Reign of Chaos Chapter 34, a Zoids fanfic by Sh33p

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

Scene One: Trigun - Not an Angel
Scene Two: Zoids - Any End of the Land
Zoids - Riese
Zoids - Any End of the Land
Zoids - Wailing Steel
Scene Three: Trigun - Scattered Rain
Scene Four: Stabbing Westward - Wasted
Scene Five: Trigun - Never Could Have Been Worse
Scene Six: Trigun - Cynical Pink
Scene Seven: G Gundam - Evolve
Scene Eight: Phill Collins - In The Air Tonight
Scene Nine: Rurouni Kenshin - The War of the Last Wolves

Five in the morning. It was still dark out as a relatively short, albeit curvy, figure heaved through the air and landed with a dull plop on top of the only bed in the only room of the Blitz Team base that had ever been reserved for guests. If the woman in question, now almost snoring and completely unphased by the fact she had just been so nonchalantly chucked onto the mattress, had been awake, she probably would`ve wanted someone else to take her place.

At present though, all that Abigail Summers could do was reach up and absently scratch her side, roll over onto her stomach and bury her head in the bed`s only pillow. The room was dark, lit only by a nightlight that was actually necessary for finding one`s way around without the overhead or a lamp turned on, and by light from the hallway, filtering in through the open doorway. Foot steps clicked absently across the rug-covered metal floor, another woman of noticably taller stature headed for the door and stopped, the sound of a lighter and a pack of cigarettes being shuffled back into her pocket as she took a glance over her shoulder.

There was a sleep-clouded grumble, a puff of smoke blew into the hallway and the taller, and only slightly older woman stepped out, the door automatically sliding shut behind her.

"And she wonders why I always win," Pierce Summers thought with the trademarked grin of an older sister. She`d won the arguement in question by default, after all. Abbie had literally passed out in mid-sentence back in the hallway, barely five or six minutes earlier. The ever-constant arguement about her height had been the straw that broke the camel`s back, the stress of the past month, topped off by the already overwhelming burden of watching an entire city go straight to Hell and learning of the death of someone close enough to almost count as family had caught up to her in spades and practically knocked her into next week.

Suffice to say, Abbie had more than earned the chance to rest a bit. Pierce was just glad her sister was a heavy enough sleeper that she hadn`t jolted awake in protest over feelings that she might still be needed. The younger of the two had a heart of gold, the catch was that it was a few sizes too big to ever let her fully rest without being completely exhausted if there was something she could help with.

"Now what?" She thought, tilting the cigarette between her lips until it pointed up towards the ceiling, then tucking her hands in her pockets and glancing around. Aside from her, there didn`t seem to be anyone in this neck of the hallway that ran all the way through the Blitz Team base, only clean floors, matching doors and a vague feeling of cold claustrophobia.

As Bit Cloud had often complained, the base wasn`t exactly the warmest place at night, nor was it among the most comfortable. It would do though.

Cigarette still flicking from side to side, Pierce began to walk off, exhaling puffs of smoke this way and that only to stop at the sound of a voice from behind.

"Hm?" She voiced, turning to face the door that had apparently opened a few seconds ago without her ever hearing it at all.

She was greeted by the sight of a short, thin looking teen with deeply tanned skin and short, spiked brown hair, with eyes that looked about as emotionally stable as a mental patient. The teen was dressed in clothing that looked two or three sizes too big on him and had a look that almost made him hard to recognize, even though she already knew who it was right off the bat.

"What are you doing here? The Backdraft is gone and the Liger Zero is MIA," Jamie Hameros pointed out with an obvious, and somewhat severe sounding detachment from reality. The way he`d mentioned the Backdraft almost made it sound as if they were still a viable organization. At least things hadn`t been for keeps back then.

"Gee, maybe I climbed out of your hormonal little head to fulfill your every little fantasy," Pierce answered with a roll of her eyes, not noticing how utterly unphased the teen was at her remark. From what she`d remembered, Hameros seemed like the type who`d have a nosebleed from seeing an uncovered thigh, let alone being teased by someone like her. He was silent with a disbelieving expression on his face. She shrugged, taking a drag off of her cigarette and then blowing the smoke out of the side of her mouth before explaining.

"Farentown`s gone. A hundred and five people needed a place to stay, Mark remembered where this place was," she said, remaining calm and collected in spite of the fairly bloody events of the night.

"How the hell do someone wipe out an entire city in one night?" Jamie growled, obviously having trouble believing that a city housing one of the largest populations on the planet had been destroyed in such a way that only a hundred or so people had survived to make it to his team`s base and convert it into a refugee camp. "There`s over a million people in Farentown. You don`t just delete them like a shoddy holo-sim!"

"Tell that to the survivors. I wasn`t there," Pierce shrugged apathetically. She`d either made her own form of peace over the past few hours or, more likely, had just gone so completely numb that it didn`t even effect her anymore.

"... Where`d you pile them? The hangar?" Jamie asked with a sigh, switching into logistics mode as if it were his only true nature.

"Still in the Gustav trailers, yes," she answered, boredly lashing the filter with her tongue, causing ash to break off and chip down to the floor. Jamie`s eyes followed it on the way down, almost obsessively.

"Flicking ash on the floor. Bad enough Brad d-... Used... Whatever, just stop with it," he fumbled, glancing over at the door across from his own. "Be right back," he said, more than earning the bland look of half-curiosity and annoyance that Pierce gave him as a result.

Without a word, she watched the teen vanish into another one of the bed rooms and come back out a few seconds later with an ash tray and a sour look that rivalled the one she had given him before.

"I hope you don`t have any thieves in your midst," he complained, handing her the tray and shoving his hands in his pockets. By all means, he probably would`ve looked threatening if he wasn`t only just tall enough to come up to Pierce`s chin.

"And why is that?" She asked, still bland as she flicked more ash from her cigarette, this time into the tray.

[Ice water splashed across his face, like a bat out of Hell, the youth sprang forward and sat up - right into an open palm that kept him from yelling out in protest. In vain, he tried to reach up and claw at the hand now clasped like a vice over his mouth, only barely even succeeding in breaking the skin as he was pulled up from the bed, legs flailing.

He could only barely see the outline of her rigid, worn looking face, but the malice in those eyes was intense enough that, even though he couldn`t even make out their color, they forced him to stop.

"Good. I`m going to put you down now. Scream, and I`ll kill you. Run, and I`ll kill you. Fight back, and I`ll kill you," she said as matter of factly as if she were giving the weather on a bad day. He could only make a muffled sound of acknowledgement before she put him down, finally lowering her hand.

