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:Music is as follows.
Scene One: Rurouni Kenshin - Fallen Angel(or Trigun - Not An Angel)
Scene Two: .hack//Sign - Fake Wings(Bittersweet Version)
Scene Three: Trigun - Never Could Have Been Worse
Scene Four: Lord of the Rings - May It Be
Scene Five: .hack//Sign - A Stray Child
Scene Six: Moby - Porcelain
Scene Seven: Trigun - Not An Angel
Scene Eight:
Zoids - Riese
.hack//Sign - Aura(Evil Version)
Rurouni Kenshin - Frozen Flare
Zoids - Childhood Memory
"I... Pierce, I don`t really know how to than-" "Stuff it. He saved my ass, but if he bleeds all over the backseat, you`re cleaning it up."
["You rotten, conniving, backstabbing FUCKERS!"
"You`re a big boy, Rayth. You don`t need us to get out of here," a younger Kyle Mazemia pointed out. "Especially not with that Kale guy to help you out."
"I BARELY EVEN KNOW HIM!"]
Voices. Some distant, some imagined, but all still clearly audible.
"I`m sorry I couldn`t do a better job patching him up but..." Another sentence trailed off to what seemed like a background haze.
"Don`t worry about it, Abbie. You did what you could, we`ll probably be able to do better when we get to the base," one of the first two voices replied. It was the harder, second voice, the one that had cut the most familiar of the group off a few seconds before.
["REST! IN! PIECES!!!"
Blam. Blam-blam-blam.
The world went black.]
"Whflbguh..."
Not the most coherent sounding thing to get out, but it was proof that he was alive, at least. Even more proof followed when he heard a slightly high-pitched screech of what sounded like joy, then felt an immense pressure wrapping itself around his beat-up carcass.
"YEOW!!!"
"Whoops!" Katherine almost yelped, prying herself off of Kyle`s brutalized form so quickly that she almost flew right into the passenger seat. Pierce spared her a quirky glance before looking back to her side at the splitscreen view of Abbie and Mark. Abbie`s face was still dripping with a bit of sweat, her eyes were still glistening and her face still a bit damp from having bawled herself senseless earlier on, but she was smiling now.
Mark, on the other hand, bore a grin as wide and smug as a confident poker player who`d just gotten drunk off too many victories. Pierce snorted.
[Silent and completely dumbstruck, the green haired pilot stood there, staring straight ahead with the blankest expression of her life, arms limp at her sides, several stray hairs sticking out and curling this way and that. Across from her, in the cockpit of the still-downed Shadow Fox, her would-be brother-in-law was grinning like a complete idiot, almost on the verge of bursting into hysterical laughter.
"I do believe you were saying something about my luck running out?"
"... Just... Shut up..."
A deranged cackle rang through the desert.]
"What happened?" Kyle asked, a bit bleary as he tried to sit up, only to find that doing so caused an instant surge of pain to run down his back, shoulders and legs.
"Well... There`s good news and there`s bad news. Bad news is that ya went fifteen rounds with a pissed off wrecking ball and got the shit stomped outta ya. Good news is that ya won," Mark answered with palpable amusement, only to continue before Kyle`s sore brain could finish processing the information enough to ask his next question.
"And yes, the Blade Liger is... Alive. It`s gonna need one bitch of an overhaul, but it`ll survive," he added. Again, before Kyle could ask his next question, Pierce cut him off. She wasn`t quite as amused as her sister`s boyfriend.
"We`re hauling it on the trailer I`d been using for my Zabat. Since the Zabat`s gone and all..."
"Thanks."
"Don`t mention it," Pierce replied with a bit of a sigh, tensing briefly and then popping her neck before speaking again. "You`re lucky enough to be alive yourself," she pointed out.
"How`s that?" Kyle asked blandly, finally managing to pry one of his eyes open and look around. His vision was still low on detail, and color shifted so that everything was either red or some shade of black, but at least he wasn`t blind or anything.
"You must not remember how the cockpit glass shattered all over you in three explosions at once, or how you probably came within a few inches of being crushed to death when you finished that thing off," Mark pointed out. "If it wasn`t for Abbie, you`d probably be dead right now..."
"I didn`t do that much," Abbie`s relatively demure voice cut in. It was odd to hear someone as perky and easily pleased as her sounding the way she did right now. "And I won`t be able to do very much until we get to the base... And that`s if they even have any real supplies to begin with."
"Don`t undercut yourself, jiggy-bug," Mark shot back, sounding as if he really didn`t care who heard him at this point. Really, losing just about everything in one night could do that to a guy.
"Can it, meathead," Abbie retorted a bit sharply, glaring off to the side at where the screen with Mark was probably being displayed in the other Gustav`s cockpit. The only reply was another half-insane grin, at which point, Pierce cut back in.
"Get a room," she said, promptly silencing both of them at once.
"How much longer until we arrive at the base?" Kat asked from where she was knelt down in the foot of the back seat, practically obsessing over Kyle with about as level a head as one could imagine. She was upset, but even now she was holding it together with more composure than anyone else probably could`ve managed in that situation.
Outside, the Shadow Fox let out a rumble, Mark paused briefly to glance around and set his eyes squarely ahead, though it was to the left in the pop-up window that Pierce was viewing him through.
"About six minutes at this rate," he clarified, looking over to where the window with Abbie in it was probably located in the Fox`s displays. "How`re the folks holdin` up?" He asked.
"As well as can be expected... A few of them freaked out when we turned back to pick up Kyle and I had to try and patch him up with that first aid kit... But they`re doing better now, I guess," she answered with a small shrug. Pierce was the only one to question her.
"No one tried running off or screaming bloody murder or anything?"
"Pierce," Abbie snorted a bit more harshly than normal, almost, but not quite glaring at her sister through the vidlink. "These people just lost everything, some of them don`t even have families anymore. When I went back to check up on them, most were still crying their eyes out or passed out in exhaustion," she growled, turning back ahead as the dark blue Gustav sped up slightly alongside Pierce`s own, with the Shadow Fox still limping a few yards ahead of them both. Mark`d had to crash through a reboot of the Zoid and it was still quite dizzy afterward, looking almost like it had a drunken swagger to it.
"Point taken," the older sister replied dimly, her tongue soon finding
its way into her cheek as the group continued onward.
In the heart of Fortress Champton, a single, somewhat petite hand tapped softly upon a large, expensive door. It was such a gentle wrapping, no one inside could`ve heard...
"I can still delay this... A little longer," Marry Champ told herself, hand starting to lower back down as she thoughtlessly gnawed on the back of her lower lip. It had taken up most of her nerve to speak to someone other than Benjamin and Sebastian, the two robots who had tasked themselves with handling what remained of the Champ family as best they could, though there were still others who tried, not that any of them succeeded beyond making sure the group was fed and as healthy as possible.
More and more, it seemed like the doting, slightly overbearing big sister who ranked in as the second youngest of six children was obsolete in the role she`d so often tried to claim for herself - head of the household in their parents` absence. When her mother and father were around, she was just a simple go-between with everyone else, even if she did have authority, but without them?
It seemed the real leader had practically risen out of the ashes while they were still burning hot. Harry had shocked all of his siblings when they`d learned that he really had taken control of things as swiftly as he did.
