By Sh33p, CultofSh33p@aol.com
The great sequal 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:Armageddon - Burn Around the Moon. As if it wasn`t blaringly
obvious enough to begin with...
The world behind the Gustav turned white for a fraction of a second before fading out with a delayed scream of heated winds. Abbie and Katherine were both jarred upright by the distant explosion, but the boy behind them just sat there, staring straight ahead once again as the night faded back to normal. Stars hung in the sky, partially blotted out by the burning, orange-tinted smoke that billowed up from the city`s remains, but those features were the last thing Kat was bothering with.
A miniature viewscreen popped up within the confines of the monitor, in much the same way a pop-up ad can appear on a computer, showing an explicit view of the remains of a gigantic beam of solar intensity, white at the core but outlined with a rainbow of sickening detail and contrast, eviscerating a second miles long trench through the city. The windsheer alone blew out an uncounted number of fires and ripped innumerable tons of dirt and debris from the ground, melting anything that left behind into scorched, black glass.
A mountain, almost fifty miles to the east, promptly lost its entire upper half before the blast faded out of existence, leaving nothing behind but a seconds-long, absolutely numb feeling silence in the cockpit.
Finally though, Katherine spoke.
"Do you think anything could survive that?" She asked dimly, needing a reassurrance that her rational mind would`ve said was impossible to find. Abbie seemed to have ignored her completely, pressing her foot into the pedal so hard that it looked as if she might have very well stood a chance of pushing right through it.
"Doubtful," the boy said, his voice still ringing with the same kind of ice that had effectively frozen the conversation earlier on. "An attack of that magnitude would probably erase them down to their core molecular structuring. I wouldn`t pin my hopes on them coming back alive."
"Well aren`t you cynical?" Kat growled out, leering dangerously at the kid from where she sat. He didn`t even blink, nor did he bother to turn his attention to her. He just kept staring blankly ahead as if he had tunnel vision.
"Both of you just shut up," Abbie finally spat out, cutting into the conversation with the razor sharp tone of a knife. "Mark`s too stubborn to die, and Harabec brought down that Kale guy without even breaking a sweat. I`m not sure about Kyle, but if he`s even half as tough as either of them, he`ll come out alive. End of story."
Katherine left it at that. If the boy had anything to reply with, he
dropped it as well and returned to his state of absolute silence. Neither
had any desire to try and crush the hopes of someone who had probably just
lost a surrogate uncle and a lover, in addition to a home town and just
about everything else.
They had dodged it.
At the relative equivelent of detonating a guided nuclear explosion at point blank, they had dodged it. Without even taking any direct damage no less.
Of course, Harabec was the only one on his feet. Wind sheer had managed to throw all of them for a loop, but aside from some scratched paint, neither the Ivory Blade Liger, nor the Shadow Fox had taken even the slightest damage, even after crashing down on their sides. The area behind the blast had been reduced to a virtual slice of glassed-over hell, steaming, smoking and blistering as the heat of the attack managed to slowly die down, leaving the two larger Zoids to start standing back up.
The Rev Raptor growled almost ferally, Harabec grit his teeth as the cannon retracted back into the throat of the Hellwalker, the jaws of which promptly slid shut.
"That was way too fuckin` close," he heard Mark bite out, his Zoid having been a second slower than the Liger to finish regaining a foothold on the now scorched ground.
"Any suggestions on how to stop the thing?" Kyle asked dimly, regarding the Hellwalker, now, as if it were just another target. Mark`s seeming lack of self-preservation had apparently begun to rub off on him.
"Aim for the gaps in its armor," Harabec said, not even sure if it would do any good. "Places between armor plates, down gunbarrels, missile launchers - if you can find it, shoot it. I don`t think we have any other options."
"Agreed," Kyle threw in blithely, swinging his blades straight up and running through the proper formation to change from the normal burst barrels to the quicker firing gattling type. He knew he probably wasn`t going to get another chance to do so.