His heart pounded into his throat, his red and white striped pajamas felt like lead weights and cold sweat was starting to blend with the water still soaked across his face, but he complied nonetheless.

She shrugged, turning to the youth, by now just a step shy of puberty, and glaring down at him.

By now, recognition was starting to down on young Bill Chapman`s mind, bringing with it the realization that this was the same woman he had encountered only two years earlier, the same one who had tried to microwave him. In that time, he had gotten a few inches taller, nowhere near as much as Borealis had matured(at least physically). The Organoid now stood at almost the same size it would reach upon full maturity.

"The Blue Devil," Bill mumbled out, finally saying the words he had been unable to speak two years ago.

"I haven`t been called that in a while," she commented. "And I don`t care to go by it now. My name is Riese, you will address me as that or I`ll show you what kind of devil I really am."

... Nice name change, Borealis pointed out from wherever he was positioned. A bit frantically, a bit calculatingly, Bill took a glance to the side, spotting the dimmed glow of the Organoid`s optics. Almost immediately, he regretted it.

A fist ground into his stomach, and without screaming, he doubled over onto his knees. If he hadn`t been paying attention before, he most certainly was now.

A bit haggardly, the youth scraped himself up, one hand holding his stomach supportively as he braced himself against the bed and wobbled upright, his vision still swimming in pain. Riese paid his hurting no mind, stepping to the door and opening it before vanishing out into the hallway. Bill, and Borealis after him, followed a few steps behind.

The sight they were greeted with was an eerie one, to say the least. Several of the blue insects from years earlier were spread out across each wall, the floor and the ceiling as well, chirping rhythmically at their mistress. After a few seconds, the pair had made their way down the stairs and arrived in the living room, only to find an even more eerie sight than the last one.

Bill`s immediate family - his mother, father, two brothers and two sisters, were all clustered together in the living room, watching a movie. They didn`t notice him, Riese or Borealis, or the insects perched on them, the furniture or anything else. They didn`t even blink more than once every half a minute, if that.

"... What did you do to them?" He demanded a bit hotly. She shrugged, answering his question as if he were wanting to know what color the sun was.

"I simply altered their perceptions of reality for the time being. To them, you`re still in bed early from having tired yourself out at a baseball game. To them, they`re still watching movies and eating popcorn. To us, they, and the rest of this miserable city, are being vegetables with bugs crawling on them."

"Where are we going?" Bill asked as the woman lead him past his family and through the still open front door of his father`s farm.

The Breaker let out a growl. Bill only nodded slightly in response, glancing off to his side in the direction where the sun would soon be rising in a matter of an hour or so. It was already twilight, the moons had both finished setting and only the stars remained.

"You can feel it too, huh?" He asked. The Zoid gave another growl, still chugging along at around half of its top speed in the journey towards the distant rock arch.

"I guess the quiet can`t last forever. Not like it ever does for us anymore, but still..."

Another growl. It was obvious that whatever it was feeling was making the Breaker nervous. That wasn`t a good thing.

["We`re here," Riese announced all too bluntly for Bill`s tastes. Where 'here' was, he couldn`t quite say, and something at the back of his thoughts told him that he probably shouldn`t have wanted to know either way. With that in mind, he had the common sense to keep his mouth shut for the time being.

Borealis lead the way into what looked like a well aged room big enough to compare to a small Whale King hangar, the once polished, almost reflective steel walls and floor alike now tarnished with the wear of time and age. Dust had collected into fine layers across broken glass that now only half-enclosed what looked like a control room, originally accessable by both stairs and an elevator, both of which were now shut off - the elevator from a lack of power and maintenence, the stairs from the door having rusted shut through the years.

In fact, the only reason that the room wasn`t covered in utter darkness was because of the odd, colorless light seeping out of a pool to one end of it.

You`ve been able to accomplish a lot in the past two centuries, Borealis noted absently, though Bill didn`t know what he meant. He hadn`t exactly been privy to any conversations held between the two inhumans during the trip to whatever this place was.

Had he known its history, he probably would`ve been left somewhere between repulsed and fascinated. It was the very chamber that Hiltz had once used to help preserve the first half of the core of what would later become the Death Stinger. The pool, still radiating a dead glow even centuries after the fact, was composed of little more than a blend of Core fluids that served a similar function to embalming fluid, or the sorts of liquids used in cryogenics.

Suffice to say, Bill was more than justified in feeling creeped out by the place.

"I still don`t get why you just added three letters to it," Riese muttered snidely.

"Shut up," Riese cut him off with both her words and an over the shoulder glare. Oh well, he`d tried at least. "The only reason you`re here is because you`re actually needed for this."

"And I`d just love to know how," Bill grumbled out, having forgotten about a little something that Riese was more than quick to remind him of.

"Keep your mouth shut, maggot, or else I`ll kill you," she growled loathsomely. Before he could manage a reply, he was halted by an arm crossing out over his chest. Borealis continued onward alone, speaking to himself in the most idle tone that Bill had ever heard from the Organoid.

I`m almost surprised you`re not his grandmother, the way you act, the Organoid pointed out blithely, now standing at the edge of the pool with tail curled slightly and neck craning out over the waters. Whatever was inside held a great deal of interest to him.

"He makes me proud to know that my real descendants aren`t weaklings like Elisi`s."

And how is that? Borealis asked with the tone of a smartassed teenager. In Organoid terms, he really was one.

"Because any of them would splatter this little pathetic wretch like the vermin he is," Riese snorted, and Bill only rolled his eyes before speaking again.

"Right, whatever. Can we just get on with whatever reason you two brought me here, or should I walk home?" He asked annoyedly, finally returning the glares that the older woman was giving him.

"As much as I abhor him, he`s right," Riese said as agreeingly as a bull in a china shop, glancing back over to Borealis with eternally furrowed brows and green eyes that were possessed of a permanently bad mood.

"It won`t be pretty when we have to fight it," he concluded blandly. Stating the obvious could only be done in so many ways, after all.

[Before either of the other two occupants of the ancient chamber could even begin to voice a retort, the Organoid threw its head back and exploded with energy. Electricity shocked and arced from every single black line between its panels, tinting from blue to red to white and back again. Glass that had withstood the tests of time shattered at random, timed almost perfectly with a horrendous shriek that was scarcely recognizable as that of something other than a Demon, let alone a mere Organoid.

Bill shrank back, turning broadside and seeking to shield his eyes, but Riese was completely unmoved. Her eyes narrowed a bit more, her still shortly kept blue hair rustled this way and that, but her body had less movement than a statue. Miles away, several Zoids churned to life and died instantly, suffering not from a command system freeze, but from core death itself - all of them fossilized within seconds, their energy shooting up into the night sky in pillars of hot white light.