Now, with that all ground into her somewhat darkened mind, Marry found it more and more difficult to try and measure Harry up to herself because in so many ways, he had surpassed her. His 'useless hobby' of piloting Zoids had given him the skills to pilot practically any Zoid in the city, his relentless fawning over that lower class thug of a girl had given him what seemed like the motivation to keep going when everyone else had crumbled and his time away from Champton`s sheltered walls had given him the chance to make connections. He`d been down in the trenches and, really...
How could a young woman who`d spent close to three weeks locked up in her bedroom bawling her eyes out like a little girl measure up to that, especially after all of the times she had blown herself up to be so much more than she actually was? Still, she needed to speak to him, to let him know that even if he had risen above the rest of them in such spectacular fashion, at least one of his siblings hadn`t abandoned him. Not completely.
Slowly but steadily, she knocked at the door again, five times in a row, audible this time. Her expression shifted from that false smile to one of stone, a look that was usually only seen in one of several situations, usually when someone had spilled her pudding.
The knob turned, her expression started to rise and-
"Oh... Who are you and what are you doing in Harry`s bedroom?" She asked, as politely as she could manage, even if it did sound like a viper`s hiss, barely restrained as it was.
"Harry`s sleeping and you feel like shit. Come on in," the scarred girl with pinkish-red hair, wearing a set of obviously new, full length pajamas said without missing a beat, pulling the door open enough for Marry to step inside. True to the girl`s word, he was half-sprawled out across the couch in his apartment-like bedroom`s equivelent to a living room area, a bowl of mostly eaten popcorn lying on its side in front of him with a delicate looking sheet spread out across him. He was snoring and looking more content in that moment than he probably had in a month and a half, if not longer.
Once the blonde had stepped into the room, the door shut without even the slightest of sounds and the girl spoke, answering Marry`s question before it could even be asked.
"My name`s Leena Tauros, guess you forgot who I am since you last saw me, huh?" She asked, sounding eerily pleasant in sheer spite of the awkwardness of the situation.
"... Pardon my asking but..." Marry was cut off.
"The scars? Don`t worry about it, they were caused by Vega Obscura`s brother shorting out my Gunsniper`s cockpit so badly that I got fried from the energy discharge," Leena explained, calmly taking Marry by one shoulder and leading her towards where Harry kept a stocked fridge and a private dining area, though it was really only fit for two people at most.
"I... This..."
"Yeah, it`s awkward for me too. I didn`t think I`d ever see you again. You look like you`ve been through a wringer," the girl said, guiding a fairly willing Marry into sitting down at the table without even the slightest bit of protest. "Orange juice? Soda?" Leena asked, only to answer herself before Marry could even finish computing the question. "Orange juice it is."
"What are you?" The older girl finally blurted out, completely baffled by how the conversation had been turning out.
"Depends on who you ask," the younger of the two replied, pulling out a thin carton of orange juice and setting it down on the table in front of Marry, then looking back into the fridge.
"What do you mean?" Marry asked, still dumbfounded even as she pried open the carton and paused before she could take a sip.
"Harry`s girlfriend, overclocked scarface, trigger happy bitch... Really, take your pick."
"Harry`s girlfriend?!" Marry sputtered in disbelief, briefly glad she hadn`t taken a sip of her orange juice. She probably would`ve choked on it in shock.
"Not sure if it`s official yet, but yeah, pretty much," Leena casually answered, still rifling through the fridge without even blinking over how strange the conversation was. "You cry a lot nowadays, huh?"
"... How are..."
"I got overclocked by a god program. I`d probably burst a blood vessel trying to explain it as anything else," the other girl answered, standing up finally with a sandwhich in a plastic bag. "You`re hungry, right?" She asked. Marry only nodded, watching as Leena nonchalantly tossed the sandwhich, still in its bag, onto the table, where it slid to a halt, pointed directly at Marry.
"Could you, um, please stop cutting me off?" The Champ sister finally asked with a low tone of voice, opening the small bag and drawing the sandwhich out. Leena only shrugged.
"I guess it would get a little annoying after a while, wouldn`t it?" She asked, shutting the fridge and stepping over to the table. Marry was normally something of a delicate eater, at this point though, she didn`t much care for manners, especially not considering the company she was in. Leena Tauros hadn`t exactly seemed like someone who really cared about manners, after all.
In fact, Leena had seemed, more or less, the exact opposite of virtually every female member of the entire Champ family - barring that ego of hers, it was almost on par with Nicolette. With the addition of her scars and the sudden shift in her attitude, it seemed even more so.
"You`re feeling obsolete because you can`t provide for Harry like you used to," Leena pointed out, having already seated herself by the time that Marry had been rowsed out of thought and chewing on food that had already been reduced to mush. She swallowed with a quirked brow.
"Do you read minds?" She asked curiously, changing the subject right off the bat.
"Schubaltz probably could, I`m just guessing off of your movements," Leena answered rather nonchalantly. "Now stop dodging the point."
"What point? That my youngest brother no longer needs me because he has you, his likely future wife?"
"If we survive all of this, yeah. That point," Leena replied, still wearing her newly donned kid gloves. If she had been her old self, she probably wouldn`t`ve been above using those newfound abilities to snap Marry like a twig - psychologically or physically.
"I don`t know how to accept that, Leena," Marry replied, finally addressing the other girl by name. "I`ve always been the one looking out for Harry, and everyone else for that matter... If I can`t be the one to take care of him, what good am I?" She asked, only to continue, her tone too stern for Leena to cut her off. "I`m only a B-class pilot at best, I don`t have any viable skills in directing a battle, I was still learning the ropes of management when Mother and Father..."
"Took a dirt nap," Leena bluntly interrupted.
"... Thank you. But yes, when they took a whatever-you-said. I don`t really have any way to add to things, I`m just a useless burden right now," Marry finished with a sigh, putting down the sandwhich with a glum look and propping one elbow onto the table, her head leaned against its fist. "Do you know... How that feels?"
"Yeah, actually," Leena replied with more honesty than her remarkably well-adjusted tone should`ve allowed. "All you have to do is stop staring at your feet long enough to see the choices in front of you. You`re a Champ, you can boost local morale, or you could do something very..." She paused thoughtlessly, waiting until Marry curiously looked up with one eye blinked shut.
"Unladylike," she said with a pause, continuing. "And dirty your hands by learning how to be a mechanic or a real Zoid pilot. Hell, you could just work as Harry or Sarah`s secretary and take a bit of the load off of Benjamin and Sebastian and all their other go-betweens."
"I think I`m starting to see why Harry likes you," Marry pointed out with a faint half-smirk, reaching for where the orange juice was situated and grabbing the carton.
"Actually, ya don`t, but I won`t spoil it anymore than I have to," Leena replied with a slightly cracked smile that almost made Marry re-think what she`d just said. "What I`m trying to say though, is that you`re only going to be a dead weight if you don`t at least try to amount to something more. There`ll be an opportunity sometime soon to make a difference, and it`ll be one that you grab first," she explained.
"Do you believe any of what you just said?" Marry asked, taking a quick swig off of the orange juice carton and then straightening up, looking less regal in under a minute than she had in the previous eighteen or nineteen years of her entire life.
"Nope. Made you feel better though, didn`t it?" Leena asked, once again cracking a smile similar to that of a depraved lunatic. Marry only chuckled in response before finally speaking.
"It did, actually."
"Say hello to sweet salvation, ladies and glass bowl fetishist," Mark`s voice rang out over the comm, bringing Kyle out of his stupor of sweet nothings from Katherine with an annoyed glance in the direction of where he guessed the transmission was being displayed.