The Hellwalker began to lift its head once again, the hearts of the three remaining pilots raced and each Zoid began to deploy its weapons again.
Kyle flipped his blades forward and over the shoulders of the Ivory Liger. Mark gave the laser vulcan gun a quick spin of the barrels, then raised it up out of its forward-set firing stance. Harabec checked the ammo on his cannons and then re-deployed his energy scythes, each one taking on a radiant silver glow.
The guns of the Hellwalker began shifting again, every single one with the trio in its line of fire promptly took aim, randomly picking a target.
"Let`s dance, you fat bastard," Mark said, any and all regard for his safety having been shot in the head and flung off a bridge long before he had ever set his sights on his current enemy.
As if in response, the Hellwalker roared out a war cry, vaguely similar to a Whale King, and then let loose once again.
Gunshots rippled through the area, each of the three Zoids broke off from the others - Kyle to the left, Mark to the right, Harabec straight ahead. Plasma incinerated the ground they had been standing upon, sending a colossal plume of smoke up into the air as the Shadow Fox swiveled its gun almost on auto. Mark didn`t need an alert to know to pull the trigger, it was almost a reflex action, and even then it wasn`t like he was going to miss a target that was at least a mile long.
"Shit," he thought, watching as every attack struck into the insanely larger Zoid`s armored hull and fizzled out without ever actually doing any real damage. They left behind a few scorch marks, but even through the hazed distance between the Fox and its target areas on the Hellwalker`s neck, he knew they hadn`t had any real effect.
Before he could bother putting any more effort into it, the Fox shrieked and burst forward, dodging to the side before he had even finished realizing what it was doing. Beams of crystal blue death streaked by in machine gun fashion, each one biting through hundreds of tons of ground as they tried to guess where the Shadow Fox would be next, but none ever hit the mark.
"This is insane," he finally managed to get out, taking control back from the Zoid and guiding it into a series of zig-zag turns and jumps, never more than a step ahead of the attacks being thrown at it. "We can`t even dent the fucking thing!"
"What?" Kyle asked mockingly, knowing that such a tone was completely past inappropriate for the current situation. "You finally gettin` cold feet, newbie?"
"Shut up, you idiot!" Mark yelled back, skidding the Shadow Fox to a halt and then side flipping out of the way of an incoming missile. "It`s just like we`re fighting a fucking Ultrasaurus that thinks it`s a Death Saurer!"
"We are," Harabec blandly pointed out. "Now stop bitching and aim for the gaps!" He ordered, switching the conversation back on track, at the same time that he was making a back flip away from another plasma beam, landing on both feet with uncanny balance. Almost instantly, the Rev Raptor`s guns jolted from recoil, a pair of shots knifing through the air and hitting in one of the dozen or so gaps along the heavier armor in the Hellwalker`s throat.
There was almost no effect. The gigantic Zoid rumbled with what clearly sounded like a similar annoyance to something being bitten by a mosquito.
Harabec grimaced deeply, holding still for all of a tenth of a second before the Rev Raptor moved on its own accord, hauling out of the way of an incoming series of missiles while Mark cleared his throat over the broadband.
"Did I not tell you that this is insane?" He asked dimly.
"Can it."
Both snorted, Kyle shook his head and took aim. The Liger growled and rocked back slightly as its dual impact cannons let off a salvo, both shots hitting somewhere near a gap in the Hellwalker`s right forefoot`s armor. Still no effect.
"I think I`m starting to agree with Mark on this," he commented, pausing for less than a second and knowingly allowing countless guns and missile launchers to lock onto his Zoid. "None of our shots so far are having any real effect," he said with the cool tone of someone whose mind was trying to turn off any active emotions that might interfere with staying alive.
