By Sh33p, CultofSh33p@aol.com
The great sequel of New Age. It'll knock your socks off. Tim Seltzer, seltzer@seltzerbooks.com
Sh33p Disclaimer: I don`t own Zoids. Consider this disclaimer valid for the whole damn story :P
Foreword: Soundtrack is as follows: Scene One: G Gundam - Evolve
Scene Two: Metallica - Unforgiven II or Drowning Pool - Tear Away
Scene Three: Lifehouse - Breathing
Scene Four: Authority Zero - One More Minute
Scene Five: Dragonball Z - Hell`s Bells
Scene Six: Pick your own until the cue. You`ll know when, trust me.
Outside of a diner, two people stood by a bit blithely, listening the various sounds of what seemed like utterly endless combat off in the distance, just outside the city. From plain gunfire to shredding alloy to howls of pain to ordinary explosions, it all painted a rather annoying audio background for both of them, especially considering that it was their first time alone with one another in days. The taller of the two, a young man in his early twenties, was obviously the one better suited to dealing with odd hours, though he looked a great deal less stressed out than the shorter one, a young woman who was also in her early twenties, even accounting for the fact that he was, more or less, used to it by now.
Then again, Marcus Harlock hadn`t spent the majority of his time over the past days that they`d spent in Farentown working over the wounded in a hospital, entirely by volunteering to do so. Sure, fighting could take a devestating toll on someone after even a short while, but then again, so could seeing non-stop blood and gore at point blank and hearing people scream from barely being anesthetized while undergoing surgery due to rapidly dwindling medical supplies.
In short, the past days had done a number on Abigail Summers, and quite frankly, it showed. Even through that though, as she sipped on a bottle of water, she didn`t focus on it. With a heart that was probably twice as big as just about anyone else in the circle of people she had grown up calling friends and family, along with the wits to match it, Abbie didn`t ever really spend her time moping over things that had already happened without a good reason. She didn`t live in the past and she hadn`t ever been a very angsty teenager, and she had always been fairly responsible.
These provided the reasons for a seemingly out-of-the-blue, unannounced adoption of the first war orphan that either of them had ever seen. Mark was still a bit upset about this new turn of events, he felt he`d been given more than enough to put on his plate already, but Abbie had the persistence of a Blade Liger when her heart told her to do something. Against that, even his objections were fairly quick to melt away into nothing.
There was just one problem with this new arrangement.
A relatively big problem, too.
"He still needs a name," she stated bluntly, with a tone that didn`t really suit her usually bubbly nature. Mark was somewhat indifferent, still not exactly used to the idea of taking on an orphan to raise as his own. Really, it was the kind of thing that tended to alter one`s life, and he was only barely twenty years old - soon to be twenty-one in a matter of three or four months.
"Abbie."
"Hm?"
"Do you honestly think that I`m cut out to help raise a kid? Let alone a traumatized war orphan, who`s practically gone autistic?" He asked a bit half-heartedly, glancing down at her from where he had leaned against the door. The boy in question was still inside, he had simply fallen asleep in one of the semi-private dining spots, on a two-person loveseat normally reserved for people who were either quick enough to swipe it or had come in on a date. He`d done so without saying a word, only getting up and walking over to it before laying down and falling into unconsciousness in an instant.
"And do you want the sugary, confidence instilling version or the blunt truth of what I`m about to say?" She asked in response, taking another sip from her water and then waiting for an answer. That was an even more uncharacteristic sign that the past month`s events had begun to take a fairly major toll on her. Not only had the two of them had to deal with a the usual time apart, she`d also had to deal with him taking on a fairly dangerous profession, then had to watch their vacation get royally screwed by a psychopath and then this.
And that wasn`t counting the little incident where Mark had kicked said-psychopath`s dead body down a flight of stairs, into the path of a speeding truck while it was still on a stretcher and in a bodybag. None of the police knew it had happened, but still.
"Blunt truth. I don`t think I could handle any sugar right now," he commented with a bit of an uncharacteristic tone of his own, tucking his hands into his pants pockets and yawning, even if the sound of it was briefly obscured by the sound of an explosion outside the city, followed by a brief view of the severed head of a Helcat flying through the air before crashing into a high-skimming Sinker and knocking it out of the air.
"I think you can handle it. I think it`ll kick your ass, but I think you can handle it."
At that, Mark rose an eyebrow up so high that it twitched the ear on that side of his head. Abbie never cussed. Ever.
"You need sleep," he said with a sage, half-numbed tone, ignoring that annoying itching sensation that had continually been nipping at his arms ever since he had lost count of the hours he had been awake. Abbie merely gave him a sideways glance packed with enough sarcasm to make most people wince.