"You`re never gonna let me live that down, are you?" The brutalized hero-of-the-night asked, a twitch starting to form in the eye he could actually open, his vision having finally started to clear up a bit.
"Not a chance in Hell," Mark replied.
"Cut `im some slack, newbie, we wouldn`t even be here without him," Pierce cut back into the conversation with the tone of a forum moderator who was just a bit stressed.
"Yeah, show some respect, newb..."
"Bah. Like he`d`ve even been able to do it without us bailing him out," Mark pointed out with a smirk.
"Markie," Abbie growled lowly, violet eyes narrowed ever so slightly. "You`re being difficult."
"Fine, fine... Last thing we need right now is for you to chew my ass off too. What`s left of it, anyway," Mark shrugged as the Gustavs and the Shadow Fox alike churned to a stop in front of the hangar bay of the Blitz Team`s headquarters. Tauros Farm, as it was affectionately known back in the days when Steve and Rina were the only actual owners, but tonight, it had another name, unspoken as it was.
Haven.
"Hey, Mark..."
"Eh?" The Fox pilot asked, glancing over at Pierce`s video image.
"Is the hole in the front door just a new renovation since the last time I showed up here or what?" The older Summers daughter asked, obviously a little apprehensive about the possibility of walking into a virtual firetrap, and if the base had been ransacked of supplies, it was going to be an even more temporary shelter than originally intended.
"... I`ll go in first and check things out, keep the engines running," Mark ordered, just as the Shadow Fox started to stumble forward with all of the grace of an annoyed drunk. Its combat system wasn`t even operational.
For a few tense moments, even Katherine turned her attentions to the screen with the profile view of Mark`s face on it, and then a sigh of relief came over the link.
"Only things in here`re a Raynos and a few tons of equipment and spare parts. I don`t know why the door is busted open like that, but if we were dealing with bandits, nothing`d be left," he explained, leaving the tension that had built up in a matter of seconds to fade away as quickly as it had come. The Gustavs churned back to life a few moments later, with Pierce leading Abbie into the hangar and both parking it not far from where the Liger Zero and Scout Fox usually stood.
Cockpits flipped open, the Shadow Fox submissively trudged its way over to where Leena Tauros` Gunsniper originally stood virtually every day when not in a Zoid battle, coming to stand with its back to the wall and the Raynos to its side, each Zoid paying the other little, if any attention. At that, the black canine slowly lowered itself down to the steel plated floor, its own cockpit flipping open as its pilot wearily undid his safety harness and stood up, watching as both his girlfriend and his future sister-in-law disembarked.
"That reminds me," he thought absently, plopping down on the edge of the open cockpit, then swinging his way off of it and to the floor. The Fox rumbled and stood back up, leaving its cockpit open for the time being. "I never did get around to poppin` the question back when we were on vacation... Not that I have a ring or anything, but hey..."
Thoughts of impending engagements were pushed aside for the duration as the Shadow Fox pilot stretched out his limbs and stifled a yawn, glancing over to the busted door. It had been ripped open, rather than outright blasted, almost as if a battering ram had smashed into it at higher than mach one or two. Thoughts of that soon went onto the shelf as well as he finally started crossing the distance through the hangar, watching as Pierce and Katherine started to help Kyle`s banged up self out of the first Gustav while Abbie lifted the nameless boy up and out of the second.
The kid never made eye contact with anyone but his own reflection on the floor, it seemed, and that both unnerved and caused a stir of interest in both Mark and Abbie, though neither really had the time to speak.
"I`m guessing the Raynos belongs to one of the Blitz Team members?" Kat asked, having never really followed the rapid advancement of the Blitz with enough interest to memorize the names of anyone but Leon Tauros and Bit Cloud.
"Yeah, Jamie Hameros owns it, which probably means he`s the only one here," Pierce answered before Mark could. "Don`t know why he`d blow open his own home`s front door though. From what little I saw of him face to face, he never quite seemed the violent type..."
"Wasn`t him," Mark pointed out. "None of the door was cut or blasted, just burnt and ripped," he explained, offering an arm to take the load of Kyle`s sagging, exhausted and completely bloodied form away from Katherine. She shook her head, Pierce just shrugged him off.
"Did you get the chance to learn the layout of the base?" Kyle asked, although it was obvious that he was probably going to pass back out in a matter of minutes simply from being on his feet.
"Nope," Mark shrugged. "Only the hangar. I`m sure it isn`t too complex since people have to live here and all..."
"Think they`d have a room for medical care?" Abbie asked, taking the boy`s hand and giving a reluctant glance to her two trailers, all of which were filled with mostly silent, sometimes sobbing people, many of whom were asleep by now. She didn`t lack the heart to make them wake up, maybe their dreams were more pleasant than reality right now.
"Considering that this place seems like it was an old military outpost at some point, and seeing as how it`s not exactly a quick trip to get to town, it wouldn`t surprise me," Kat pointed out, pausing slightly to compensate for her barely conscious boyfriend`s weight. Pierce was completely unphased, despite being classed by more than a few men as an überbabe, she was probably strong enough to sling both Mark and Kyle over her shoulders and make a good two or three mile run in the process.
"You gonna come help patch him up?" The older sister asked, glancing over at Abbie.
"Let me find a decent place to leave him," she began, glancing down at the boy who was still holding onto her hand and staring at the ground. "And I`ll be right after you..."
"I can handle it," Mark pointed out, drawing the attention of virtually everyone - almost all of them giving nothing short of a morbid stare in the process.
"... What?"
There was a faint rustle in the dim light of the hangar, the scream of the Hammerhead II`s engines was that much more apparent here, giving a background hum and rumble to almost every single thing done or heard, coming just a few steps short of blotting out the background noise of the door even opening to begin with, or the small sounds of hard rubber soles clapping along the cold steel of the floor.
"I thought I`d find you here. I was kinda worried when I didn`t find you on the couch," Vega commented with a somewhat dreary, tireless voice, his eyes remaining in the here and now, rather than their far struck look of so many hours prior during the past day or two. He felt the mental equivelent of a maternal smile, and heard a dual growl that alerted him to the presences of both the others.
I won`t be going to sleep like that anytime soon, Vega. I can assure you over that much at least. How have things been in my absence? Specular asked, a good deal more calm and confident than her Voice had been when the boy had last heard her.
"Couldn`t you just skim through the bugs?" Vega asked aloud, coming to a stop and placing a gloved hand to the safety rail, now standing scant yards from where the unarmored Fury stood, the vast majority of its body beneath the catwalk with only the head at level with him. An easily recognizable figure, sleek, inhuman and metallic blue, lay upon the closed hatch of the cockpit, curled into a veritable Organoid donut with yellow optics glimmering in the shadows.
They`re still too busy trying to adapt to you to really bother with me at the moment. I`ve only been able to take brief glimpses through things, nothing long enough to piece together all that`s happened...
There was a pause as the Organoid lifted its head up, eyes briefly glimmering a bit brighter than before. Vega cracked a smirk, she looked like some cross between a bettle, a chicken, a raptor and a snake all at once. Still, he regained his composure a few seconds later, staring straight at the Fury with slightly narrowed eyes.
"I haven`t been able to fully reign them in yet."
You`re adapting to them while they adapt to you. You`re the first human master they`ve ever had, and on top of that they only just finished getting over having to go on only one controller, rather than two or even the hundreds who lorded over them before the Endtimes, Specular answered, calmly craning her neck around to either side as far as it would go. If he`d been paying enough attention, Vega would`ve heard an annoyed comment about metal fatigue.