The Hellwalker fired again, Kyle dodged by inches that felt like miles for him, avoiding a fiery end as the Liger leapt forward and took off into a sprint, back booster springing up and burning to life with a burst of white fire. Almost automatically, the blades flipped straight up and then lowered back down the sides of the Ivory Liger, each one taking on a hot, golden glow as the Zoid made its charge with a challenging roar.
Of course, the Liger had never actually counted on its challenge being heard by the vastly larger, vastly more powerful, vastly more homicidal Zoid that it was up against, and as a result, it hadn`t counted on the Hellwalker actually accepting it.
With every stride it made, the Blade Liger closed with its target, and Kyle growled almost as ferally as his own Zoid as the distance between he and the right forefoot of the Hellwalker shrunk with every passing second. His ears went selectively deaf, his eyes developed tunnel vision and the Liger gained another burst of speed to accompany it, racing frantically against the larger Zoid`s reflexes, even as it felt one of the Hellwalker`s optics virtually narrowing on its backside.
Mark and Harabec both let out shouts over the broadband, Kyle either didn`t hear them at all or chose to ignore them completely, even as the gigantic foot of the Ultrasaurus from Hell began to break out of the yards-deep imprint it had left, lifting up through the air with a tidal wave of dust and dirt.
Kyle felt the Liger instinctively kick on its shield by its own accord, just as the dust overtook the basic optics. Automatically, Kyle`s eyes fell to his scanner, but by then, it was already too late.
"KYLE!!!"
There was a sound close to glass shattering from a golf club, and then the Ivory Blade Liger came flying back out of the dust cloud, the remains of its shield following behind almost like a vapor trail made of shards of energy. By the time that both of the other pilots had finished taking in what had just happened, the Liger had performed a series of corkscrewing flips in every possible direction, only to slam head first, upside down, right through what remained of one of the taller buildings in the city, crashing through whatever else was behind it until hitting the ground and rebounding back up into a tumbling roll.
By the time it stopped, the Ivory Liger was lying on its side, having been thrown right out of the city itself.
It was covered in debris, several gashes had formed in its armor and the cockpit glass was cracked in numerous places - one of the teeth was missing as well, but somehow, as if by a miracle, none of the limbs or the blades had been ripped off. Damaged, yes, but severed outright? No.
Silence reigned for several seconds, and then finally, a low groan issued over the broadband.
"You... Fucking... DUMBASS!!!" Mark finally screamed in reply, still staring in the direction the Liger had just gone flying off in a few moments earlier. "WHAT IN THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING, YOU IDIOT?!"
"Chew `im out later, Mark, we got enough trouble as is," Harabec retorted sharply, and his nephew promptly shifted to glare accusingly at the Hellwalker, its head held as high as a skyscraper, those doom-filled, orange eyes burning like miniature suns.
"Right... Don`t suppose you can pull a Gravity Cannon out of your ass, can you?" The younger of the two pilots asked blankly.
"... If I could, I`d`a used it by now," the older replied with the same
tone.
There was the passing sensation of feeling as though a hair had just been plucked from one of his eyebrows with a tweezer, and then his vision came back into focus once again, though the background hum in his thoughts was as constant as it had been for two or three days now.
"Welcome back to the land of the living," came a slightly nasal sounding voice from his left and front, a bit intentionally low as if the speaker constantly mumbled to himself.
"I couldn`t stomach watching it anymore," Vega replied dryly, reaching up and wiping one of his eyes with a fist.
"Watching what?" Lars asked, though he was paying more attention to a game on his datapad than anything else.
"We`ve lost Farentown. Romeo`s not gonna be around much longer either."
Lars stopped as if he`d just run into a brick wall. Kyle and Katherine were both in Farentown.
"Are they alright?" He asked, knowing that Vega would understand who he was talking about almost instantly.
"... Katherine isn`t in any immediate danger, I don`t think. Kyle... I`m not so sure about Kyle," the younger of the two answered, carefully choosing his words in the pause that he had crafted for himself as he did so.