Within seconds, that same light arced long and gracefully, curling down towards the ground and exploding towards the only remaining entrance into the ancient facility, buried as it was from rubble and debris.

If Riese had been able to stomach the first show, even she had to shield her eyes and lower her head for the second, as metal screamed in protest and dozens of Micro Sworders that lined the entrance of the underground facility overloaded and exploded in droves, all from only being in scarce proximity to the incoming souls of the dead Zoids.

Those same souls shredded through the formerly closed, Gustav-sized door into the chamber, howling even louder than Borealis as they streaked in towards the pool. Liquid churned and boiled, long forgotten panels exploded and Bill felt the tips of his hair singing from a sudden increase in the chamber`s temperature, but it still continued.

More and more sacrificial energy shot into the pool, many of the bolts seeming to pause reverently to orbit around the Organoid that had summoned them, but all eventually finding their way beneath the surface. Within seconds, Borealis himself finished his insane plea for help and ceased to exist with any definition. By the time that Bill and Riese both managed to catch a glimpse of him, the Organoid`s features were a blur of contrasting energies, blue and red seperated sharply by lines of black, all of it outlined thinly with a white aura.

There was a sound akin to a gunshot, the creature had formed into a bolt of multi-colored energy and flashed straight up, coalescing into an almost perfect sphere before blazing right back down at an angle. The already churning liquid exploded outright, as if shot with a cannon, and steam flared up towards the ceiling.

"WHAT THE HELL DID HE JUST DO?!" He screamed in shock, unable to believe what his senses were telling him. He could even smell the stench of evaporating core fluids.

"You wouldn`t believe me if I told you!" Riese yelled back, her ears still ringing so loudly that she couldn`t even hear his words as more than a whisper.

Seconds passed, and while Riese had already gotten herself calmed down to her usual state of annoyed apathy, Bill`s heart was still skipping beats like an out of shape marathon runner. The liquids in the tank had come to ease back down into something resembling inactivity by now, small waves still shocked in circles upon the water`s surface, its glow had almost dimmed completely, but something remained.

Blue optics burned, the raw intensity of their fierce glow defining itself from the rest of what little light remained in the tank.

"What is that?" Bill almost yelped as the water again began to shift this way and that, a noticable bulge forming as something began to force up from the bottom of the tank.

The liquid finally exploded into a veritable tidal wave, as if a depth charge had been set off at the bottom of the tank. The chamber was briefly set aglow once more as an imposing, heavily shadowed figure, saurian in nature but far larger than Borealis had been, emerged from within, flames tearing from the back of either leg and the sole of each foot as a Zoid of incredible power prepared to walk the face of Zi for the first time since the Death Stinger had been let loose upon humanity.

Metal clanged soullessly against metal, Bill took another step back but Riese was still unmoving.

As breath taking and as dangerous now as it was over two hundred years ago, the Zoid stood before them, rebirthed to fight again - awakened to a new age, and with a new purpose.]

"Wake me up when we get there," Bill ordered as he started to lay back further into the cockpit. His stomach let out a groan of protest, but he ignored it, just as he`d been able to ignore virtually everything lately. It would only be a half an hour, but the nap would still do him at least a bit of good.

It was a simple thought, conveying surprise, perhaps even disgust. The shock was practically stamped across his naturally tanned face with enough impact that one could almost see the hairs on his head all moving to stand straight up and back from it all. The smell alone was unpleasant to say the least, a mixture of dirt, grime, perhaps a small bit of urine, bodily gasses and soot. The sounds were equally unpleasant, ranging from hiccuping sobs to childish sniffling to almost deathly grave breathing.

The sight, however, was what held the most impact. The hopeless looks of reverence and malice somehow woven together, the blood drying into clothing and the sorrow laced into virtually every expressions. It was as if someone had taken every single bit of order from their lives and shattered it with enough raw hatred that the sheer shock of it all had left them numbed to all reality but whatever was directly in front of them. No one offered comfort, but people clung to each other to try and find it anyway. Men, women, children who should`ve never seen the horrors of the night, they all tried to find some way to keep it together.

A few lost souls were even chuckling, empty as it sounded. It was the laugh of those who were condemned to die.

In all of his life, even through the mental rigors that had been thrown at him by his deceased alter ego at Riven and his own atrocities against the Fatalistic Renegade and its defensive fleet of Zoids and pilots, Jamie Hameros had never come as close to seeing the effects of war - real war - as he was now.

If anything, it was as if someone had dropped a refugee camp right in his lap. In truth, that`s almost exactly what had happened.

"Now do you see why I don`t think any of these people stole Hunter`s gun?" Pierce asked, snuffing out what was left of her cigarette in the tray and glancing over at the teen standing beside her with his jaw practically unhinged.

"This is all that`s left of Farentown`s million-plus population. Getting the picture yet?" She asked again, perhaps a bit offensively this time. Even then though, she still seemed so numb that it was a wonder she even bothered paying attention to the horrific reality that the two were standing in. Dozens of brutalized refugees lined either wall.

If Jamie had a retort, it caught itself in his throat and didn`t get the chance to finish forming. A sudden interruption from his right side halted that.

"Is that you?" A voice asked from the side in question, a scraggly, dirty hand reaching out to grip Jamie by the wrist. Almost instantly, he felt the urge to recoil in disgust and pity, but the grasp of whoever was next to him was far too much for that. His balance temporarily faltered as he was used for leverage by whoever had been sitting to his side, and after a moment, a man about the same height as Pierce had straightened up as best he could.

His face, along with the rest of what skin could be seen, was covered in soot, as if he`d been working in a coal mine for days. His hair was kept about neck length, its color hard to determine since the same grime that marred his skin was obviously clumped into it as well, but it looked naturally black, while his eyes were tinted a dull shade of teal. His build wasn`t that different from Mark`s, but the comparitive lack of height left him a bit stockier.

"Holy shit, it is you!" The man practically yelped in surprise. One of his teeth had been covered with gold, as evidenced by the smile he had on his face.

"Friend o` your`s?" Pierce asked beneath her breath, sighing as she went to reach for another cigarette. With all the stress she was finally starting to feel, she needed it.

"Nobody I recognize," Jamie mumbled out before speaking up again. "Do I know you?" He asked, watching the streaks of hope in the man`s eyes dim slightly, only to brighten back up almost imperceptibly.