"I take it you`ve been controlling them for a few centuries, then?" The boy asked, still watching the Fury.
Roughly seventy years, ever since my last Bondmate - your nine or ten times great grandmother, Riese - abandoned them. The only real reason I took them was to prevent control of them from falling to your mother or older brother.
"Eh?" He voiced, quirking up a brow as he finally took another step forward, fully leaning onto the rail now.
Sarah, as intelligent and thoughtful as she no doubt is, is too ruthless and, I believe, too shortsighted to use them properly. Kale would only use them to hunt down percieved threats or spy on women in uncompromising situations.
There was a sideways glance.
... Right. I`ll pass your little... Indescretions off as a side-effect of puberty.
"... Anyway," Vega switched the subject, a faint blush storming across his cheeks as he looked back to the Fury. "How was it that I ended up being picked then?" He asked.
My guess is that it had to do with your proximity to me when I lost control. It could`ve also been their own choice, but that`s up for debate.
"Right..."
So then... What`s happened while I was out?
Vega paused heavily, nodding to himself a moment before explaining things.
"A lot of people died today, and tonight. Bit`s... Whatever-she-is has allowed herself to be captured, he doesn`t know what he`s in for and most of what`s left of neutral zone civilization is starting to pack in to Champton, and... I can`t really sum it up," he sighed, finally allowing himself to sit down with one of the safety rail`s supports as a brace for his right shoulder and that side of his face. "And that`s just today..."
Then, Vega, what`s happened that matters?
"Too much. I never realized how detached I used to be from reality until a few minutes ago, and now I can`t even tell what matters beyond what I`m looking at now," he replied heavily, his eyes distant again. A mental prod jarred him back to the same reality he had complained about.
Including a girl, I see, Specular commented with a telepathic grin. Vega had to literally lock her presence out of his mind on raw, juvenile instinct alone.
Well, we`ll leave that part of things alone then. What`s happened to the people close to you?
"Mom`s hijacked Champton, Bit`s sleeping like a bum - Jamie Hameros is also asleep but more like a war veteran, Brad Hunter and Jamie`s alter-ego are both dead, Leena`s become... I don`t know what to say, Kale..." He trailed off for a moment, then continued. "Rayth has finally been laid to rest by the only one who could actually do it, Kyle, who`s being patched up right now by Marcus Harlock`s girlfriend, and... So much else. Harabec is also dead, he was vaporized about an hour or two ago I think... Maybe longer, I`m not entirely sure."
... I see. And... Do you mind if I ask you what`s become of Leyla Tsun and Bill Chapman? Their Organoid as well, if you can.
"Tsun is having a chat with some guy after waking up from a flashback, Chapman is headed towards the only place he has left to turn to and Borealis..."
You have no idea, do you?
"Nope."
Thought so. Boris always was one of the only Organoids who could hide himself when he wanted.
"You knew him?"
... In passing, so to speak. It`s not important now.
"Right," Vega half-nodded, finally completing what could best be described as an in-field report to a commanding officer, even if the two were now virtually equal. "And we`re heading for Nyx."
I know. Do you know anything of Zeke? She asked, only barely hinting at any real concern as her head began to tuck back down onto the canopy of the Fury`s cockpit.
"Burned himself out like a light last night."
... Convenient, Specular noted, though why she did was unknown. Everything seems to be falling into place exactly as she didn`t want.
"Hm?"
Nothing...
A terse quiet soon filled the hangar as the boy, the Organoid and the
Zoid shared a pleasant, if unspoken and perhaps even foreboding, reunion
with one another, however dimly lit and however rickety the setting was.
["Papa, she`s awake," a voice rang through her ears. It was unfamiliar, accompanied by the sensation of momentum from being in a moving vehicle of some sort. Her eyes were slow to draw open as she let out an exhausted yawn, registering the feel of warm, eerily soft metal pressing to one cheek in the form of a snout nuzzling against her.
"I know, Erisi. Let her rest up some more," an older voice, clearly male, replied. The momentum shifted slightly, Reva supressed a groan and forced herself to sit up. Boris rumbled softly and remained in place, optics dimmed somewhat. A second growl accompanied the first, unfamiliar as the man`s voice itself. Her vision began to clear not long after, the world - or what it was currently limited to - came into focus, her eyes cleared and shifted from side to side, then straight ahead.
It was about as spacious as the back of a full sized van, only a single-sized mattress laid out in the back, the foot end pointed to one of the walls, the head pointed to the other with the side pressed against the back wall. A metallic blue Organoid with yellow optics lay curled up behind the front seats, barely two or three feet away from Reva and Boris as the little girl began to turn forward, her entire body sore and dry feeling.
"I... Thank you. I guess," she shrugged as graciously as she could in her current situation. Boris sat up not long after, contrasting sharply to the larger, more mature Organoid.
"You`re welcome..." The father trailed off as momentum came to a slow but steady halt, the sound of the engine dying down still fresh in the girl`s ears as the driver`s seat began to rotate, slowly revealing a man in what passed as the Zoidian equivelent to his mid-thirties or early forties, with dark blue hair that was long even by the standards of the day. His eyes were tinted a more watery shade than those of the larger Organoid, but it was more or less quite obvious that he was the creature`s bondmate. His skin was pale, though his face was strongly defined and handsome even well into his hundreds, though there were obvious stress lines here and there.
"Reva," she finally answered the unspoken question with a dull nod.
"Well, Reva, my name is Riese, and this is my daughter," he paused, glancing expectantly to the chair beside him, which finally spun around to reveal a slightly bubbly looking little girl with an obvious resemblance to her father, though her hair was lighter and kept in a short braid, and her eyes pitched a sedate shade of green, with several Micro Sworders perched on her shoulders and a grin that didn`t quite fit in with the rest of her. She looked like the humanoid equivelent to a half-empty drinking glass.
"Erisi. I heard her name," Reva replied before he could finish, politely - and numbly - placing her hands into her lap and staring at the floor.
"Yep," the other girl replied, still grinning rather... Emptily. A way of coping the horrors that were still wracking the Zoidians left and right, no doubt.
"Where`s her Organoid?" Reva asked, shifting from childhood depression to vacant curiosity, a coping mechanism in its own right. Riese merely cleared his throat as his daughter`s grin faded away, the slightly older girl`s eyes starting to water slightly.
"... Oh. Sorry."
"It`s okay," came the reply just a bit too quickly for Reva and Erisi`s father alike, that grin snapping back into view as one of the girl`s brows twitched slightly, her bangs shifting out of the way to reveal a pinkish-red dot on her forehead, large enough to encompass most of its center. "To be honest, I really only noticed you because I couldn`t find any Organoid..."
That hurt. Reva didn`t respond though, and Riese cleared his throat again with a bit more authority, ending the eerily friendly insults right then and there.
"Were you the one who saved me?" She asked, glancing up at the driver of whatever Zoid they were currently packed into.
"No, we found you and your Organoid yesterday evening, a few dozen miles from Tanbriai," Riese answered, his daughter spinning back around to face away from the Organoids and Reva without another word. "To tell you the truth, I was wondering how you survived... Did someone help you?"
"... All I remember is being thrown into a hole and shielded by someone. Not sure who it was or if it was a man or a woman, but... Yeah," Reva answered with another shrug. "I guess it just wasn`t my time yet."