If Lars had been impacted by the information, he didn`t show it. Not in any recognizable way, anyway. The reclusive computer genius simply paused and saved his game, turned it off and switched over to some other program, reaching up to scratch behind one ear as Vega stood up.
"I`m going to go see if she`s awake yet," he explained, turning away
from the chair he had been sitting in and walking to the doorway. Two swishing
sounds later, Lars sat alone at the controls of the Hammerhead, tongue
in cheek as he began to work his magic on something or other within the
virtual world confined to his datapad.
By the time that Kyle`s head stopped spinning in every direction, the Blade Liger had started to stand up. Both blades were still extended to either side, the glass of the cockpit had cracked in three or four places and more cracks and lines had appeared all over the dust covered Zoid, its tail hanging almost limply to the ground.
"Thassa last time I try to play soccer with a wrecking ball," he groaned dizzily, resisting the urge to shake the cobwebs out of his head as he reached up and checked himself over.
He was bleeding down the side of his forehead, there were bruises all over his lower legs that he didn`t even have to see to recognize and his elbows were both numb. Bad signs, but nothing he couldn`t ignore if he had to.
"Guys?" He asked, forgetting that he had left the comm on just before he had been punted through god knows how many tons of debris in a matter of seconds.
"Oh good, you`re awake," Mark`s sardonic, angry voice chimed in almost instantly, underscored by the sound of the Shadow Fox`s main gun firing.
"What`s your status, Kyle?" Harabec`s calmer voice popped into his ears a few seconds after, rousing the twenty-something pilot a bit more. The others were alive, that was a good sign, right?
"Uh... Not good?" He asked, clearly having lost all bearings at the moment. It would`ve taken him a matter of seconds to check his console if he were in the right state of mind and body, but right now, the world was still shaking and it felt like someone had just used his head to ring a church bell. From the inside.
"Your console, dumbass," Mark pointed out. "Look at the screen. It should automatically be bringing up a diagnostic after a hit like that."
"... Most of it`s either dark yellow or red."
"Shit," Harabec muttered as the firing stopped and the ground shook and rumbled once again, trembling four times in near-rapid succession as a massive silhouette shifted about in the distance, knocking over the remains of buildings and spilling out copious amounts of death from almost every part of its body, mostly in the form of plasma beams and the occasional missile.
"Ohhhh yeah," Kyle blinked, red eyes going a bit wider than usual as he regarded the fire-tinted figure of the Hellwalker, suddenly remembering how his attack had gone wrong and how it had ended up sending him across the city like a fly caught in the path of a haymaker.
"Yeah," Mark replied dryly between explosions, the incessant growling and shrieking of the Shadow Fox proving barely audible in comparison. "What in the fuck were you thinking? Aren`t you supposed to be the smart one here?"
"... Shyaddap, newb..."
"I really hope they`re alright," Katherine finally blurted out, going out of her usual character and clasping her hands together with a nervous twiddling of her thumbs.
"I`d give anything to be back there with Kyle... If I had my old Pteras-" "You`d just be shot down," the boy interrupted bluntly. "I doubt any aerial Zoid would do any good against the kind of thing they`re dealing with. I doubt they`re even still alive."
"Be quiet," Abbie snapped at the others, having the tone of an upset parent laced into her voice. "Both of you. I`m not repeating myself."
Kat let out a tired sigh, underscored by a series of gunshots in the background. It was obvious that there was probably still at least some fighting sitll going on in what remained of Farentown, a city that had been reduced to ashes and dust in a matter of minutes. There just wasn`t enough rubble left to qualify even for target practice, if what they had last seen was any indication.
"Can`t we at least call them? To check up on them?" Kat asked, showing another unusual trait in that she was actually sounding rather timid for once.
The sideways glare she got as an answer was enough that she let the subject drop there. The boy didn`t cut in, and at this point, he really didn`t need to.