"You`re telling me to get sleep? Come on, Mark..."
"... Yeah, that is kinda absurd, when ya put it like that..."
"Besides."
"Hm?"
"We would be sleeping if not for a certain someone and her-" "- pointychinnedsilverhairedman-bitchofa-" "- boyfriend."
Pause.
"Did you really have to cut in like that?" She asked a bit glumly. Mark shrugged with a half-juvenile indifference that made him look almost like a kid.
"Meat head," she mumbled out with a smile that would`ve probably twinkled if there were any sunlight out, the very atmosphere itself seeming the lighten between the two of them.
"Jiggy bug."
At that, both shared a sideways glance that made it hard to believe
they were still stuck in what barely amounted to a safe haven in the midst
of an otherwise desperate warzone where they were both getting what amounted
to only a passing break from what they had formerly been doing, each reaching
out at the exact same moment and holding hands before taking several sideways
steps, which ended with Mark leaned against the wall of the diner and Abbie
leaned sideways against him.
Skidding, bladed feet tore through grass like a hot knife through butter, jumpjet engines cut out for all of three seconds and silence briefly fell in the cockpit of a second generation slaughterbeast, a killing machine piloted by a man who knew he was living on absolutely borrowed time, at best, and if not that, then because he had simply been forgotten.
First by his friends. Then by the very villains who had taken them away in the first place.
Bill Chapman was not a happy camper by any stretch of the imagination. He didn`t know which possibility insensed him more, and furthermore, he didn`t really give a shit. There wasn`t any other way to spell out the kind of anger he was feeling, anger that burned in his soul as brightly as that soul itself still burned in his eyes, leaving them to lightly glow with all the power and fury of something that had forsaken it`s very humanity.
He was no longer a mere man. He wasn`t someone with the blood of an Ancient Zoidian coursing through his veins, he had no lineage to a great hero or villain like Bit Cloud or Kale Obscura, more than anything else in history, he was unique.
He was alone.
He was living on borrowed time.
He had a bomb strapped to his neck.
He had one shock before he knew his time was about to run out, and if that shock came, Chapman was sure he would die without anyone giving much thought to it. That was fine though, he didn`t care about anyone else anymore. To Hell with everyone.
To Hell with his promise to his fallen team mates.
To Hell with his promise to take out his former imprisoner.
To Hell with his former partner and to Hell with the annoying little brat that the Organoid had chosen over him, twice. In a row.
He didn`t care about them anymore.
Three seconds had gone by. The thrusters re-ignited under the constant pressure he`d been applying to them and the Geno Breaker roared off of the ground all over again, setting the forest briefly ablaze with the fires of it`s jumpjets and leaving a pair of trees in the process.
"Where the hell do I go now? What the fuck do I do now?" He asked himself several times, removing his hands from the controls and leering into the monitor on the right side of the cockpit, watching the thick forest and trees slowly start to thin out as he approached the vast desert that still covered the majority of the continent he was located on.
Eerily, he felt something 'prod' his mind, so to speak. It was only familiar to him because he had spent close to two or three days forcing himself to create a telepathic bond to it.
"You got an idea?" He asked aloud, still staring at the monitor. The Breaker had hit it`s lower peak for flight and begun to descend again by now, but it still responded in kind without so much as a single telepathic word or audible growl, an image flashing out of it`s memory and into his thoughts.
"... Sounds like as good a place as any, I guess."
And with that, the Geno shifted slightly in mid-air, skidding along
sideways as it touched down, crushing another tree under it`s weight and
then shifting again to point a little back to the left, promptly taking
off all over again on a bylining course towards Romeo City, wherever it
was in relation to him.
Champton was a city that had been built around a massive Zoid and arms manufacturing plant, which itself had been built within the heavily protected walls of an old military installation that had once belonged to the Guylos Empire, then the Guardian Force and then had been left to rot. It had taken Donald Champ - the grandfather of Jerry Champ, Harry and Marry`s father - roughly sixteen years to fully renovate and restore the fortress itself, something that had been both a casual hobby and a half-paranoid precaution.
Even after the sixty years it had been in the ownership of the Champ family, the fortress itself had lost none of it`s imposing military stature, bearing alloy-reinforced walls that had been polished to almost glass-like smoothness, though they still maintained a rugged edge that seemed like it could cut through resolve like a chainsaw through a loaf of bread, with several additional gun towers and missile emplacements that had been added through the past few years as groups like the Backdraft had become better known for stealing large groups of Zoids.