"It`s never anyone`s time," Riese replied, finally standing up from his seat as a gasp of air filtered into the closed-off space, the entire forward half of the cockpit raising up to reveal the waters of a lake, clear as cleanly polished glass but reflective of the hellishly darkened skies above. It was a wonder anyone could tell time anymore at all, let alone down to days and nights.
"But for right now, it is time to refill our water... Maybe food too, if this place has any fish," the father said, a dozen or more Micro Sworders promptly flittering into view from outside and plunging into the water as he grabbed an empty gasoline can-sized jug and hopped out of the Zoidian Molga.
Silence remained as the smaller Organoid, and in turn, the younger girl, cowered slightly from their larger companions, until finally...
"Don`t worry about Specular," Erisi said with a sigh, turning around again with an expression of blank calm and perhaps even a vague bit of friendliness. "She`s just... Protective, that`s all."
"Where are we going, anyway?" Reva asked dimly, scooting over to lean sideways against the wall, half-shielding the frightened Boris from the ever attentive gaze of the larger, more mature Organoid. It was Erisi`s turn to shrug as she leaned back into the seat, one of the Micro Sworders flittering softly under a petting fingertip.
"I don`t know... Papa says we`re heading for a place in the Efrank region, wherever that is. He just says... We`re going to sleep there. I don`t know what he means though," she explained as best she could, obviously having been left out of the loop that the 'sleep' planned for her and her father, and Specular too, was intended to leave them virtually frozen in time for uncounted centuries.]
It was an eerie sight to behold out on one of the Whale King landing pads. Two creatures stood in place upon the colossal rectangle, only one of which was even identifiable since the other was, more or less, the size of a large beetle. The taller of the two shimmered ever so slightly in the dull light of the twin moons, red contrasting sharply with blue along solid black lines, formed into a checkered, mixing pattern that could hurt the eyes if one started too long.
It was an Organoid. Clad in a light brown jacket, wearing a pair of gigantic sunglasses and a baseball cap with an industrial-sized mop in hand. The inhuman was utterly motionless, optics narrowed impossibly upon the vastly smaller blue-and-silver insect perched upon the tip of the broom handle, its miniature wings exposed and pincers spread wide. A telepath would`ve been able to sense the conflicting energies, each one set to a vastly different wavelength with the stronger flooding the perception of the weaker with false information.
In short, Borealis didn`t feel like being found.
[The first pod slipped shut with a flush of air, Erisi vanished behind an inch of plastic, glass and metal, insulated by a mixture of rubber and several other materials. There was a brief pounding from the inside and then it was over. Riese grimaced slightly, feeling the mind of his daughter slowly fade from alertness and fear due to a brief bout with claustrophobia and vertigo alike, caused by the effects of inhaling the fumes of the gasses and liquids intended to keep her alive and preserved for however long was needed, to a thick numbness, backlit by a feeling of detached awareness.
"Just like going to sleep," the man said, though Reva, now close enough to Specular that she could, and did freely clutch at the larger Organoid`s wrist like the hand of a mother, was unconvinced. Her untrained mind had empathetically sensed the shift, heard the half-sounded telepathic cry as the entire world snapped from viewing her father and their companions to pitch blackness and harsh cold. It was almost disturbing.
"Alright, Reva, it`s your turn now," he explained, straightening up from the first console and turning to the second girl, now as if she were a second daughter to him. She only nodded, falling into step behind Riese while clutching onto Specular`s wrist, with Boris bringing up the rear. The floor rattled somewhat, one of the walls split open to reveal three or four dozen more pods, every one of them lined into two rows, each marked specifically with Organoid and Zoidian. The vast majority of the Zoidian occupants were either children or women, maybe three or four men were visible from where the entrance was.
"Why is Erisi`s seperate?" Reva asked almost instantly, glancing back to where her friend and another empty pod lay.
"Erisi and whoever takes that last pod are going to awaken everyone in here... Even if she doesn`t know it," Riese answered, leading Reva down the row of Coldsleepers without so much as a single glance back. The girl, now flanked by both Specular and Boris, followed like an acolyte, her curiosity too intense to let the subject be.
"Who`s gonna take the last pod?"
There was a brief, jerking pause. Riese`s emotions spiked lightly, even Reva could feel it. Specular`s emotions were felt almost instantly in the same manner, though the Organoid didn`t indicate anything of them. The man shrugged, still not answering as he again started walking, only to stop several paces later at the last two unused pods, both of which were still wide open.
"Alright, you two," he said, turning around finally and indicating for Reva to come step into the pod marked as Zoidian. "It`s time to take a long nap... When you wake up, it`ll all be over," he explained with a smile, and the girl did as ordered, disrobing long enough to step into the pod. Seconds later, an internal switch was flipped by whatever means possible and the pod vaccumed shut with Reva inside.
A telepathic flood of disorientation followed - no fear though. Moments went by and it was over, Riese finally let his expression drop as Boris began to wander towards his own pod, slowly but surely.
... I can`t let you do this, Riese.
"We don`t have much of a choice," he retorted bluntly, causing Boris to pause and crane his head around and take in the arguement with dimmed optics and audio alike. "Besides, the remaining pods are suited for Organoids, not Zoidians. I`d die in them either way."
There was a pause. Specular seemed unable to come up with a counterarguement that didn`t involve pulling someone else out of a pod and killing them. She was desperate, yes, but that had always been that Riese would never allow her to cross.
"I knew it was going to come to this the moment we took in Reva and Boris," he explained, causing both Organoids to bow slightly at the same time, even if one of them had to crane its head around even further to do so. "Just take care of Erisi for me. Don`t let anything happen to her, alright?" He asked, reaching out and giving Specular a reassuring pat on the snout.
Without me, you`ll probably die of old age before we`re awakened...
"I know," he said slowly, soon letting the subject drop there as he turned to Boris and knelt down, placing his hands to the creature`s shoulders as if it were a Zoidian child. In truth, the bond between Zoidians and Organoids was such that he felt that Boris really was one of his children, even through a species barrier.
"What I said to Specular goes for you too, Boris," he began. "Take care of Reva for me."
There was only a low growl and a nod. Boris could understand speech, but he lacked human vocal cords and his abilities with telepathy hadn`t matured beyond projecting emotions and listening in on things. A minute later, the last sound that the small Organoid took in was that of the pod activating, and before that, the last sight he beheld was that of Riese`s somber expression. The next face he would see wouldn`t come for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years, nor would it be Zoidian.]
Bah.
The broom rattled, the Micro Sworder flittered up into the air and promptly shattered from impact with the lengthy handle of the tool, bits and pieces flinging through the air and dropping to the ground with several sounds akin to crumpling tinfoil and bouncing pennies.
Hundreds of miles away, a sleek blue Organoid let out the mental equivelent
of a sardonic smile. Borealis went back to sweeping without another thought.
A blast of heat, the blow torch was applied and metal began to yield to the forces of intense, highly focused heat, slagging it until it stuck like thick, industrial glue. Dark blue eyes narrowed slightly behind a welding mask, a spark bit at the side of his neck and his thumb snapped away from the ignition switch, which automatically flipped back into place as one thickly gloved hand came up and pushed the mask up and out of the way. Teeth slid around the tip of one gloved finger and anchored the leather in place, his hand was freed, the glove dropped to the floor and his palm held up onto the sting.
"Fucking flash burns..."