Abbie`s eyes alone had said enough. They were as violet tinted as ever, but a bit watery around the edges, packing something beneath the surface that Katherine had simply known was past the point of arguement. As much as she herself wanted to go back and fight alongside Kyle, that single look from Abbie had basically said that the petite, green haired medical student was as determined to keep running as she was hurting inside at the choice she`d had to make.
Unlike Kat, Abbie had effectively taken on the lives of around a hundred people into her hands when she`d gotten into the driver`s seat. And then she`d had to choose saving those lives over trying to look for other survivors, as well as trying to force her own boyfriend to come along as well. On top of that, her hometown for the past two or three years had just gone straight to Hell in under fifteen minutes. It was taking everything she had just to keep going at this point.
That said, Katherine stopped twiddling her thumbs and shifted in her seat slightly, looking out through the side cockpit glass and catching the briefest glimpse of a shadow out in the desert, illuminated for less than a split second by a streak of moonlight before vanishing again, only the faintest trace of anything identifiable present in its short appearance.
"... What was that?" She wondered, absently seeking to remove her mind
from thoughts of the carnage back in the city.
Stop, hop, turn and shoot. That was the only tactic that Harabec could think of in the seconds leading up to now, bringing his guns to lock onto a single point, just behind the bottom of the Hellwalker`s lower jaw. Without any hesitation, without even being sure that the shot would hit, he pulled the trigger and dodged to the side reflexively as he did so.
Two thirty pound, explosive projectiles lanced through the air at several times the speed of sound, crashing violently into the base of the gigantic, mutant Ultrasaurus` jaw and blowing apart in an instant, just as the Shadow Fox came skidding to a halt nearby, the turret already swinging around to follow the lead of Harabec`s earlier attack. This time, there was a straight line of gray smoke and orange fire, leading from the base of the jaw to the chin as the Hellwalker began to lower its head in contempt.
Orange optics flared brightly, those enormous jaws flew open and the head finished diving down towards the ground, missing the Rev Raptor by precious inches, with the undescribably smaller Zoid jumping out of the way at what could best be described as the last possible second, if that.
It was just the kind of opportunity that Mark had been waiting for. With what he had in the way of experience, and with the Shadow Fox itself guiding his aim, the targeting reticule whipped over the side of the Hellwalker`s gigantic head and locked down across one of its optics. His index finger did the rest, pressing the trigger hard enough that he felt as though it would jam. The barrels whirled up and then let loose with a barrage by the time he had even finished realizing what he was doing, and for the first time -
"SUCK ON THAT, PIG FUCKER!"
- the Hellwalker groaned in pain. Explosions tore across the left eye, trailing up and down in a continual pattern for all of two seconds before the head snapped back up from the ground, plasma turrets swinging to get a lock on the hapless offender.
By the time that the Demon let loose, the Shadow Fox had hauled it out of dodge, springing away from the area it had formerly been standing in, an area which promptly turned into into a colossal fireball that was easily six or seven times the size of a Gojulas, probably even larger still.
"Go for the eyes," Harabec mumbled. "Why the hell didn`t I think of that?" He asked himself drearily, watching his nephew weave through the dozens of plasma beams that were following his movements, knowing that for the moment, he had been forgotten completely.
"`Cause you`re senile," Mark jabbed, somewhere in between dodging instant death and praying to God that he could keep it up.
If Harabec had a witty retort, and he most certainly did, Mark`s ears never registered more than the beginning of the first syllable as the Hellwalker threw it`s head back again, howling in pain as it had before, a pair of neatly arranged explosions rocking across the left eye for a second time, though both of the remaining pilots knew that they hadn`t been the ones to throw the attacks.
"You bastards think I`m gonna let you have all the glory?" Kyle asked, just as both of his team mates shifted to glance in the direction that the busted up Blade Liger had been soccer kicked in earlier on.