Around the fortress itself was where the real Champton lay though, sprawling for at least a mile in every direction and running the gauntlet from quaint suburban homes to the upper class neighborhoods to the enormous mansion that the Champs themselves called home, it looked like a place that you could raise a family in for generations and make a good living while doing it. True to it`s image, that was exactly the case - the Champs looked out for their workers, that was another reason why the factory and the planned-city supporting it had been built in and around a fortress in the first place.
Precautions upon precautions intertwined with genuine concern and respect, there were reasons why the Champ Corporation had documented cases of entire families working for it over the course of multiple generations.
The hitch to all of this was that the entire city`s combined command structure - ranging from civilian to the volunteer military - relied heavily on the Champs themselves. Unfortunately, for reasons yet to be revealed, all of that considerable weight of responsibility had been dropped on the hapless shoulders of Harry Champ, the youngest son and current heir to the family prestige. He was the heir because, despite his little obsession with a certain 'lower class' girl and Zoid battling, Harry had what was probably the most balanced personality of the six children who had been born to Jerry and Sharon.
Admittedly, he had been sheltered for a great deal of his life, but unlike his snobbish younger sister and his rebellious older brothers, he had effectively struck out on his own during his time in the chase for Leena Tauros` affections, if not in the financial sense, then in the sense that he had gotten to know people. He had hung out in the proverbial trenches with the average Joe and that raised him up a notch in his parents` eyes.
At present, those eyes weren`t watching him, but another set was, and it was watching with a mixture of concern that had only barely even bothered manifesting itself, and a vague inkling of respect that hadn`t previously existed, though it was a respect born out of the fact that he was still standing when he looked like death warmed over.
"Alright," he finally mumbled out as the two came to a stop, now standing inside of what looked like a combination of the Office from Hell and an at-work sleeping area. The desk was half-cluttered with stacks of paper, there was a computer that looked like it had only been turned off for the past fifteen minutes, along with slightly dirtied plates, empty bowls and cups of what had been instant noodles, all of it stacked into a trash can that looked like it would`ve broken if anymore weight was applied to it`s insides.
There was also an office-bed that looked similar to the type used by psychiatrists, along with a fairly old looking quilt and a scarcely used pillow bundled up near the head of it. There was a portable video phone lying on the floor near the bed, and the chairs that had formerly been in front of the desk had been shifted around, one to serve as an elevated foot rest, the other holding an even larger stack of papers than what was already on the desk itself, while a portrait of Sharon Champ hung a bit raggedly near the door, along with another portrait of the Champ children themselves, obviously done when Harry had been younger.
The second thing that struck her, after the room`s rather wrecked appearance, was the chill in the air. Were she not wearing a turtlenecked, long sleeved shirt and pants, she probably would have felt cold. Instead, she reached up a hand and adjusted her glasses slightly to make sure that she wasn`t seeing things.
Harry, on the other hand, took a few steps forward, then a few more, and then literally fell onto the office bed, twisting in the middle of it and landing in a seated position, even though he had shifted the piece of furniture back into the wall behind it. "Grill away," he said tiredly, plopping his hands in his lap and waiting with the look of someone about to be executed.
"For starters, Harry," Leena began, pausing with a thoughtfulness that wasn`t really her style, taking a few steps after him and then plopping down next to him on the bed. "Where`ve ya been lately? We haven`t even gotten any of the usual stalker calls from you," she said, obviously leaving out the whole 'that was before the world ended, but still' part of things.
Harry let out a ragged laugh and rubbed one eye with a dried fist before answering. "Mom and Dad got into an accident."
"Hm?"
"A low flying Whale King crashed into their Skimmer," he answered, suddenly looking far less jovial than his tone implied. It was almost disturbing. "Then James got into an overdose, Monty ran off on a binge, Nicole went off to find him and came back looking like Hell, Marry curled in on herself and Renee went into denial. Then this all happened and..."
A pause. Another disheveled, half-hearted and utterly empty chuckle followed before Harry continued, looking a bit relieved to get things off his chest, even if he wasn`t even seeing Leena next to him anymore. The guy had tunnel vision, and if his eyes were lasers, he would`ve burnt a hole through the wall he was staring at.
"Marry hasn`t left her room in a week. James is still in the hospital, we don`t know where Monty is, Nicole`s too busy dealing with her own problems and Renee`s on the verge of trying to kill herself," he said with a suddenly too sober tone. Harry Champ`s world had fallen apart at this point, his family was in tatters and he was the only one left who hadn`t imploded from the combined stress of personal loss and the apocalypse. Yet.
"And I`ve been having to handle the workload..."
