face and continuing to hold his ground.

And with that, Bit Cloud vanished from sight, engulfed in the fires of Hell itself.

"So... In short, what you`re saying is that... The shit`s hit the fan, right?" Lars asked. He hadn`t been prepared for everything Vega had told him, from the state of the world at large to the events concerning Kale and numerous other things, ranging from things called the 'Hellwalker' and the 'Black Ultra,' both of which sounded like they could level cities in minutes.

"Basically speaking," Vega answered bluntly, leaning against the frame of the door and watching Specular on the couch. The Organoid hadn`t moved an inch since she`d collapsed earlier. "Which is why I want you to take me to Nyx."

"That place is forbidden though," Lars pointed out almost reflexively, more than remembering how many times his flight instructors back at the academy had told him about the dangers of even going near that part of the world. "Has a Rare Hertz effect, doesn`t it?"

"No. If it did, I wouldn`t be able to see there," Vega answered. "What is there though, is the very likely possibility of our deaths, as well as the chance for the planet`s salvation."

"You don`t have to, Lars," the boy clarified tiredly, straightening up off the wall. "I can probably get there myself if Specular were in better shape, but she isn`t. Breaking out of the Fury, then trying to heal it and me has all left her too drained to manage a serious teleport like that. That`s why I need you. You`re the only person I know who`s free, can pilot the Foe Hammer and who I can trust to do this."

"Because. You`ve got no family to be with, your crush is busy elsewhere, Dana doesn`t care enough since she thinks we`re both fine, and you`ve got ties to the Five Kings program. Al`s brother wouldn`t sell me out, I know that much," Vega said, and meant it. He had a great deal of trust for Lars, probably more than for Kat or Dana put together. Lars had been a witness to some of the things that happened during the Five Kings project, he had a tie to most of the pilots for as long as his brother had been alive and he wouldn`t neglect it without a very good reason.

"I`ll go then. How`re we gonna get the blue wonder out the door though?" He asked, standing up from the table he`d been sitting at the entire time and peeking over at the unconscious Organoid lying on the couch like she owned it. "Doesn`t look like she`s light enough to just drag her out or anything..."

"Huh?" Jamie asked, climbing down along the enormous back landing leg of the Fatalistic Renegade, still hidden from view of countless guards who might or might not have been covering the area around it.

"Makes sense," Leyla conceded from above him, halting just a few moves from where she would`ve likely been facing him eye to eye. The landing legs of the Renegade were enormous after all, easily the size of most large Zoids, as was the case for almost any Whale King approaching the size of a Type Seven. They were both clinging onto a combination of exposed hydraulic parts and power cables, an act that most people would`ve considered nuts.

Then again, most people didn`t spend their days trying to escape a paramilitary terrorist organization that had virtually toppled modern civilization as everyone knew it. There were mitigating circumstances, after all.

"How so?" Jamie snorted up at Leyla, giving her the most deadpan look he could afford. Part of it was plain fear of the Wild Eagle, the other part was... Well...

The Wild Eagle was Jamie`s equal opposite. Everything that Jamie was, the Wild Eagle wasn`t, and everything that the Wild Eagle was, Jamie wasn`t, with only the exception of piloting to seperate them in that respect. Where Jamie was relatively non-violent and outright wimpish, the Wild Eagle had few - if any - known equals in a fist fight, and he was also a crack shot with just about any gun.

Where Jamie was fairly respectful about other people`s relationships though, the Wild Eagle also happened to be a letch. A pervert. An unfaithful jackass, so to speak. Furthermore, with everything happening as it was, he wasn`t quite sure if Leyla was still just Leyla now. She could`ve absorbed a good deal of Connie`s personality as well, after all and-

"Will you stop thinking on it and just do it?" Leyla asked in a very un-Leyla-like manner, which only served to further the brooding bit of insecurity beneath Jamie`s otherwise ordinarily confused demeanor.

A moment was all it took. It was like flipping a coin, on one side you would see Jamie, but barely an instant later, you would see the Wild Eagle, his hair literally shifting into it`s usual pattern, his expression seemingly becoming permanently cockier and his former deathgrip on the parts of the landing gear he was holding onto becoming markedly slack in comparison.

The smirk on his face was a mixture. Boyishly handsome with a James Bond-like charm to it, with an underlying layer of a well skilled assassin lurking beneath the surface, and as his eyes finished the blink that had taken place during it, Leyla could almost swear she saw something else change.

"Let`s get the party started, little lady," he stated with a grin, promptly letting go of the landing gear and backflipping towards the ground recklessly.

"Agh! What the hell are you doing?!" Jamie demanded irately from the mental prison he sat in everytime that Will get control.