"Come on, dude, don`t be so modest! I know a freaking commando like you can remember the `Staver who ya helped bust outta jail, can`t ya?" The man asked hopefully.

There was a few moments of quite. Jamie just stood and stared with a vague shake of the head, Pierce lit up another smoke and the man`s hopes began to sway slightly.

"It`s me, Terry? Come on, I know you remember me," the newly identified Gustav driver said, practically desperate for any sign of recognition he could get. A few seconds ticked by again, but with them, Hameros` eyes widened slightly, his pupils could almost be seen dilating during that time, but the shock soon wore off to reveal an apologetic, but impassive, expression.

"I remember you," he began, feeling a bit of guilt for what he said next. "But it wasn`t me," he said, dashing Terry`s glint of hope as soon as it had been formed. The grip on his wrist slacked more and more until the Gustav driver`s hand fell away all together, the man lowered his head with a sigh and then shook it.

With that, he stepped away, eventually sitting down as out of sight as possible. Instantly, Jamie was left with the feeling that he should`ve tried to feed some sort of lie, to raise the spirits of everyone that he could...

But it still would`ve been a lie. Even though he felt guilty for it, his own logic ruled that he`d been correct in doing it in the first place.

"Way to crush people, asshole. I could learn a thing or two on how to mindfuck my ex-boyfriends from you," Pierce commented snidely as the two began to walk again, though neither had any particular location in mind.

"Wouldn`t be the first time," Jamie replied, more to himself than to her. He had killed so many people, through his actions and inactions alike, that, by now, he didn`t feel justified in trying to mount any sort of defense. It wouldn`t have done any good anyway.

An imagined laser fence shattered like glass. The outside world rumbled and groaned, the pain was unbearable.

An inhumanly complex mind ripped through miles of fiber and copper, electrons chased from circuit to circuit, thoughts raced at the speed of light and a rage that could no longer be contained in human - or Zoid - body fueled every last movement through the self-contained information super highway.

["Do you remember that convenient little incident a few days ago? The one that left you the default heir of the corporation?" Vilhelm asked, casually seated on the couch that lay across the floor. The coffee table had broken, bits of glass lodged into his forehead and nose, his arms shook uncontrollably and it was all he could do just to keep breathing. His heart felt as though it would explode at any second, and his legs had gone completely numb.

"... Whuthufuckdidyoudoto... Me?!" Henry managed to gape out somewhere between gulping down air and trying to pry his bleeding face from the glass.

"Oh, let me think... Replaced your medication with various addictive stimulants, bribed your doctors and probation officers, sent all the guards on paid vacation or bought them off, shut down the security cameras... And did I mention that funny little bit about spiking your drink with a toxin designed specifically to induce a temporary paralysis?" Vilhelm asked, idly taking a sip from the wine bottle he`d had in hand for the greater part of the night. The glass for it alone probably cost enough to feed a family of five for a month.

"Sss... Sss..." Henry couldn`t even finish the first letter of the word without trailing off into a hissing sound. It was a wonder that the cocktail of drugs working through his system hadn`t killed him right off the bat by now.

"In short, my beloved big brother... I`m dethroning you. A coup de etat, for lack of a better term," Vilhelm added as casually as if he were giving the weather. Another sip from the wine, he was still unphased by it, or by his own brother`s current state.

"Why?!" Henry managed to wheeze out, finally finding the strength of will and body to lift his head up from the glass. The results were that the cuts around his face promptly split open again, new ones formed across his forehead and temples.

"Just doing my part to right a wrong. No grand, complex reason other than that, to be brutally honest. Disappointed?" Vilhelm asked, finally standing up with an expression of raw ego. It was probably one of the few times in the younger brother`s life that his pride had ever outshined his logic.

"Oh, that`s right... I forgot that you can`t really move around or talk right now. How silly of me," he commented, stepping around the table with the graceless stride of a confident predator. He had nothing to fear from Henry, the older brother was having to fight just to breathe, he couldn`t`ve attacked if he wanted to - and he wanted to. Badly.

"I suppose what it all boils down to, is that there was a bit of a grave injustice. Scum should always be mindful of their place at the bottom of the food chain and, well, Mother and Father disagreed."

"Kullyoo..." Henry grit out, his neck faltering enough that his head fell back into the glass. Already weakened, what was left in his path promptly cracked and gave way. It wasn`t dramatic and glorious, like when a hero dives out of a window in an action movie, it was slow, and when it finally did break, jagged edges raked across his cheek, drawing even more blood out.

"Yes, I`m sure you`d love to. But for now, and forever, in all likelihood, all you really can, and should, do..."

There was a pause, soon ended harshly as pain cracked through Henry`s body. His voice tore out in a gag of protest, legs slipped and the wood and glass of the coffee table finally, fully gave way, crashing him face first against the floor with Vilhelm`s loafer-clad shoe ground into the back of his neck. A few seconds ticked by, the younger Rommel drew his foot away and a trickle of wine could be felt across the back of the older sibling`s head.

[Glass broke. Vilhelm had tossed the now emptied bottle aside before turning away, his expression seeming permanently victorious, perhaps even smug to an extreme that Henry would`ve only been able to comprehend if he weren`t in such dire shape.

"As it stands though, Henry... I and an... Associate, of mine, have plans for you. If you survive, you may actually prove useful to us in the long run," the younger brother commented as several men in finely tailored suits stepped into the room, accompanied, in turn, by the appearance of something inhuman.

In every way, it stood out. Dark, metallic-green skin - maybe it was plating? - flexed and released with every movement of a long, narrow tail. The creature`s legs were those of a raptor or dragon, finely balanced and geared towards speed and agility, with short but dangerously clawed arms. Its head was equally slender, easily blending to the rest of the body, if not for the disturbingly vivid gold eyes that slit themselves into existence on its face, just above and behind the snout. Finely sharpened teeth, the kind that could reave the flesh from a man`s arm in one pass, lined its jaw.

I take it things went as you had wanted, yes? A voice rang. Henry, in his drugged state, couldn`t even tell if it was a hallucination or not since none of the men who were now starting to scrape him from the floor even noticed it. Only Vilhelm seemed to be paying attention, and though his expression was still as smug as it had been moments earlier, the ego had dropped from it like a stone.

"Yes. I take it you want me to fullfill my part of the bargain now?" He asked, dead serious in every sense of the word as those dark purple, almost black eyes that had been his trademark since childhood narrowed by several fractions of an inch.

"Whabahgin?" Henry sputtered out as they began to carry him away, his head hanging limply. The last sight he was treated to was his brother standing across from the creature, posture rigid, hands clenched to fists at his sides. He passed out before he could make out anything else.]