"You haven`t slept since that night that this all started, have you?" Leena asked, finally breaking him of his unfocused rambling. At that, he let out another of those hollow chuckles and shook his head.
"I haven`t had the time to, really, even before this all went down. First I had to shovel through all of Dad`s paperwork on finances and everything else - that meant crash coursing through a few economics courses and firing two of his former advisors who thought they could control me, then re-hiring them after they came to their senses, then when this happened, I had to keep order over everything and make sure people didn`t go nuts from the outside world caving in like it has. Crazy as it sounds, I had to keep going and make myself a bit of an idol to them," he explained, before Leena interrupted.
"To keep them going. But you haven`t bothered with yourself," she stated rather than asked. Another shake of the head came in answer, he didn`t say anything, propping his head up on one hand that was in turn propped up on one knee, leaving him hunched over slightly.
"How`re things on your end?" Harry asked after an uneasy pause, taking a glance Leena`s way and seeming to look further than he did before, past the scars and beneath the skin. It was one of those glances you`d be more prone to see with people who had either been meant for each other or had spent their entire lives longing after one person, and in that moment, Leena Tauros realized just how much Harry really did care for her.
She also felt like something of an idiot for not seeing it sooner.
With a mild tingle in her stomach though, she brushed the feeling aside and leaned sideways, over the bundle of the quilt and pillow and onto the armrest.
"Well... Let`s see..."
"Go ahead, I`ve got the time. I hope," Harry mumbled at her pause, obviously referencing the communicator on the floor. It was plain to see that he was beginning to gain a growing contempt for the little device.
"Bit ran off about two days before all Hell broke loose, then after that, Brad and Jamie both took off - Jamie mentioning something about his girlfriend and Brad running off to make sure he doesn`t get himself killed. Dad is as nuts as ever, he`s buried the hatchet with Leyon, who`s also as nuts as ever, Vega Obscura`s mom is now a part of our little group, Naomi and Leon joined up after we got to Romeo and I think you probably know the rest from there."
"... Bit ran off?" Harry asked as if he hadn`t even heard the rest of what she had been telling him. He looked as if a few more pounds had been lifted off of his shoulders, not to mention a passing resemblance to a War Shark circling a busted up Sinker.
"Yeah, he just... Took off, didn`t say good-bye, didn`t explain himself, just left. We haven`t seen him since," she explained without really carring. Bit wasn`t ever her favorite person after all, bar those times when she beat him over the head with a blunted object of some sort, at times like those, he was definately her favorite, but only that punching bag sort of way.
"Yanno..."
A brief pause and an out-of-place quiet as Harry actually bothered considering his words for once. Apparently gone was the lovesick sap who could spout off romantic poetry and glorifying nicknames like it was a second language of some kind, that had either gone dormant or been broken out of him completely for the time being.
"Did you ever... Um..."
"If you even dare to suggest that I have even a passing crush on that twit, I will introduce you to a new definition of pain and suffering."
"... Well, that`s a relief," Harry replied with a tone to match his words, even if his voice still sounded rubbery and worn down. "Now all I need is about three days of sleep, a hot bath and something that isn`t cooked out of a microwave," he commented drearily, and at that, another uncharacteristic instinct chimed through the girl who sat next to him.
A few seconds passed by, then there was the sound of things being rearranged before Harry felt a hand grasping the back of his head and giving a tug. Even if he wasn`t weakened considerably by sleep deprivation, the teen would`ve probably caved in with a dumb grin on his face anyway, though said-dumb grin was absent at the moment. His head hit the pillow and for a few seconds, he held his breath, coming to the realization that the pillow was laid out across Leena`s lap, hearing the distinct sound of her sneakers thumping onto the floor and then feeling the movements of her legs under the pillow itself, shifting around until she was sitting indian-style with the quilt in hand.
"Take your jacket off," he heard, complying without a second thought while at the same time kicking the loafers he had been wearing for the past half a week onto the floor at the foot of the bed. After that, the jacket found it`s way onto the floor, and then the quilt was spread out through the air and gradually pulled back down until it obscured the majority of his body from view, leaving only the dark blue, turtleneck shirt he wore underneath his jacket visible, and even then it was only by the collar of it.
"I can`t give you three days, and I can`t give you a bath or any food, but I can still give you some rest. Go to sleep, Harry," she ordered with a stern, though eerily gentle tone of voice, the kind that would`ve probably made Bit, Jamie and Brad all break their jaws on the floor at the very sound of it. "I`ll wake you up if anything serious comes through, alright?"