At that, the Wild Eagle landed in a crouch atop the foot of the landing leg, hidden on one side, exposed everywhere else. The guards were blissfully unaware of his presence though, they hadn`t even noticed him touch down, all had their backs to the Whale King, expecting an external threat.

"Idiots," Will mumbled out with that same grin as before, charging forward towards the nearest guard with the intent to make them all regret it.

Leyla on the other hand, was left to awkwardly continue her climb to the bottom, half-shocked, half-expectant and entirely unamused by her current partner`s efforts, but still possessing the ability to appreciate them despite herself. By the time she got to a distance where she felt she was safe to jump though, gunfire had already started ringing out, and people were dropping like flies.

"Days like this make me wish I was a normal teenybopper," she thought sardonically, landing on both feet and making a break for the nearest cover.

And it was at that moment, that Leyla Tsun heard an almost screeching cry ripple from the gut of one of the dozen or so Whale Kings parked out in plain sight within the hangar.

"You could at least have the decency to be more detailed," Brad muttered out, only barely loud enough to hear. He had given up on counting away the seconds some time ago, how long, he wasn`t quite sure. Bill only responded with a mix between a cracked smirk and a distorted, maniacal grin.

"I`m getting out," the black haired youth finally replied, his expression fading back to seriousness as he stood up, languidly cracking his neck to either side. There was silence now. It hung heavily over the former bandit`s thoughts, but didn`t prevent him from springing up to his own feet almost instinctively as the cell began to shake and tremble.

A pause, even as the rumbling began to become more intense, matching the wavering glow in his eyes, shake for pulse, moment for moment. It was like the entire room was moving in tune with his heart beat, and in a way, it terrified the former mercenary quite a bit, but not enough that he lost his cool, instead narrowing his eyes and looking for something he could use as a weapon if he had to.

Another pause. Silence. And then that serious look snapped back into a half-demented, overly determined smirk, driving a chill up Hunter`s spine and leaving him to tense up all over again.

"Suit yourself," Bill shrugged with little care, even as the floor behind his cellmate suddenly starting bending, leaving Brad to instinctively lunge across the small room and come close to braining himself on the wall behind his unwilling companion, who merely stood there with what looked like an unbreakable expectation. The floor began to bulge up around a point, until finally it snapped open, leaving a serated blade to stab all the way through to the ceiling and keep going for several seconds, promptly drawing back an instant after gouging a man-sized hole in the ceiling.

At that, the glow intensified, Bill slowly walked forward and the blade began to withdraw, pulling completely out by the time he had finished clearing through the small room, even as the sound of blaring alarms filtered in through both holes.

And with that, Bill Chapman jumped straight into the air and kicked his way down through the initial opening, vanishing out of Brad`s sight in an instant and leaving the former mercenary to sit there in the corner with his jaw hanging as if it was almost unhinged for several seconds until -

- he straightened up off the floor and jumped down through the hole as well, falling down into what looked like an officer`s room, which bore a third hole running through it`s floor which in turn connected it to the main hangar of the Emerald Nightmare, which in turn happened to be in the possession of one dark Blue Geno Breaker, it`s cockpit hatch sliding open and a single figure climbing from one of it`s forearms and inside a split second later.

In his life, Brad Hunter had seen some weird things, and some crazy, impossible things.

It was a simple technique to break a man`s arm, especially one who was caught completely off guard, and it also left him to drop his gun, which only furthered the success of the Wild Eagle`s third take down in twice as many seconds. Gunshots rang out, disoriented Rommel soldiers dropped like flies and the young man in the pilot suit straightened up, wielding a sub-machine gun in each hand and recklessly spraying bullets off at targets which were already trying to escape - though not necessarily from him.

"Who cracked that Free Willy joke, eh?! EH?!" Will demanded irately, though that joke had never even been said. He just felt like being dramatic, not like these guys were even providing a challenge for him to begin with.

Whipping around with the speed of a throwing knife, the Wild Eagle was as precise as a sniper, blowing chunks out of people`s bodies with all of the care of an annoyed butcher dealing with a particularly tough chunk of beef, sending three more people to their graves before jumping to the side, landing in a roll on his shoulders and swinging back up to his feet like nothing, spreading his guns out to either side and tagging two more people in the process. Both dropped without screaming, and Leyla zipped by like a cat in the melee.

It was then that twin pairs of blades stabbed through the gut of the nearest Whale King, spaced precious yards from one another before spreading outward, the top two moving straight up, the bottom pair moving straight down, their dulled sides literally crushing metal out of the way rather than slicing through it. The action stopped in that split second, Leyla skidded to a halt, the Wild Eagle lowered his guns briefly and the soldiers who`d been trying in vain to mount a response halted everything they were doing and looked on in terrified awe, even as the Fatalistic Renegade began to take off from the launch pad, suspiciously prepped from the start.