The last firewall met with every single electron of raw hatred and anger that screamed through the Hellwalker`s mind. Against any ordinary hacker, it would`ve been like an insurmountable, purely defensive juggernaut, able to withstand any possible attack, from worms to trojans to overly sophisticated frequency cracking without even the slightest of compromises.

Against what little coherent thoughts that remained of Henry Rommel, it was about as effective as a thin sheet of tin foil trying to hold back a crashing freight train.

Programming broke under the strain, the Hellwalker`s equivelent to a command system crashed, its combat system wasn`t too far behind. In a matter of nanoseconds though, the work was completed and the slate consisting of the colossal Demon`s controls, for everything from the most basic of gears to the most complex of sensors, had been wiped completely clean. All that was left was a blank field of zeroes and ones, eerily coming into an outline that only vaguely looked human.

The figure sparked with static, a recording began to play through what was left of the Hellwalker`s sanity.

|Well, I can`t say I`m particularly pleased with you, Henry... If you`re seeing this message, it probably means something went terribly wrong. While I can`t say I`m all that thrilled that you must have failed...|

"Fuck you," Henry`s mind blurted out at the recording. Vilhelm probably would`ve only rolled his eyes dismissively, if he had actually seen what was going on.

|I can also say I`m not very displeased either. I... Well, no, I don`t really hate to admit it. Either way, you were meant to be destroyed from the start, either by me at a later date, by withdrawls or even by whatever target you`ve failed at eliminating properly.|

There was a pause. To the outside world, if anyone had survived close enough to see it, the Hellwalker`s lower jaw had begun to sag.

|Regardless of that, you`re still my brother - a shame I couldn`t pick my siblings, but you know how it goes, don`t you? - and that means it`s still my job to... Help you. Make no mistake about it, Henry, I`m still probably going to end up playing some part in your demise, if you don`t fail again, but for the time being, I`m going to walk you through how to program this body of yours in whatever way you want.|

Another brief pause. The Hellwalker`s optics, or at least it`s surviving one, flared up slightly in the twilight of morning, bringing a vague light in the smoke of the massacre that had burned all night long.

|Never let it be said that I didn`t do anything for you, right?| The message asked, only to continue less than a thousandth of a second later. |Now then, let`s begin...|

A deep, relieved sigh echoed through the hangar. Slowly, tiredly, Marcus Harlock took a step back from his fully completed handiwork and let the mostly emptied blow torch fall from his grasp, the safety automatically kicking on as the tool bounced from the snout of the Shadow Fox and landed somewhere on the hangar floor. The sigh gave way to a yawn as the man tugged his gloves off, followed by the welding mask that had been obscuring his face for the past hour or two.

"Finished," he said with no small amount of pride at his achievement. That said, however, he wasn`t above losing his balance and flopping back off of the Shadow Fox`s nose, crashing rear first into the cockpit chair with enough force that his baseball cap almost jarred off, while his mask and gloves were both left to drop where they would.

His surroundings shifted this way and that, the Fox took a few steps straight back and then dipped forward, lowering its head to the ground with a synthesized growl. The cockpit tilted from side to side, Mark groaned and tried to avoid moving his arms and legs from where they were - feet dangling out of either side of the cockpit, arms hanging limply to either side.

"Do I have to?" He complained. The response was a steeper tilt to the side. "Blah."

A few seconds ticked by before the haggard looking pilot climbed back out, carrying his gloves and mask with him before dropping both to the floor and undoing the thick leather apron he`d been wearing. Soon enough, it too had been cast down to the polished metal beneath his feet, just as the Shadow Fox straightened up and let out another growl. An errant spark lit off from the wound still blatantly displayed on the side of the Zoid`s neck.

Before the Fox could reply, the sound of jet engines dying and a fist pounding loudly upon the main door abruptly signalled the end of the odd conversation. Whoever was knocking was doing it loud enough that it was audible even through Mark`s slightly shoddy-but-effective repair job.

"If it`s a bandit, kill the bastard," he ordered to the Zoid, which promptly shut its cockpit, optics glowing a bit brighter than before.

From there, it took all of ten seconds for Harlock to straighten his hat, then make it to the human-sized front door next to the one used for Zoids, requiring another second and a half to unlock and open it. With that out of the way, he took a step outside-

"Hn. I was expecting you to just open the main door, my friend isn`t exactly small enough to take that one," a man commented, though Mark barely even noticed him for the time being. His eyes were, more or less, focused on the forty foot tall death machine that was standing behind the visitor, its cockpit extended all the way down to the ground and small whisps of steam still drifting away from its legs and the boosters on its back.

It was a Geno Breaker. A blue one with a menacing air to it that would`ve probably done the first one a great deal of pride.

"Jesus Christ, man... First Farentown, then Kyle, now this?! Death and poverty must like me so much, they`ve brought friends!" Mark whined out like a bitchy teenager, just hanging his head, slamming a clinched fist into the doorframe and waiting to be vaporized at this point. Even quasi-lunatics had their breaking points, having a Geno Breaker and a guy with neon blue eyes show up on your doorstep after the night that Mark had gone through?

It was a real wonder why he didn`t just shoot himself and get it all over with by now.

"I`m guessing you`ve had to deal with it, then?" The man asked, not even bothering to introduce himself as the Breaker retracted its cockpit. Before Mark could answer, the guy had ducked by him and gone inside, somehow working the controls to open only one half of the hangar`s two main doors, giving just enough space for the Breaker to come inside without tearing through anything.

And when it walked in, it did so like it owned the place. The Storm Sworder roused only slightly at the sight of the beast that had virtually crippled it, giving an indignant squawk before going back into the Zoid equivelent of a deep sleep. The Shadow Fox took several steps back, while the Blade Liger remained unconscious and the Raynos stood its ground, completely impassive to the newcomer.

"... Yanno, one of these days, something normal is going to happen to me," Mark spat, having stood rooted to the ground during this process. At that, he finally turned and stepped back inside, glancing around for a second before finding where the other man was standing, right at the control console without much of a care in the world.

"Have anything that`d cut industrial strength circuit protectors and elastic?" He asked, finally paying enough attention to Mark that he would`ve given him the time of day. If he had ever bothered looking at it.

"... I got a blowtorch," Mark shrugged. "Who the hell are you anyway? And how did you get that?" He asked, thumbing over his shoulder at where the Geno Breaker had practically laid claim to just about every empty spot in the hangar. The Shadow Fox wasn`t even going near it.