The skin at the point was now effectively sunburnt at four or five in the morning. His teeth ground together slightly, a sigh followed and the man straightened up, leaving his arm with the blow torch to drop limply to his side. Straps were tight, constrictive almost, around his head, shoulders and sides, but the thick flameproof apron and the welding mask were both worth it in the long run. His once pitch black shirt and darkly colored pants were now stained in so many ways that, were they any other color, they would`ve been virtually unrecognizable. Beneath the backwards-turned baseball cap, his short, usually buzzed hair was messy even though it wasn`t even long enough to do more than lay down or point straight up in various directions.
There was an annoying crack of already cooled welding, his head snapped up so quickly that the mask almost flipped back down.
"Hold it in place."
The beaten looking Shadow Fox issued a growl.
"Ah-ah, hold it there or I`m rippin` off the Saltine`s left tooth and castrating you with it."
There was a brief pause. The Fox grumbled irritatedly and Mark shrugged with a similar feel.
"If I could use something else like... Oh say, Kyle`s spine, I would - but that`s beside the point," he commented offhandedly, finally looking away from the Zoid - which was currently bracing the weight of a fairly large slab of metal that would`ve probably been used, under normal conditions, as spare armor plating for the HoverCargo, on one of its front shoulders and on its cheek. "Now quit your bitchin` and hold that damn thing..."
The hangar was virtually empty of any other human life at present. Mark had personally gone to the trouble of waking the refugees and leading them into actual base itself so that they could sleep, hoping the walls and doors were thick enough to be relatively soundproof for the lot of them. In his own way, it was making use of what remained of his somewhat sleepless conscience at the moment, and by busying himself as he was, he didn`t have to think-
["Deal."]
- about the more-
[*BANG!!!*]
- unpleasant events of the closing night. Really, it wasn`t healthy to drown oneself in brooding angst, useless guilt and depression when you had around a hundred or more war wracked survivors and no less than three different Zoids to have to at least try to pass up.
Come to think of it, at this point, Mark was probably thanking any local gods that he`d always kept various tools and such around for handling a breakdown in the desert. He hadn`t much counted on ever using them to stave off hopelessness or block out the dry, nosebleed inducing air of the desert at daytime, but he was still thankful nonetheless. That the base`d had numerous extra tools lying around had been a blessing of its own.
At present, the makeshift addition to the door was about halfway through on the left side, it had taken twenty minutes to get that way. Fox growled again.
"No," he muttered out, bending down and grabbing his glove back off the ground, then somehow worming his hand back into it before reaching up to slap his facemask back down.
"Why?"
There was a jolting pause, the door into and out of the hangar slammed shut, not hard enough that someone angry could`ve done it, only careless. The voice was cold, outright distant and virtually emotionless, as if the speaker could`ve been shot in the groin and would`ve just shrugged and asked for a band-aid. If that. Even more disturbing, it was the voice of a child.
"Shouldn`t you be in bed by now?" Mark asked, actually displaying the presence of mind to not just go back to work. Fox was unappreciative, voicing its discontent with a growl. Whether it was because of having to hold up the slab of metal or the presence of the visitor was unclear. For a long moment, there was silence before finally, the grime covered ex-`Staver turned around, one hand still holding his face mask.
"Shouldn`t you?" The nameless boy retorted, staying where he was standing without even the slightest motion other than the rare blink or the slow, steady rise and fall of his chest.
"The bed I was using got blown to shi-er... Dust. Yeah," Mark replied with a shrug.
"There`s your answer then. Why are you doing this?" Came the counter reply. It almost seemed as if the boy had come just to pick at his motives or something. As if anything else really needed to go wrong tonight.
"Why are you?"
"Because I felt like it," the boy answered impassively.
"There`s your answer then, kid," Mark retorted, practically throwing the child`s own words back at him.
"Why are you still going?" The next question came without missing a step, as if Mark`s previous answer had gone completely unnoticed. Those dead eyes were starting to bore into his skull at this point, but he kept the game up. "Don`t you realize that this is all hopeless in the long run? Harabec didn`t kill that thing."
There was a sudden, hardly noticed jolt in the base of Harlock`s spine, his hand dropped to his side, and in what probably would`ve been his own words, the back of his neck felt like a fucking brillo pad. For how long the shock lasted, he didn`t know, but when it was over, he shrugged again, expression taut for a moment before easing back up as acceptance came to the situation.
"Then I`ll just have to hit it harder next time."
"Next time?"
If it were a game of poker, the boy would`ve just lost his face in an instant. It wasn`t a game though, and for a few seconds, neither of them bothered speaking.
"Yanno, kid, when I was your age, my mom always told me that... It`s not always the smartest choice to go charging into a situation where the odds are completely against you, but sometimes, it`s still the right thing to do. I couldn`t save anyone back there, but I can at least try to keep it from happening again," he explained, slowly so as to pick his words. He wasn`t sure if they would have an effect, or what that effect would be if it happened, but he was patient enough to bide his time and let the information fully sink into the boy`s head. If nothing else, it was giving him a rest from inhaling welding fumes.
The boy started, stopped, then started to speak again.
"I think I understand now. I still think it`s stupid though," he replied, only to speak up again before Mark could reply. "Do you mind if I sleep in the Gustav? The smell of death isn`t exactly easy to sleep to."
"Go for it," the older of the two shrugged to his adoptive son, finally reaching up and lowering the mask back down into place before turning back to what he was working on. "The `Stav cockpit is pretty much soundproof when the systems aren`t on anyway."
A moment ticked by, footsteps echoed and Harlock readied to continue welding, only to hear the steps fall short of the still-open Gustav cockpit.
"One last thing..."
"Eh?" He voiced, craning his head to get a view of the boy.
"Don`t call me 'kid.' I have a name."
There was another quiet pause, only the Shadow Fox seemed to let out the equivelent to a sigh of annoyance.
"And that is?" Mark asked, turning back to glare at the tempermental Zoid standing just a few feet to his side and above him, only to receive a counter-glare from its orange optics.
"Alistair. Alistair Edward Smith."
And with that, the footsteps continued until the cockpit slid shut, pulled to a close from the inside. The switch was pressed forward once more, a thin jet of blue, orange and white fire spraying out of the tip of the blow torch, which was promptly applied to the still-present line between the replacement slab and the actual door.
"And they all thought I couldn`t handle a kid... Hah," came a smug thought as metal began to tarnish and melt under the heat of the torch, matched only by the equally smug expression hidden so well by the welding mask over his face. It seemed that even with the world going to pieces and loved ones dropping like flies in a smoked out garage, Marcus Harlock was still lucky enough to find at least one bright spot this evening.
Even if he had made up the saying from his mother...
"There," Abbie finally let out with a sigh, wrapping the last strip of gauze around Kyle`s already taped up head. From his toe to his silver hair, he was practically covered in it. One of his eyes was hidden completely by the taping, while the only things that remained of his original clothing were the gloves he had been wearing, now cast to the table, and the boxers he was wearing under an improvised pair of pajama pants. His chest, barring the bandages criss-crossing all over it, was bare, likewise with his back and arms.
The only other people in the room were Pierce, still clad in her flight jacket and civilian clothing, Abbie, who was likewise in her usual, if not dirty clothing, and Kat, who was still dressed in her grease covered jumpsuit.
If Kyle hadn`t been so thoroughly brutalized by the night`s events, he probably would`ve thought it was some sort of demented fantasy of Mark`s that had tainted his own thoughts.
Not that he really would`ve disliked such a thing, but still.