They couldn`t have seen it, but even with all of the damage inflicted to the Ivory Liger, it was still able to stand and fight, albeit only from a long distance. Both blades had been flipped forward, over the shoulders, and the barrels had been switched over to the sniping setup, while the forelegs were spred and bent about as much as possible, considering the damage that the Zoid had gone through.
And in the cockpit, one banged up, twenty-something veteran by the name of Kyle Mazemia was wearing a grin that would`ve done his self-proclaimed lunatic of a team mate proud.
"Nice shot," Harabec commented as the last traces of the Hellwalker`s screaming died down to little more than an angered growl, even as the neck began to straighten back out, both eyes glowing even brighter than before.
"Think ya pissed `im off even more than I did," Mark added as casually as if he were giving the weather.
"Oink," Kyle replied. "Oink, oink, oink."
Silence. And then...
"You`ve both got issues, yanno that?" Harabec asked sardonically, leering over at the Shadow Fox as it made a gesture remarkably similar to shrugging.
The conversation instantly stopped with all of the finesse of a car flying into the ground from the top of a six story building, mainly because two thirds of its participants were now running for their lives as missiles and plasma beams rained down into the area, scorching the already fried, glassed earth even more than before, though both the Shadow Fox and the Rev Raptor were mostly unscathed by some minor miracle.
The Blade Liger growled, Kyle squinted one eye shut as blood trickled down from the cut on the side of his forehead. All things considered, he should`ve been running for his life, with or without the Blade Liger, but he stayed put, even as the ground shuddered from the Hellwalker`s attempts at swatting flies with a sledge hammer.
That shudder promptly halted like it hadn`t even happened, just as the entire, warped Ultrasaurus seemed to tilt back onto its hind legs for several seconds, the tail and neck both arcing high as another deafening screech echoed through the ears of anything within six or seven miles of the city`s remains. For several more moments after this, Kyle was left to do nothing but watch as the Shadow Fox and the Rev Raptor stopped and turned away, no longer hindered by plasma beams, missiles or anything else since their monstrous foe had stopped its attacks for the duration.
And then the tremendous monstrosity started falling back to the ground, feet first.
"Ahhhh Hell..."
The Rev Raptor and the Shadow Fox both vanished in a tidal wive of shattered, charred glass, ash, dust and dirt as the two forefeet of the Hellwalker crashed into the scorched earth beneath it with enough force to instantly give birth to a small scale earthquake that was powerful enough to almost jar the Ivory Blade Liger`s balance, even two or three miles from the twin epicenters, though the dust wave stopped just a few hundred yards short of doing the same.
Fires across one half of the city stopped for a short time before churning back to life as the Hellwalker started prying its feet from the pits that had formed around them, first the right, then the left.
Only Kyle and the Ivory Liger were still standing by the time it finished. The Rev Raptor and the Shadow Fox had both vanished during the seconds after the attack, and there was a fairly high chance that both were buried under countless tons of debris as a result.
"Crap," the lone pilot bit out venomously. "Crap, crap, crap, crap..."
The Hellwalker took several steps back from the epicenter of the former earthquake, its head still smoking from where the shots had hit its eyes, both of which were promptly dimmed while it seemed to glower in the direction of the last pest that had dared to defy its reign of terror.
"Don`t suppose we could talk this out over a beer, huh?" Kyle asked cynically, finding his question greeted with a rumbling growl that was audible even from the distance between he and the Demon.
A symphony of clicks and whirls of machinery followed, both of the Blade Liger`s sniper rifles and its main gun locking onto the left eye of the Hellwalker, all of the Hellwalker`s available weaponry locking onto the Blade Liger`s general location with all of the spite and malice that something of that size could manage.
"Didn`t think so."
Light began to gather in every barrel, the Hellwalker`s mouth slid open and its main gun extended into view, already starting to glow, along with the countless vents along its sides, sucking in and charging particles like there was no tomorrow, because in truth, there probably wasn`t. In response, the Blade Liger growled and prepared to go out fighting, its formerly limp tail snapping up and going rigid as both rifles began to light up from a near overcharge, the double impact cannon on its chest showing no signs of change.