"Call me Bill, and I seriously doubt a blowtorch is gonna be useful for cutting this," he answered, using one gloved fingertip to tug the black collar still tightly coiled about his neck, so much so that red marks could be seen now that it was pulled back.

"Ah. Scissors or a knife`d get that. What about that thing though?" Mark asked once again, mirroring his earlier gesture and again thumbing at the Breaker.

"Long story. Assuming we survive, I`ll tell you sometime," Bill answered casually, letting the control collar pop back into place. The sound alone would`ve made most people wince, but Mark was utterly unphased. "Know where the shower is? I`d really like to take one... And get some food, I haven`t eaten in a week... Oh, and I`d also like to get this collar off my neck soon, it has a bomb in it. And a tazer too, but that`s beside the point - and we`ve got company in five seconds. Maybe the blowtorch would be a better choice..."

"What the fuck are you, anyway?" Mark blurted out with an expression that had a big fat trio of letters, W, T and F, hung out over his head as if on a gigantic neon sign. Conveniently enough, a three ounce sweat drop somehow appeared on his temple and rolled down to the floor with a plop.

Harry Champ, age seventeen - going on eighteen sometime within the next three or four months, youngest of six children, current head and former heir-apparent to the Champ Corporation.

At present, Harry Champ was sprawled out on his fold-out couch, one leg dangling off the edge, the other bent at a seemingly impossible angle and both arms flung out at random, his head resting in a lopsided position with a bit of drool trailing down his mouth. It was accompanied by deep, relaxed snoring.

Complete with fairies, pixies, moonwalking polkadotted Iron Kongs, skewered Liger Zeros and about seventy-two versions of Leena Tauros in various states of undress, not to mention the endless repeat of Bit Cloud falling off the edge of a cliff and landing with this really funky splattering sound.

And then about two gallons` worth of ice water splashed across him, most of it geared towards his head, chest and stomach, a bit finding lower regions and the armpits as well.

Bullet-proof glass windows cracked, the fortress rattled about quite violently, a certain pinkish-red haired Zoid pilot let out a completely cracked smirk and a calm, collected older sister let out a sigh of relief as Harry flew out of his makeshift bed, crashed facefirst into the ceiling and then fell back down, his body somehow ending up contorted and tucked away inside the couch with only his legs dangling up in the air a few moments later.

"Toldja it`d be fleeting," Leena pointed out, watching her boyfriend twitch and let out muffled complaints from his awkward position. If Harry wasn`t somehow lucky enough to have real life character shielding when it came to being picked on by the gods of Zi, he probably would`ve been dead by now. If he could think properly, he probably would`ve wanted to be.

"Nice to have a return to some degree of normalcy, isn`t it?" Marry asked casually, tossing the empty bucket, which had once held a gallon or so of ice water, over her shoulder. "I used to wake him up like this all the time when we were younger..."

Leena was smug and a bit indifferent, tossing her own bucket aside before nodding towards the door.

"I`m gonna give the Prince a nice, sloppy make-up kiss. You might want to run right about now," she pointed out, cracking her knuckles and then reaching up to remove her glasses. Marry only barely managed to avoid turning green at the thought, twirling towards the door on the ball of one ankle. "Oh, and one more thing..."

"Go for the Dark Horn. It`d suit you better," Leena replied, working her fingers in between the cushions and getting ready to pull, her glasses now dangling from the collar of her shirt. Even with the scars, she looked like she was about to successfully imitate some kind of dreamgirl. In truth, that`s just what she intended to do.

"Ah... Right. I`ll think about that if I pilot anything, tell him I said good morning," Marry said back, already to the door. Quickly and precisely, she opened it, stepped outside, reached back in to flip the lock and slammed it shut.

The screams died down and something akin to a whistful sigh sounded out, just loudly enough to be heard in the hallway.

"If it didn`t make me feel sick, I`d probably be laughing right about now," Marry thought to herself, dusting off her dress and then turning to go find her way back to her own bedroom. If she was going to be helping out wherever she could, she`d need the right clothing, and there was that old jumpsuit she never wore...

[A woman and a boy stepped into the hangar, the doors sliding open and shut for them within a split second. The two contrasted greatly in more than a few ways, the woman walked with confidence, seemed passingly older than Marcus and Bill and had hair greener than the grass back at Chapman`s hometown, while the boy walked only barely in her shadow, and looked to be the same age as Jeffrey Halsworth had been - prior to being vaporized, of course.

Confidence seemed to drop like a rock from a Hammerhead, the woman`s jaw looked completely unhinged. The teen, by contrast, was virtually unphased.

"It`s the same Geno Breaker that crippled her Storm Sworder, and I`m it`s pilot," Bill interjected, loudly enough to be heard all the way across the hangar. His Zoid proudly glared over over at the downed Sworder, tilting its head arrogantly and then going back into neutral.

"Bit?" The teen asked, blinking for a second before speaking up. "That you, Bit?"

The water had felt good. In a way, it didn`t just help cleanse the ounces of grease and whatever else had collected on him since his abduction, it also seemed to help wash away some of the stains on his very soul. Amazing what a good shower could do.

[The rest of the conversation went by quickly. A few threats, a dozen prodding questions and at the end of it, the four stood in a semi-circle halfway between the Gustavs, the Breaker and the Fox. Talk of past battles soon gave way to talk of the one that undoubtedly hung over the heads of all four of them.

"Can you describe it to me?" Bill asked, tucking his hands into his pockets and glancing over the faces of the other three. It was obvious, from their expressions alone, that each was still dealing with their own conflicts. First and foremost, Pierce definately didn`t trust him. He didn`t blame her. Hameros didn`t seem to care either way, he was too absorbed in thoughts of his own, but Mark?

Mark, for once in his life, appeared to be the only one with his mind set solely on the matter at hand.

"A demon outta Hell. Beck called it the Hellwalker, it seems like some kind of inbred bastard lovechild spawned from an Ultrasaurus and the Death Saurer - complete with a CPC o` doom and an attitude to match," he explained with little of his normal lightheartedness, if any at all. "I honestly don`t know how the hell any of us walked away from fighting it, I just know it murdered close to a million or more people in just an hour or two, tops."

Jamie was the only one to show a visible reaction to it - he winced. Pierce merely glanced off to the side with a vague sneer, and Bill sighed under his breath.

"We`re gonna need a plan if we`re supposed to fight that thing," Hameros pointed out semi-reflexively. "One that everyone will actually follow so we don`t all get killed."