A light, already half-asleep mumble was the response, and for the time
being, at least for Leena Tauros and Harry Champ, all was right with the
world, even if it was falling apart around them.
*THUD!*
Two figures dispersed from one another, large of the two being grossly inhuman, the second bearing a striking appearance to a half-zonked out raver thanks to her hair, eye and eyebrow color. The setting was relatively unfamiliar for either of them, merely an unocccupied section of the desert outside the forest, on a straight line from the base that the two had just teleported out of all of a minute ago.
The first up was the rather twisted looking, mismatched Organoid, Borealis, his optics flaring and blinking out in the rough equivelent of a nervous twitch while his tail wagged about like that of a dog on crack, his snout showing those razor sharp teeth in what looked like - and actually was - a fairly demented smile. The girl followed suit a few seconds later, springing up with an agility that she normally wasn`t capable of, though any and all grace was noticably absent in the process, her face contorted into an unbelievably angry expression.
Now then...
Quiet. The kind of quiet you could expect as the calm before a storm blew out the power lines while the TV remained active, permanently stuck on the crappiest infomercial you could have the misfortune of finding, your dog got hit by a steam roller, your cat choked to death on the gold fish, your genitals turned into butter, World War III began, Stalin came back to life as a neo-communist super zombie and atomic bombs were dropped on you like they were going out of style.
In short, it was the kind of quiet most people didn`t want to hear.
Shall we talk?
"... What..."
Nownow, let`s not get too hasty, yes?
"... The fuck..."
... Aww, come on, Leyla, I didn`t mean anything bad...
"... IS WRONG WITH YOU?!" The girl demanded irately, practically going rigid as her eyes started to water. Were she able to pay attention to it, she probably would`ve noticed the sonic boom fading in the distance, but the explosion visible from several miles away caught her eye a bit more.
... Okay, Ifuckedup. Sorry!
"Sorry? You`re sorry?"
Yepyep, I am, that I am.
"SORRY DOESN`T BRING JAMIE BACK FROM THE DEAD, YOU FUCKING SON OF A BITCH!" She screamed angrily, causing the Organoid to almost fall over in what amounted to shock, though the sanity-deprived halfwit didn`t completely lose his balance, righting himself after a few moments and losing the demented grin. At this point, Leyla was actually starting to cry, which in turn effected both Borealis, and even if he didn`t know it, would`ve probably started to effect Bill Chapman as well, were he still in the general area.
Actually, he`s not dead, yanno...
A pause.
"WHAT?!"
... Damnit, I`M THE ONE WHO`S SUPPOSED TO BE THE RAVING LUNATIC HERE, CALM THE FUCK DOWN!
Another pause.
"DAMNIT! BORIS, YOU TAKE ME TO HIM OR ELSE!"
BUT I WANTED TO TALK THINGS THROUGH! LIKE SANE, RATIONAL HUMAN BEINGS!
"... Hello, NEITHER OF US ARE EVEN HUMAN!"
... YEAH, SO?!
"SO, WHAT`S THE POINT?!"
Pause number three.
I just wanted to catch up, I guess...
"On what, Boris? The fact that I haven`t seen you in ten years? The fact that I didn`t even remember you existed until you possessed my Zoid?"
Hey, damnit! Don`t pin that on me! YOU were the one who called ME, and I had me a nice fucking life too! Asshole.
"A nice fucking life? With who?! That Breaker`s lunatic pilot?!"
THAT LUNATIC PILOT WAS MY FRIEND, DAMNIT! SHOW SOME RESPECT!
Pause number four.
At this point, Leyla`s resolve to keep arguing with the poorly painted brick wall known as Borealis crumbled away and stress took it`s toll, leaving what remained of Eliza to kick in and set things as close to right as possible.
"Just take me somewhere else."
... Gee, s`much for THAT effort at graceful reconciliation.
"... We`ve both moved on, Boris. I`d really prefer that you unbonded yourself from me," she said bluntly, though how much she meant it was unclear. A Zoidian without an Organoid was as rare as a human who actually had one. They weren`t exactly common and they didn`t tend to live very long compared to the hundreds of years most Zoidians could tolerate before giving out to mortality.
And then what?
"I don`t know, I don`t care," Leyla answered, rubbing one temple with her index and middle fingers. She was starting to get a headache just from being around this... Utter lunatic. How had she ever been Bound to the thing to begin with? Had she really been that different or...
"You`ve changed too much for me. You need the one you really are Bound to now, and that`s not me," she stated, coming to the conclusion with an almost robotic logic. "All I want - all I need - is for you to take me somewhere else."