"All done," the improvisionist doctor said, sliding back from the reclining bed that the man was laid out on, promptly stretching her arms and legs out before literally bouncing to her feet in just the right way that Kyle, were he paying attention, would`ve recognized as the likely reason that Mark nicknamed her 'Jiggy Bug.' Either way, it felt good to know he could move again, even if he was effectively unable to see with one of his eyes due to the bandage trailing through his line of sight and blocking it as a result.
"A round of applause for the pint-sized genius," Pierce commented, mock clapping while leaned against the frame of the door.
"I`m not short," Abbie snorted, glaring tiredly over her shoulder. She still wasn`t quite used to having such long hours, and after tonight, it was likely she could`ve slept for a week straight without moving an inch.
"... Your boyfriend can use your head as an elbow rest."
"He`s tall," the younger sister complained.
"Not that tall, midget."
"I`m not a midget!"
Bickering soon became distant with a slam of the door, the two sisters vanished out into the hallway at roughly the same time and Kat was barely a step behind both of them in making sure they didn`t think to come right back, springing from her seated position near the sink and practically scrambling to get the door shut.
"Those two never shut up," she complained, finally seeming to decompress from the guarded state she`d been in all night. Kyle could almost swear he heard her eyes rolling around like marbles in their sockets.
"Least now we know why the newb`s such a lunatic," he explained, nonchalantly scooting himself upright and then inching to where his legs dangled off the edge of the hospital-like bed, breathing shallow and yawning infrequently.
"With as much as those two blab at each other, yeah," she agreed, reaching up to undo her ponytail for the first time in what was probably two days. "Christ, you`d hardly think they just lost a relative or a hometown with the way they act..."
"I killed Rayth."
There was a numbing pause. The conversation`s course changed and crashed into a brick wall, Katherine froze in place for several seconds and Kyle held his breath the entire time, even though it felt as though the tension level in the room - formerly nonexistent - had just jumped straight through the roof of the base and kept going. An eternity probably could have passed by within the span of those moments, and neither Katherine, nor Kyle, would`ve registered even an instant of it.
Finally though, the woman spoke, her voice suspiciously even, her expression taut, though Kyle couldn`t see it since her back was still toward him, and her hands continuing to undo her ponytail until her hair, now revealed to be a little past the top of her shoulderblades, flopped down limply, but orderly. It was when she let her hair down that she bore the most resemblance to her younger, now deceased, brother.
"I`m guessing... That he was the pilot of that Liger you shot down tonight?" She asked, still restraining herself. Kyle could tell it was the usual routine, he could also tell that he didn`t have much of a chance of getting her to drop it anytime soon.
"Mark and Pierce filled you in then?"
"Only that it was a Command Wolf-sized Blade Liger with a black paintscheme that fought like a Class S champion," Kat replied allowing her hands slip down to her sides.
"... The piloting style had Rayth stamped all over it. The way his Liger was the opposite of mine also had Rayth stamped on it, so did the way it mocked me when I was down," Kyle explained, leaning forward until his forearms and elbows braced his upper body against the tops of his thighs, lower legs still dangling off the edge of the bed. His good eye had already locked down onto the floor as Katherine began to respond.
"And how did you kill him?" She asked, finally turning around with a face that was as dead looking as Rayth`s could sometimes be.
"Took my good blade, crashed it through his Zoid`s cockpit and pulled the trigger. I think I was screaming the entire time."
"... Right," Kat finally said, and as Kyle looked up, she began to walk forward, expression still bland while she spoke. "It wasn`t like you had much of a choice, I guess," she explained, or started to, that sickening Takahori logic shutting out almost all emotion from her voice. "It was either him or you, Mark and Pierce. A numbers game."
"It wasn`t the same thing," Kyle retorted annoyedly, feeling Katherine`s weight plopping down next to him on the bed. "I could`ve found another way to end it-"
"How? By getting yourself killed? Rayth was a bad seed to begin with."
"But he was still your brother," Kyle grumbled, sitting up straight and inching his head around to look at her since she was on his currently blind side.
"There weren`t any other alternatives, Kyle. Rayth had to die and it had to be you who killed him," she replied bluntly. "I don`t hold it against you though... I probably never will since I would`ve probably had to do the same thing."
There was another pause. It was really little wonder why Katherine almost always won every single debate or arguement between the two, she had an uncanny way of cutting off every possible counter that Kyle could think up, and wasn`t above resorting to cheap or unfair tactics to do it. With this arguement now ended in 'victory' for her, the silver haired Liger pilot who`d gone from a soccer ball to a hot blooded killer in one night had little to do other than mutely - and slowly - raising his arm up and draping it around her back.
"You`re right," he finally conceded.
Kat didn`t respond, but a tug soon brought the two to lean against each
other. Nothing else was said.
["What the heck is all this?" A boy, approximately the age of nine or ten asked aloud, holding up a camping flashlight as he stepped over a piece of rubble. It was some sort of twisted looking chamber, worn down almost endlessly from centuries of hardened abuse by time and careless shellings alike. He had found the way in within an old building situated a few miles out of town - his class had gone there as part of a Halloween field trip, odd as it sounds.
The building was said to be the home of the Blue Devil, a malignant old witch who ate people`s souls and left them as bedridden and amnesiac for however long she desired.
In truth, it was a local myth forged from a decades old cover-up, orchestrated solely by the Guylos Imperial military. The building was ancient, that much was obvious from its unconventional construction, but that didn`t change the fact that it was also originally the last resting place of dozens of Ancient Zoidians and their Organoid counterparts, almost all of whom had died from power failure or collapse through the years, except for a single girl and her Organoid uncovered by a long dead boy by the name of Nikolo.
His Helcat was still standing in the cave that it had died in.
Young Bill Chapman, however, knew none of these facts, and paid them as much mind as the two or three blue, metallic insects that lurked across the walls and floors. He had been stupid, again, and allowed himself to stray from the campsite, located outside the building itself. A dare had been the reason, apparently there was a rumor going around about a little girl being found amongst the ruins by a nosy pair of scientists just a few days earlier, scientists who had promptly left the town without giving even the slightest confirmation or denial about this.
Regardless of rumors and facts though, Bill knew one thing - this dump was creepy. Bones lay scattered about, and were he to clear dust from many of the strange looking tubes, he would`ve found partially decomposed bodies and crumbling stone statues, both humanoid and inhuman alike. It had been almost friendly in a hollow, sad sort of way back near the entrance, old, dusty, child-like drawings lay scattered across virtually every wall and a pair of consoles, additionally linked up to a pair of empty, broken looking pods were the center of the first room, while the second had apparently been hidden for centuries only to be revealed by a recent cave-in or someone taking a jackhammer to the huge doors that seperated them.
Careful to not disturb anything, praying he wouldn`t alert anything to his presence, the boy stepped over an unbroken, but long dead power cable, then started to climb up a small pile of debris.
"Don`t be afraid, nothin`canhurtmehere," he reassured himself, only to continue as he scooted himself over the top of the pile, inching his way under the dusty, broken looking ceiling and then righting himself on the other side, his sneakers barely providing enough traction and his jeans catching on numerous dull points, prying small pebbles loose. His dark brown jacket was little comfort against the chilled, stale air of this part of the chamber.
"Just don`t-"
"Be afraid," a woman`s voice growled out with contempt. Chapman`s eyes widened and the chain of events that were going to shape the rest of his life blew into action like a hurricane.]