"I don`t think it`s possible to take that thing out without being killed anyway. Beck couldn`t even do it and he was the best pilot since Fleiheit, Schubaltz and Raven," Mark shot off in reply, almost instantly dashing the brief streak of bravery that had shown up in Jamie`s eyes. "Strategy or no, if we go in to fight that thing, we don`t go in to win - we go to make sure it loses."

It was a statement that everyone understood almost instantly. Going in for the sole purpose of taking out an enemy meant that the odds of survival, already low enough as is, would go down even further.

"I don`t even have a Zoid handy, he shot the Sworder down and my Zabat`s gone to Hell in a handbasket," Pierce commented, glaring over at Bill. He was as indifferent as could be.

"Do we have any data on it? Any idea what its weaknesses might be?" Jamie asked, cutting the other two off from exchanging anymore cutdowns than they already were.

"The Fox probably has recorded data in its memory banks, you can check those if you want. I`d suggest the Liger, but..." He thumbed over at the haggard, comatose Zoid, the holes, cracks, breaks and burn marks all over it standing out just a bit more as he did so.

"I doubt I could even turn that thing on without an overhaul, let alone pull anything out of its memory," Jamie blandly replied.

"I can fix that t-" "Don`t," Mark cut him off with a serious tone. "Whatever you`re capable of, don`t fix that Zoid. You may be able to put it back in the fight, but it`s pilot ain`t in any shape to be out of a hospital bed, let alone in a cockpit."

"Then what`s the worry?" Bill asked skeptically, one brow arched and both neon blue eyes leering to the Fox pilot.

"Because the pilot`s a bigger dumbass than me when it comes to minding his own injuries. Good as he is, he`d probably just rupture something in battle and get himself killed, working Liger or no," Mark explained, meaning every word of it with more than a passing hint of respect.

"Right... We`ll need to get more firepower somehow though," Bill stated, pointing out the obvious to a crowd of faces that had 'No shit, Sherlock' stamped on them.

"The only spare guns we`ve got are my old Pteras` Bomber Unit and the Command Wolf`s 150-Rifle," Jamie replied almost instantly.

"Where are they? That Raynos looks like it could handle them with a bit of work..."]

The sounds of hair being cut hadn`t taken too long after the shower. It had gotten long enough to reach between his shoulderblades by the time he`d finally been able to take it off, forming into a single lock left lying on the floor in the seconds afterward. The rest of his hair was soon shaped back into the style he preferred it in, oddly mirroring Bit Cloud`s - only shifting to the opposite side and slightly forward instead.

[Soon enough, jaws dropped again. While Jamie had been downloading the Shadow Fox`s combat data into a handheld datapad, Pierce, Mark and Bill had to move the guns into position. Oddly enough, the Raynos cooperated at only a single command from the neon-eyed pilot, stepping near the Geno Breaker and then bending down as the old Command Wolf`s rifle was lowered down until bumping against its back. After that, the Bomber Unit`s leg covers had been brought in, it took the Breaker to set them in place leaned against the Raynos` feet, but it worked.

After that, Mark had mentioned needing to attend to some business of his own and then taken off out of the hangar and down the hall. Nobody had been able to ask why - Pierce was too busy catching her breath, Jamie didn`t care and Bill was focusing on the Raynos.

Slowly and with an odd degree of caution and respect for a machine, the young man set his hands against the Zoid`s leg and spoke up.

"I know these parts probably aren`t really your style, but... We need you to put them on, please."

A few seconds passed by. Pierce grew skeptic, but remained silent, and Jamie thoughtlessly climbed out of the crouching Fox`s cockpit. It was when he looked over at his Zoid out of mild curiosity that it happened.

As if from Bill`s command alone, the Raynos began to actually glow black, whisps of blue passing over it as the aura expanded, the spare parts soon vanishing in blurs of light, along with the Zoid itself. The other beasts that still stood in the hangar held their ground as if expecting the light show, but the other two pilots were both barely able to do more than stand there and look stupid.

Within seconds, it was over. The light faded, Bill took a step back and the old Jamie seemed to return in spades.

If Pierce were in her normal state of mind, she probably would`ve made a snide comment or two about Jamie Hameros being a Raynos fanboy. She would`ve been right too, considering the way he was practically snuggling the Zoid`s right leg and coming a step shy of making out with it the instant after he`d shrieked like a girl and sprinted across the hangar.

He had reasons though, the Raynos had been altered severely. It`s colors remained the same, but it now held a few extra toys, so to speak. The 150mm Long Range Rifle, along with its two rarely used 50mm secondary cannons, formerly used by Brad Hunter`s long dead Command Wolf was now fused to the Zoid`s back, melding seemlessly with the Raynos` former main thruster and the sensory dome that had originally been on its back. Two more thrusters had appeared as well, one at the rear of the base of each wing, with a third, far smaller thruster situated in the Raynos` collar. In addition, the Bomber Unit`s shin coverings were now fused into the Zoid`s legs, and had turned the proper shade of green as well.

"It`s like a kid trying to get a mom or dad to buy a toy. Just gotta know how to persuade `em," Bill pointed out, taking another step back, then a deep breath. His eyes looked a little dim for a few seconds, but they soon brightened back up - literally. "One down, now to fix your Sworder and the Shadow Fox."

"... Right," Pierce muttered in disbelief, finally looking over at Jamie. "Hey Fanboy, let`s go make a gameplan."

Then he calmly stepped back down off of its foot and onto the floor, picked the datapad up and gave a nod, not even questioning why Pierce wanted to help formulate any sort of strategy since she didn`t seem to be the type at all.

Bill paid them no mind as he approached the Storm Sworder, climbing onto its trailer and stepping over towards its head. The Zoid faintly tried to squawk at him, but now lacked the strength to do even that.

"Shhh, calm down. I know we busted you up last time, but we`re on the same side now..."

Slowly and gently, he pressed his hands to the Zoid`s cheek and began the process once again.]

The clothes weren`t his, but they fit perfectly anyway, even the gloves. Bit Cloud and Bill Chapman were the exact same size after all, though now, Bill wagered that if Bit was alive, the blonde was probably in better shape at first glance. Even the other pilot`s boxers fit, though he wasn`t too keen on thinking about that. Instead, he simply got dressed.

A short sleeved black shirt, a pair of faded blue jeans that fit like a perfectly made glove, one of Bit`s three red-and-white leather jackets - the only one that went down to the waist line - and a pair of black-and-white boots, which also fit perfectly. Lastly came the gloves, another pair that had once belonged to Bit Cloud.