... Mmmkay, so... Whereto, then? Borealis asked as if the entire string of words she had just thrown out had gone in one metallic ear and out the other with no effect.
"I don`t know."
Dunno if I can take ya ta Splitface, he seems t`be a bit too... Cramped, at the moment.
"Just take me somewhere safe. I don`t even know if I can really handle being around Jamie right now," she said, and meant it. It was true that she genuinely did care a great deal about the youth, but quite frankly, she needed space to breathe right about now, and being around him probably wouldn`t have helped either of them.
`N` after that, we`re through, right?
"Done."
Finished.
"Over with."
Kaputsnick.
"Yes. Something like that. Now can we just leave?"
By way of response, the Organoid`s chest promptly split open, thick
wiring practically spraying out to cover the short distance between the
two, and a few seconds later, a multi-colored streak of light bolted through
the sky to parts as yet unknown.
There were few words to fit the scene of what had once been a Rommel-operated base that had been dubbed 'Clusterpoint 6A.' Among them were massacre, death, chaos and destruction, and all of them fit reasonably well given the fact that all of two people had survived it, possibly only one given the situation that Brad Hunter had been in when he had jumped into the river.
At the core of this little waltz through Hell though, two things in particular stood out above the rest. The first was a titanic black demon, thinly built in an almost raptor-like manner but still thick and powerful to behold, even if it looked almost completely unarmed with it`s shoulder panels clamped shut and it`s arms fully retracted to their base length, crest flipped back and charged particle cannon concealed in it`s throat, none of the visible weapons possessing the trademark glow that had dominated them when they were in use.
The Geno Maxis was covered in small, spurting whisps of smoke, caused by everything from explosive slugs to plasma cannons, but none of the attacks could`ve damaged it. Kale had been so lazy during the attack that he had intentionally let himself get hit at least sixty times before bothering to get serious, and by then, Hunter and Hameros had both fled. Not that he cared or anything. To him, this had been little more than the equivelent of someone putting together a doll house as a hobby, he hadn`t been too dedicated to annihilating the place anyway.
Not that it hadn`t been thrown into oblivion, dragged back out, shot in the head with a .365 Magnum and then hung from a bridge to be hit by passing children with baseball bats like a pinata, but still.
Bodies, parts of bodies, downed Zoids, chunks of downed Zoids, pieces of superstructure, shattered glass, burning liquids - it didn`t matter what it was, you were likely to find it dropped at random somewhere in the killing fields that had been Clusterpoint 6A, just as you were also likely to see the smaller, darker colored demon currently standing amidst the wreckage like a god of the underworld, darkly crystal blue optics shifting focus over the scene with a near minimalistic interest.
This was too easy. Even accounting for the kind of power that we possess, this was still too easy.
"Probably a setup to accomplish some other stupid plan and use us in the process," Kale deduced without so much as an ounce of concern, leaning back in the flight chair of the Geno Maxis` cockpit, which bore an eerily hybridized resemblance to both the Geno Breaker and Death Stinger cockpits. There was a single, all inclusive monitor scaling around the chair in a 360* view, while the front of each armrest bore gel-like panels that served as the controls by linking right up to the electrical currents of a pilot`s body, reading thoughts by specific patterns that Kale knew by instinct.
That aside, though, it was rather spartan. To exit required either an Organoid to teleport the pilot out or for the monitor to split open and allow for the chair to extend down through the chest door common on the Geno Breaker and Saurer. It wasn`t much to look at, but Kale Obscura wasn`t someone who obsessed over appearances. Function over form, and all that.
It wouldn`t surprise me.
"A burger`d be nice," the mostly-human commented out of nowhere, removing his hands from the controls and leaning back with the realization that he hadn`t eaten anything since the night he`d met Shadow.
You don`t need to eat. I`m providing you with the life to keep going.
"And you don`t need to unbond from the core, I`m providing you with the time to take some very unneeded rest."
A lingering quiet as the Organoid shifted to place what looked like an eternal glare in the direction of the Zoid that looked like it`s big brother, though it was really looking right through layer upon layer of armor and circuitry to the bored looking young man in the cockpit.
... Hnnn...
"We`ll stop at the next town. There, I`ll get something to eat, you can disembowel some poor sap and then we`ll blow the fucking shit outta the dump, how`s that?"
... I suppose it`ll work. One question though.
"Shoot," Kale replied with a casual tone that sounded utterly disturbing given their current location and what they`d done there mere minutes earlier.
You do know... That the very reason we came out here got away from us, correct?