"Shit!" Jamie yelled out upon coming to a snap realization, which in turn brought Will to look over his shoulder at the gracelessly ascending Whale King, even as it plowed straight through the launch bay door with a creaking howl of metal, a green bolt flinging between it and the Emerald Nightmare in a blinding flash of movement.

"What the hell is going on, Brainiac?" Will demanded hotly, shifting back towards the other Whale King, which now bore an immense, gaping pair of holes in it`s side, not quite big enough to fit a Zoid through, but close enough that the integrity of the hull plating between them had been grossly compromised.

"He fucking knew this would happen!" Jamie stated in a half-shock, just as all Hell tore out of the stomach of the Whale King, landing with a skid as a metallic plate that probably weighed as many tons as most small Zoids crashed down on top of over a dozen of the soldiers and a number of supply crates near them, setting off several massive chain reactions of missiles going off and igniting other explosives, which in turn spread into a fireball that blew across the entire hangar.

The only reason that Leyla and the Wild Eagle survived was because they were both small enough to dive down onto their stomaches and have the flames pass right over them, missing by so few inches that Leyla could feel the edges of individual hairs on her head starting to singe by the end of it.

When the flames died down, Will was the first to open his eyes and look up, making a critical check in Leyla`s direction as she got onto her hands and knees, patting down her head and upper back to make sure that she wasn`t on fire from the blast.

"You alright?!" He shouted out, getting up to one knee in a crouch, guns already spreading back out, forward with one, to the side with the other.

"I`ll be fine!" Leyla shouted back, already up on her feet and glaring at the newly arrived Geno Breaker, which stood with impunity through the flames, heat that was intense enough to singe the green Whale King behind it to a near black, practically killing at least thirty people where they`d been standing in the process. With a stir though, the Zoid halted it`s rampage, growling and stomping away from it`s first victim, it`s now blue optics seeming to re-focus.

That target was a blue haired young woman standing no more than eighty feet away, a blue haired girl who didn`t back down and didn`t even have the decency to tremble, whereas her apparent companion was in too much shock to do more than stand up and lower his pirated arsenal in something of a stupor. Recognition showed in those optical units, echoed through a loudspeaker a second later.

"You`re the one," Leyla said in unison with the pilot of the Geno Breaker, feeling a bit of possessive ire fall over her in the process.

"You-" "- took-" "- my Organoid!" Leyla cut him off, dominating through the conversation with a presence that neither Jamie or Will had ever seen from her before.

"Your Organoid?" The pilot, who Jamie now recognized as Bill Chapman, demanded. "He was my best fucking friend, you snot nosed little bitch!"

"He was my Bondmate, you psycho!" She shot back, seemingly oblivious to the fact that someone with a charged particle cannon and an itchy trigger finger was upset with her. For a short instant, there was silence, a girl who formerly had multiple personalities standing up to a guy in a Geno Breaker who had been so dedicated to getting free that he had probably altered his own brain chemistry to do it.

And caught in between this mess was a simple, fifteen year old boy who just loved his Raynos, his girlfriend and making up new battle strategies. Who happened to have a secondary personality that was currently in control.

"Fuck you," Bill muttered, the crab-like claws of the Blue Geno suddenly springing open again, as if it was going to use them to kill a single, human sized target, even as a burning glow formed in the ceiling.

The ceiling ripped open around an incoming bolt of energy, Bill pulled the trigger, Leyla grit her teeth and Will and Jamie both screamed as a bullet the size of a large dog blew over their combined head, whirling through the air with a sonic boom.

The bullet crashed into a stack of oil drums, Jamie went numb and the Wild Eagle became indescribably angry, while Bill blinked and Leyla rematerialized precious feet out of the way of the attack that would`ve blown out her entire upper body, conveniently overshadowed by an eerily familiar, blue and red Organoid that had it`s own disturbed glint in eyes that weren`t even the same color.

Well fuck muh toes `n call me Bobby-Sue Carloff the Fifth, wasn`t THAT a nick o` time ass-saving?!

"What the hell?" Will muttered, his anger changing to near-muted shock, while Jamie`s numbness faded to something that equated to the feeling one got before fainting. There was the telepathic sound of a thud, and Jamie Hameros stopped consciously thinking.

"BOREALIS?!" Bill almost yelped in shock, automatically shifting his aim, even while Leyla whipped around and found her hands clasped tightly to the clawed grapplers of the Organoid, which stood two or three heads taller with an innocently insane look on it`s face. Oddly enough, she wasn`t cut in the process.