A gloved hand eased slightly on the afterburners as the Geno Breaker arrived at what the Zoid itself considered the turning point, within distant view of a range of mountains.
[Blue insects popped their wings open and flew out of the way at breakneck speeds as a juvenile body went flying with what sounded like the crack of a whip against a baseball bat. Only half were successful in fleeing as the boy, his face now bruised across one cheek with a burning red handprint, crashed into the front of a long dead pod, cracking glass and hardcast plastic, but leaving metal to only bend and dent around the nine year old`s head and shoulders.
He didn`t make a sound after the impact, merely sliding down like a smeared glob of thick paint, shlupping down onto the hard floor, though his body still leaned back against the pod.
"I don`t know why telepathy didn`t work on you, human, but all it means is that you won`t be allowed to leave here alive," his attacker said as his flashlight finished clattering lifelessly to the floor. He was able to make out few things about her through the tears welling up in his eyes and the painful haze further blurring his vision and thought processes. She was thin, her hair was short and blue and she wore an outdated pilot`s jumpsuit that looked beyond vintage Imperial, probably dating back over two hundred years.
"The Blue Devil," he managed to gasp out, the realization slapping him almost as hard as the back of her hand.
"Yes," she replied bluntly, sneering with no mercy. Slowly but surely, she began to step forward with a miniscule limp in her right leg, only to stop halfway and throw out one hand expectantly. Bill felt his clothes tug and pull towards her, particularly at the parts sitting just above his heart, but nothing happened. This brought a perplexed, annoyed expression to the Blue Devil`s face, the pupils of her eyes shrinking down.
Those insects that hadn`t been smashed to bits by his body soon latched onto Bill from almost every angle, countless small pincers gouging into his skin, even through his clothing as he began to struggle, the fight or flight mechanism kicking in with full force.
"I would have rather not had to do it like this, but if I can`t erase you one way..."
"STOP IT! IT HURTS!"
"Life`s a bitch like that. Then you die."
Blindly and in pain, the boy threw his arms and legs out and flailed around, feeling an uncomfortably high level of static start to course through his body, standing every hair on end and starting to almost flay the threads of his clothes.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME?!" He demanded, unable to think of anything else to do or say. Her response was cold, lacking pleasure or guilt.
"Microwaving you," she explained, just as his body temperature began to rise. "No one else is going to desecrate this place, ever again. You will be a simple, gruesome example to future defilers that assaults on my people`s resting grounds will not be tolerated."
A hand smacked blindly against a switch, the temperature continued to rise until he couldn`t even bring himself to take the breaths required for screaming.
"I truly feel for you."
Glass shattered.]
"So we`ll be there around sunrise then?" Bill asked, feeling the weight of the Zoid shifting to the side as it entered a wide, oddly graceful looking turn, heading south in a straight line.
[An indignant squawk sounded through the chamber, dirt, bits of dust, metal and rock fell and drifted to the floor as a thin, short creature, blue and red but lined with black, stepped into view, looking dazed and confused, but angry as well.
Bill`s abruptly renewed screaming ground to a breathless halt, the woman jolted back as electricity, both blue and an unnatural red, sparked from the raptor-like creature`s body, flittering off in short arcs and fading away while black light filtered out into view between every panel and color change. Optics were an upset, sleepless tone of solid black, only to suddenly spring to life as if they were eyes hidden by wincing lids, revealing a blue and a red eye, bearing no pupils or irises.
In another instant, the sensations had stopped all together, the blue insects that still clung to the boy soon lifted off, flittering away without an unneeded sound as the woman called them back, withdrawing her hand with a snort.
"He`s desecrating sacred ground, even a child like you should understand that!" She yelled at the beast, recieving only a growl in reply. Bill slowly started to work his way to his hands and knees, body curled up in pain.
"Thankyou," he managed to wheeze out, only to feel energy blurring up all around him as something literally plowed into his thoughts in a way that the woman had apparently been unable to.
Leeagoh.
Energy flared, the boy was left to stare at the floor as it blurred out into sharply contrasting blue and red fields, seperated by swirling black lines. There was a loud, Core-like hum and then the sound of stone and metal shattering like glass.]
The Zoid let out an affirming growl, and Bill again felt it shifting this way and that until it was hovering across the desert sands in a straight line towards a distant archway.
[It was over before he knew it. The presence remained locked in his mind as if it were an animal trapped in a cage, even while the pair materialized out in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere.
In this case, the middle of nowhere was a flat, bright green grassland stretching out to the valley that the town was situated in, just barely in sight of a long abandoned military base. It was probably the farthest he`d ever been from home, not counting the field trip that had brought him here to begin with. He was on his feet already, even if he was lacking the balance to stay that way for longer than a few seconds, plopping down into the grass and just sitting there with his eyes locked onto the creature standing next to him.
Ewoodakeeldyew.
"Huh?" Bill asked. He still felt the jarring sensation in the back of his brain that told him something wasn`t the same anymore.
Awohmin. Ewoodakeeldyew, the creature replied, craning its proportionately long neck to glance down at Bill.
"... What are you?" The boy questioned, now just trying to find some sort of way to explain all of this.
Erganoyt, the small Zoid answered with the telepathic verbal skills of a toddler.
"Erganoyt? ... Oh - you mean Organoid, right?" Bill asked, his juvenile admiration of Van Fleiheit practically blaring like a bad pop song. The newly semi-identified Organoid snapped upright and hopped once, its tail wagging from side to side as the boy sprang to his feet in a blur. "COOL!!!"
A few seconds crashed by as the poor little Zoid-like beast tried to prevent the boy yanking its chest open and climbing inside. It wasn`t quite old enough for someone to ride in it anyway.
"C`mon, lemme in!"
NO!
"... Fine, fine... What`s your name?" Bill asked, still unconcerned with the fact that every answer he got sounded more and more as if it were his own voice doing the talking, not to mention the fact that he never actually heard a thing, not with his ears anyway.
Brs.
"... Bera-wha? That won`t work," Chapman grumbled, still holding onto the Organoid`s claws. The boy was obviously a bit too flighty to notice the fact that said-claws could`ve gouged through his palms at any second if he made a wrong move. "We need to give you a better name..."
Silence followed as one thought and the other blankly stared at him with those mismatched, utterly inhuman eyes.
"AURORA! ... No, wait, that`s too girly."
The Organoid nodded slowly in agreement.
"Borealis sound good then?"]
"I wonder," he began, slowly drawing his hands away from the controls since he knew the Zoid intended to go where he wanted it to anyway. "If anyone will be expecting us..."
["Borealis it is then!"]
Author`s Note: Minor inconsistency involving Bill and Borealis` first meeting, but I`ll edit the problem(which is from an earlier chapter) later on. Likewise, there was some other minor inconsistency I needed to hammer out, but I`ll think it up later :P
The Big Fisch: Yes, Bill is back. And expect to see more of him soon. Told you guys I had plans for everyone... *Behehs.* >_>
Tilly: Yes, the Ivory Liger avoided death... But it`s gonna be out of action for a while now, huh? x_x
Illidan: CONGRATULATIONS! YOU! are now the 100th reviewer of ROC! *Hands Illidan a cookie and a Random Minor Spoiler, so long as it doesn`t involve the plot or anything.* >_> Glad you liked how Rayth trashed so many people, he was indeed one of the better pilots prior to his demise.
Welp folks, that`s all for now! Enjoy, leave a review and Sh33p out!
See ya next time!
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