If the Zoid could make human expressions, it would`ve been smiling.
And that was when the virtual mountain of dust and debris blew open in two places at once, a stream of pulse lasers and four pairs of solid cannon rounds alike streaming through the air to crash into the roof of the Hellbringer`s mouth. At best, the damage was negligable, but the psychological effect was what mattered.
The colossal Demon stopped short of firing off another salvo of instant death, seeming to stagger back slightly as its main gun retracted back into its throat, both eyes now burning with rage so thick that a knife wouldn`t`ve been able to cut it in decades as both the Shadow Fox and Rev Raptor, each briefly stained a dull brown from being covered in dirt, emerged from where they`d been hidden, one growling as annoyedly as the pilots themselves felt.
"Show-offs," Kyle muttered, powering his rifles back down and taking the time to wipe the blood from the eye that was still squinting shut.
"Ass savers is more like it," Mark pointed out with a slightly smug tone before going serious once again. "But I don`t think we can win this one... We should cut our losses and haul ass outta here before all three of us get turned into shit stains on that thing`s foot."
"... I thought you had no self preservation?" Kyle asked dimly.
"... You haven`t ever had to deal with Abbie when she`s really, really pissed off, now have you?" Mark answered about as bluntly as possible. Harabec cut them off from going into another insult jammed tirade, speaking up with an unnervingly calm tone of voice.
"Mark`s right. We can`t stay and fight this thing, not here, at least," he said, only to continue. "Mark, you know which way Abbie went, right?" He asked.
"Yeah."
"Lead Kyle that way, I`ll try and get Big Ugly here to ignore you, then join up later."
There was a pause.
"Beck. Don`t you even fucking think it," Mark growled out angrily, having read his uncle`s intentions like an open book. "Mom and Dad`d have a fuckin` heart attack, man."
"Like they don`t everytime they see your god damn ass out there in a Zoid battle?" Harabec retorted sharply. "Besides, I`m the best pilot here, I can take care o` myself. You just need to take care of everything else for me."
"He`s got a point, Mark," Kyle`s voice sounded into the other pilot`s ears, a good bit more sedate than usual. For the time being, the Hellwalker seemed more or less content to try and shake off the effects of the ambush, rather than to attack them again. They were wasting time, even Mark knew that much, but still...
Moments of rare indecisiveness passed before the youngest of the trio finally snorted and spoke up again, however annoyed he might or might not have sounded.
"Then promise me you`ll survive and meet up with us again by tomorrow," he ordered, narrowing both eyes in the direction of the Rev Raptor. The black and gold Zoid seemed to pause in tune with its pilot, neither moving, but at least one thinking.
"Promise me or I`ll blow the legs off that Zoid and drag your ass out with us," Mark affirmed, swiveling the Shadow Fox`s main gun to point to the hips of the Rev Raptor.
"Deal," Harabec finally answered, a bit too simply for anyone else`s tastes.
It was in that moment that the Shadow Fox`s gun pointed forward and lowered back down again, just as the black Zoid turned around and broke into a series of hopping strides before running off in the direction of the Ivory Blade Liger.
With that out of the way, Harabec calmly flipped off his comm link and took in a deep, eerily relaxed breath, one gloved hand casually flipping open a small compartment on the front of one of the arm rests, causing a small tray to flip out with a brown-capped silver tube and an old lighter in place next to it. The Rev Raptor growled accordingly, both blades flipping back for the duration as the Hellwalker finished recovering with an angry shake of the head, though it had yet to make a sound.
"Dumb kid always did make me give `im promises I couldn`t keep," he commented to the Zoid, which seemed to shrug accordingly, one foot coming forward of its own accord. Each arm curled up for balance, but it had yet to start running.