Chapman pulled the trigger, Borealis lurched forward, bending Leyla over backwards in a near tango-styled dance move, while the bullet cracked through the air above them and slammed into the side of another parked Whale King with little effect. At that, Borealis straightened up and performed another near-waltzing dodge, each of them bending over sideways and kicking a leg out as another round streaked overhead, plowing into the same Whale King as before.

For several seconds this continued before finally, an annoyed sounding scream echoed over the loudspeaker, leaving the Wild Eagle as the only one to try and respond in force, raising his guns up and taking aim towards the inside of the barrel of the charged particle cannon. It was a long shot, but the Geno Breaker had it`s mouth open and if Bill was going to keep firing, it was all he could do.

But since I THINK I`m a male, someone`s prob`ly just gonna run over me, huh?

"What the hell is going on here?!" Leyla cut into things, obviously more than a bit annoyed that her Organoid was being friendly with someone that was trying to kill both of them.

Oookay, so mebbethatwadn`ttherightthingtasaybutstill... Can`t we all just... Get along?

"Let go of her!" Will cut back into the conversation, shifting one gun to aim right at Borealis` red eye with an annoyed glint. "Unlike that idiot, I won`t miss what I`m aiming for."

"Put down the gun, Will," Leyla ordered sternly, yanking free of the Organoid`s grasp and clasping her hands to her hips. At that, Will only kept his aim firm, trying to split his attention between the Breaker and the inhuman lunatic standing behind his other personality`s girlfriend.

Leyla took on a deadpan expression, Borealis almost mirrored it as best he could and Bill only quirked a brow up.

It was then that Will realized he was dealing with an Organoid, an Ancient Zoidian and a homicidal madman. He was actually the only civilized human being currently left standing.

"... Okay, so maybe that wasn`t the best way to put it, but still," he corrected himself with a sardonic expression on his face.

Well, ya see, I`d LOOOOOOVE getting to talk this out with these two shits here, but I got a conversation I need to have with ol` Blueberry, and there`s a murderous psycho coming about... Five? Six minutes behind me? Ya miiiiiight wanna LEAVE RIGHT ABOUT NOW! Tha`s what I`m doin`!

And with that, Borealis` chest split open, revealing hollow insides as metallic cables sprung out, wrapping around the girl in front of him, who seemed to shift from a paradigm of defiance to the same frightened teen she`d been through most of the day, shouting out -

- and promptly being yanked off her feet and into the Organoid`s newly bloated-looking body, which in turn took on an ethereal glow before vanishing into a multi-colored bolt of energy and taking off through the hole that the Fatalistic Renegade had punched out earlier, leaving only the Wild Eagle to stand behind and deal with the irate Bill Chapman and his Blue Geno Breaker, and leaving only the Wild Eagle to voice both his, and Jamie`s feelings with a single word, mainly since the other was still unconscious.

And then, Bill Chapman screamed, the Geno Breaker`s thrusters blazing to life on both top and bottom as the huge Zoid tore from the metallic floor of the hangar, crashing into a wall and then punching straight through it with no trouble at all, promptly vanishing from sight as a result, just as a familiar Zoid plodded out of the initial hole in the Emerald Nightmare`s side.

"Jamie!" Echoed over another loudspeaker, causing Will to turn back to a newly emerged Scout Fox, but before he could ever even hope to stop and tell Brad that he was the Wild Eagle at the moment, something horrible happened.

The ceiling shattered in a cacophony of screaming metal and terrified, dying men and women, Hell`s Bells ringing loudly as a sadistic laugh echoed through the ears, hearts, minds and souls of everyone who hadn`t been shocked out of their senses, followed by the words that both Brad Hunter and William Edgars/Jamie Hameros would forever regret hearing spoken by the newest party crasher.

Author`s Note: So much for stopping and reflecting... Maaaaaybe I didn`t name this chapter right O_o;; *Nods. Hrms.* What`d everyone think? >_>?

EndlessAdventure: Like I said: Nooooobody believed me when I said Mark was outta luck. And to think, that`s only a minimal inkling of what I`ve got lined up for that sorry son of a bitch...

The Big Fisch: I`ll give ya a hint: It wasn`t a Dibison. Thomas lost that back in Bitterfrost(thus far, ALL of my Zoids fics(POVs included) have run in the same storyline/AU/what-the-hell-ever you wanna call it). Suffice to say, our dear blondie`s work is going to have drastic consequences for the NC/0 cast...

Illidan: No, they`re still quite alive for now O_o; *SMACK* Snap out of it man! >_>;;

And that`s all for now. Guess I couldn`t keep that five pound weight off the AHBL button, could I?

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

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

Reign of Chaos

Chapter 18

Stop and Reflect