A dulled, knowing chuckle escaped, and for the first time in well over a century, Shadow found himself outright intimidated, not by a Zoid, not by an Organoid or even a Zoidian, but by a human being - a mostly-human being, anyway. The last time had been the result of a specific, then-murderously dedicated man in his mid-twenties with messy blonde hair.
Shadow didn`t like to be intimidated. He liked being left out of the know even less, but at the same time, he was too Bound to Kale to feel anger over it.
"I let him escape for a single purpose, my dear little Organoid."
And why is that?
"Because he jumped into a fucking whitewater river filled with rocks and debris. Kinda redundant to chase him down, don`t you think?" Kale asked bluntly, unconcerned with the fact that he hadn`t seen Brad Hunter die. In all likelihood, the former mercenary would end up passing out in the water and being battered to death or drowned by the river. They had bigger fish to fry than someone who was already going to end up dead before the first ray of morning light ever bothered shining through.
"Any nearby towns?"
Pfeh. Like I bother keeping tabs on 'human civilization.' Your people are fucking pathetic.
"... Like you really have to tell me? About the only thing most humans are good for is screaming when they die. And even then, most can`t even do that right," Kale muttered out, placing his hands back to the controls and guiding the Maxis into a slow, steady walk forward, uncaring of how close a town was in that direction. A long journey would just make the food and the slaughter a bit more pleasant. "C`mon, Fido."
Don`t call me that.
"Fido."
... If you weren`t you, I`d murder you.
"If you weren`t you, I`d murder you."
Neither spoke after that. They didn`t really have to.
If not for the constant, tortured cries of the sound barrier, one could`ve almost heard the sound of hair rustling, of bone and skin shifting about in a process that should have been scientifically impossible. A few moments dragged by an what sounded like a strangled gasp of air that had been withheld for too long burst out of the mouth of a desperate, glary-eyed youth, hands locked so tightly to the controls of the Raynos that his palms were starting to go numb, losing their color beneath the texture of his gloves.
His eyes felt watery but dry at the same time, sweat dripped down along the face that was so often consumed by a pleasant - if not reclusive - expression, an expression replaced by a look similar to someone drowning. For a long moment, he did nothing but breathe, noting the painful feeling at the back of his skull that had been becoming more and more frequent over the past days. Tiredly, he felt his body pulled back in the seat, instinctively dragging the speed of the Raynos down to a manageable level in the process. It wasn`t that Jamie couldn`t handle flying at mach three anymore, he could do so with an increasing level of ease that almost scared him, it was that he was exhausted.
Mentally, physically and emotionally, he had been through the ringer a few times in the past days and hadn`t even stopped to think about it.
"Not that it matters," he grumbled to himself, languidly reaching a hand up and rubbing the side of his throbbing head. His memories of the events during Will`s spurt of control were sketchy at best, downright blurry at worst, but he could still see the expressions on the faces of the mechanics as they realized they were going to die no matter what they did, and the look on the face of the guard as his head flopped down and his body dropped to the floor.
He could see those with crystal clarity. They were probably going to give him nightmares for weeks.
"Just gotta find Leyla... Then get back to the guys," he told himself, feeling the Wild Eagle lurch back into remission. The other personality had been taxed to maintain control, something was starting to change and Jamie didn`t know what it was, he also didn`t really feel that it was important at the moment.
His only crystal-clear objectives were his missing girlfriend and then getting back to the Blitz Team.
Brad was most likely dead.
That itched at his senses, especially considering how much trouble the mercenary had gone through over the past weeks as a result of Jamie`s actions. From going missing for hours on end to turning up with a stolen jeep after massacring a Rommel-owned base of some kind to making the guy paranoid to unwittingly dragging him off to his own demise, it left a pit somewhere in the teen`s heart to think of the role he had played in Brad`s death, but that was offset by another guilt that only Will really knew of.
During the last battle the Blitz Team had managed to fight as a cohesive unit, in Class S, on the very day before the end of the world as everyone knew it, Jamie Hameros had made a decision that still weighed heavily on his senses and left him feeling too numbed inside to really feel remorse over the death of his team mate.
That was because Jamie had stopped thinking of Brad, Leena and Bit as team mates at the exact moment that he had shifted his sights from the Konig Wolf to the Scout Fox. He`d had every intention of pulling the trigger and disqualifying his own team. If not for Rayth Takahori`s timely interference, he would have done just that. He had been willing to sell out a group of people he looked up to and cared for as if they were his own family, but there was another guilt that nagged even at that.