All of the massive deathbringer`s attention shifted over the course of another two or three seconds, which was the same time it took for Beck to take his gloves off and cast them into the floor. Dozens of guns and missile launchers capable of blowing holes through Type Nine and Ten Whale Kings whirled about to lock onto the position of the Rev Raptor, but the old pro didn`t pay them any mind.
Instead, he took the silver covering off of the cigar, which had already been partially smoked to begin with, and then put the business end into his mouth before grabbing the lighter. Two clicks and a small flicker of flame later, a slight trail of smoke lifted from the burning tip of the old cancer stick, the cover and the lighter both finding their way back into the compartment, which was promptly slammed shut with no amount of care on Beck`s part.
The gloves were off. There were no bystanders to worry about, no family members and friends to have to look out for and no valuable structures to have to deal with. The world itself had fallen apart and the only things that seemed to matter anymore, in the self-contained battlefield that had once been Farentown, were the monstrous Hellwalker and the small, but proud Rev Raptor that had the guts to defy it.
Where before, the colossus had bothered to charge up for the sheer thrill of it, now there was no such pause. The ceasefire ended with a thousand explosions and a single, whistfully spoken sentence that seemed to have no real meaning to anyone but the man who said it.
"So much for that little get-together, huh, Liese?"
And with that, the Revered Raptor launched forward one last time, escaping
one death as it did so, but chasing another all the same.
*BANG!!!*
Both the Shield Liger and the Shadow Fox slowed from their previous jog away from the remains of the city, the slightly smaller Zoid turning its head to glance in the direction of what looked like a low level nuclear explosion, forming into a hellishly bright, purple and white tinted sphere, which in turn seemed to force itself to become nothing short of a doomsday whirlwind for almost a minute and a half before slowly dissipating into nothing but a pitch black cloud of smoke, with only scant glows of orange and red occasionally breaking into view.
For a time, there was silence. And then the Shadow Fox turned its head forward again.
"... You`ll be okay," Kyle finally commented with about as much comfort as he could manage.
"... Right. Let`s just find the Gustav," Mark replied with one of the most nonchalant, empty sounding attempts at sarcasm that he had ever bothered making.
Both Zoids promptly sped back up into a jog, slowed only by a mixture
of the injuries to the Blade Liger and the grief that was slowly but surely
washing over the numbed pilot of the Shadow Fox.
Author`s Note: I REALLY hope that didn`t read like wet cardboard... This chapter was an even bigger bitch to write than the one before it.
EndlessAdventure: At this point EA, I`d rather appreciate it if you stop sniping at me and start being a bit more neutrally objective. I can only take so many nitpicks and annoyances before I chew someone out, and for the past three reviews you`ve sent, all you`ve done is nitpick at things YOU find wrong. I can understand disliking them, but if you`re going to do nothing but sit there and snipe me in reviews, or IM me with little jingles about how my characters are stupid, take it elsewhere. Nothing personal, and I apologize ahead of time if you find what I just said offensive.
The Big Fisch: Don`t worry, he`ll be going back to work soon >_> And I`m glad you liked Madison and Rommel`s little... Chat. It was probably my favorite part of that chapter :P
Illidan: Kyle/Mark/Harabec have/had something simply known as one of two things: Idiot Shielding or Character Shielding. Take your pick :P And glad you no longer dislike Madison. Believe it or not, I actually went a bit out of my way to write that so people would like her, and now, I`m glad that I did.
Nox ab desparo: Glad ya like it :D
Welp, that`s all for now. Expect a few more delays before the next chapters start posting, ROC is winding down and I`m going to have to start lengthening the chapters out if I hope to have a reasonably clean(and/or bloodier than your momma`s used tampons) slate to start on x_x Hopefully, the quality will improve with the length. Expect certain things to start fleshing themselves out, very soon.
Hope you enjoyed the chapter, leave a review, and Sh33p out!
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