He hadn`t felt trust for Brad Hunter since the incident with the Shadow Fox. A new Zoid had seemingly shifted the former mercenary`s loyalties and afterward, Jamie had never quite trusted the man as anything more than a team mate. He didn`t think of him as a greedy older brother, he had just taken to thinking of him as a complete bastard who could only be trusted as far as he could be thrown. Jamie hadn`t ever said these things, but it had been half the reason he had intentionally given such a cryptic answer about his loyalties in the first place.
And now, Brad was dead.
The biggest guilt of all, though, was that even if he had a pit in his heart for the man he had once thought of as a brother, he didn`t actually feel it.
He didn`t care.
And that was what nagged at him the most.
"Just keep moving. It`s almost time," he heard himself - or had it been Will? - think in a vaguely reassuring manner before taking a deep breath and exhaling.
It was at about that time, as the sun started to either come up or he entered another timezone, that the teenager finally looked up from the floor of the cockpit and set his eyes on a rapidly closing object somewhere in the distance. Almost instantly, his expression tightened considerably, and strength that hadn`t been there before seemed to materialize into his blood from nowhere, eyes narrowing with hateful intent.
"It is time," he muttered out, watching the escaped Whale King start to slow down to what was most likely a combat speed, apparently having noticed him.
Apparent became definate a few seconds later as Jamie watched the stomach of the huge Zoid spring open into a pair of gigantic, bomb bay-like doors, what looked like a near-hundred Foxbats promptly starting to drop out into view, with a pack of what looked to be dark green night owls dropping out after them, each forming up into an escort position in a mass formation around their mothership.
One to a hundred. Odds that the Wild Eagle would`ve, could`ve, and should have grinned maniacally at.
Jamie just growled to himself and again tightened his hands onto the controls of the Raynos. Guilt took a back seat.
"I`ll end this now, you son of a bitch," he said, never once hearing his alternate self speaking up in a cynical mumble just beforehand.
"Nah. It`s not time yet. Soon though..."
If Jamie had bothered listening, he still wouldn`t have cared.
With a saurian shriek, the Raynos burst forward, just as every single escorting Zoid around the Whale King broke formation and lunged right back at the incoming attacker, though the young Hameros seemed completely unphased. Be it stress, anger, raw hatred, temporary madness or a flat-out self-delusion, Jamie refused to back down. He didn`t turn back, he didn`t even bother to try and evade any lock-ons.
Instead, he smiled like a raving mad man, heedless of the fact that he didn`t even have the communications system online and equally heedless of the fact that he was going on what amounted to a suicide mission with utterly reckless abandon.
"One, two, three..."
A pause after his whisper. Warning lights flashed all over the cockpit glass, accompanied by beeps for each and every single one of them.
"Here I come with the wicked."
And with that, the sound barrier screeched in violation as the Raynos
gained more speed, followed instantly by missiles of every size dropping
off the wings of a hundred different attackers at once, every last one
of them aimed right at the sole attacker who was coming right at them like
a bat out of Hell itself.
Author`s Notes: The utter convenience... XD
*Promptly beats his head into the desk.* Well, Mark is finally starting to show his long-hidden serious side(even if he did it in a silly sort of way), Bill`s starting to feel like Doctor Zoidberg, Harry`s seeming corpse-ness has been explained, Leena seems to be evolving, Borealis and Leyla have called it quits, Kale is still Kale and Jamie...
Jamie`s gone off the deep end.
And yes, 'Boris' is Borealis` real name. Monty and Nicole are short for Montgomery and Nicolette, if anyone`s curious.
The Big Fisch: Glad so many people agree with me about One fitting the Hellwalker, though it [SPOILER] [SPOILER] [SPOILER] [SPOILER]. ... Gee, ain`t I a stinker? :p As for Kale - methinks everyone overestimated his temper and underestimated his personality. He`s thorough but only to the point that he gets what he wants. Remember, most of his kills only came about because they were in the way of his primary goal at the time(Raven Heights being leveled so he could get to Alteil, Garnhelm Base getting the AHBLATS treatment to scare the crap outta Bit, etc).
Illidan: Jamie`s a mixed bag. He does have more strength than most people credit him for but he also tries to ignore a good deal of his troubles as best he can. I doubt Roc and Madison will be dying anytime soon, I need them for one, and for another, [insert SPOILER signs here]. They also aren`t really turning Bit into a Kale-killing machine, nor are they really making him into an UberVan copy, but you`ll see how he turns out by the time they finish with him. As for Harry... Well, making him an angsty, brutalized simp isn`t something new(just look at any Harry-basher fic... Or any angst fic involving him as a main character x_e), but doing it to actually improve him probably is.
Well, that`s all for now folks. Leave a review, enjoy, Sh33p out, expect
mucho AHBLATSATSM next chapter and see ya next time!
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