"I really have to pay that guy back sometime, if he isn`t dead already," Chapman noted absently, stopping at the mirror to give himself a once over. He hadn`t needed to shave, whereas Bit needed to every few weeks, Bill`s facial hair amounted to peach fuzz that needed to be groomed once a year at most, his head hair grew out instead. It was probably one of the few differences between the two.

[After the Fox had been done, he stopped, taking a small stumble backwards and right into the side of the Geno Breaker`s foot before sliding down to his rump on the floor, elbows automatically braced on his knees. His breathing was a bit ragged, he felt weak from having gone so many days without eating, being sustained by his Zoid or not. The fact that he`d had about as much to drink wasn`t a very great thing either.

"First eat, then shower?" He asked. The Breaker let out a sound that seemed as if it wanted to be a snort, but couldn`t quite replicate it properly. "Shower first then," he agreed belatedly, hanging his head with a groan.

The Fox had been the easiest of the trio, though it had still been the strangest. Bill could get it to repair with ease, but its mind raced at dozens of times that of the other two, spitting out enough thoughts to prove it - all of them focused around one of three things: Marcus Harlock, which brought a sense of purpose and the Zoid equivelent to joy, Brad Hunter, which brought a sense of doubt and guilt, and something Bill could only identify as 'Diamond' every few seconds.

In the end though, it had also been the only Zoid of the lot that had modified itself through him. Emotions ran wild for all of then ten extra seconds it took, Bill was rooted to the floor at the time, but when it was over, the dual impact cannon was gone, while the boosters once placed in its legs had moved, re-positioning around the base of the tail and the back of the laser vulcan gun`s turret, while its teeth now looked as if they`d been re-painted gold. Its ears had also shrunken back down, and Bill had a feeling that the cockpit`s layout had probably changed at least a bit too.

"Weird Zoid," he thought aloud, scratching at the base of his neck with a gloved fingertip before bringing his head up straight.

"You wanted to ask something?" He wondered aloud, glancing from left to right and finding nothing.

"Thank you for not telling them," came a voice from behind, obscured by the profile of the Geno Breaker. Bill was in no hurry to move for a better look anyway.

"I have a suggestion for it, if you`d like. I intend to pilot it someday anyway."

"What name will you give it then?" He asked slowly, listening only to receeding footsteps towards the door. Out of laziness and his own apathy, he didn`t bother to look.

The door into the hallway slipped open and shut. Chapman was alone with only the Zoids to keep him company now, just as he already had been for so long.]

He knew the base`s layout instinctively - it was virtually the same as the Thunder Team`s own base had been prior to its destruction. The only differences were that every turn had been reversed, and for a guy with the shoddy sense of direction that Bill Chapman lived with when it came to indoor areas, that was probably a good thing.

The door slipped open and lead him into the hallway, just in time to see a beaten looking man with silver hair coming to stand outside of the room that Bill guessed to be the Blitz base`s guest room. Neither greeted one another as he turned away, heading back down the hallway and towards the kitchen.

"Next stop: A BLT thick enough to tear my stomach open. Then a drink. Then the planning room."

The door slid shut with a gasp of air, it was dark enough that he had trouble seeing for a few seconds, bar the night light that was placed near the bed out of sheer necessity. Slowly, and with the full weight of exhaustion forcing his normally broad shoulders into a slump, he made his way across the room almost blindly, finally finding the back of a chair and tugging it up into place. At that, he twisted it around, its back to the bed, and when he sat down, his own back was to the door, legs spread to either side and arms placed on the top of the chair.

His chin came down, planting itself onto his sleeved forearm with a dulled thump. The sleeping figure in front of him twisted slightly, her back to him.

"Y`nno... I must be freakin` pathetic," he began, voice a bit shaken. "Can go for twenty battles in four days, get flung onto the roof of a hotel building by a psycho, pop jokes and survive a Demon, but the only time I can be emotional to you is when you`re asleep..."

The figure, was unmoving, laying on her side comfortably. He noted, a bit absently, that her hair almost matched her skin in the near nonexistent lighting of the room they were in.

A pause. Go through life cracking jokes about everything from a sprained ankle to almost being killed, never take anything seriously and then lose almost everything in one night - then try to be serious. It wasn`t easy in the slightest.

"I guess that what I`m trying to say is... For the first time I can think of, I`m really scared. Not scared from being dizzy or off my guard like when I took out that crazy fuck during our vacation, but scared. I mean... Shit, it feels like my knees should be shakin` right now," he continued, pausing again before taking a deep breath and picking up where he`d left off. "I`m scared because that layer of invincibility is gone. Beck... Harabec fucking Davids, the Revered Raptor, hero to God knows how many people, my uncle and a guy I looked up to more than my own parents died last night."

"He was like some sort of... Shit, I can`t even put it into words. It was like... Well, when he was around, nothing could go wrong. The guy trashed a Geno Saurer without even getting hit - he took out fifty Zoids in half the time it took me and Kyle to down ten. He was like the perfect good guy you always wanna see savin` the day in a movie... He had to struggle to get where he was, succeeded and never forgot. Nothing bad is supposed to happen to people like that, right?" He asked.

No answer, only a deeper breath and a bid to snuggle her face a bit further into the pillow.

"I honestly thought he`d be around to cover us forever, I guess. Last night, he stopped being there. I think he knew he wasn`t going to come out of it alive, he told me as much when he said... When he said to take care of things. I made him promise me he`d live, but it either wasn`t enough or he was lyin` when he said he would," he explained, that pit that had been lying dormant in his chest all night acting up again. It made breathing a chore, his throat felt sticky.

"And now... Now, I`m afraid I might not make it out alive either. Shit, if he couldn`t, what the fuck kinda chance do I have?" He asked again, speaking at an increasingly lowered tone. It wasn`t easy to spill his guts out to anyone, even if they were asleep. Still, he kept going, if only because he needed to get it out. It was like absolution at a confessional, sans the priest. "And I`m also... Really afraid of losing you. I`m not all that worried about dying now... Well, yeah I am, but you get the idea, don`t you?"

"Afraid I might lose you, afraid I might lose Kyle, Pierce... Kat... Al... Everyone. You guys`re almost all I have left right now, I don`t even know if Mom and Dad`re alright or not. Shit, I don`t even know how you feel, haven`t been able to get any real time with you like we should`ve had since this crap all hit the fan."

Finally, movement. Not from her, but him, reaching up to set a hand onto his capped head, a few hairs sticking out of the front since it was still being worn backwards. It almost felt like his skull rattled from the motion, but he kept going nonetheless.

"Once they`re all done... Doing whatever, planning and eating and showering and stuff, the four of us`re gonna go back and try to fight it. I don`t know if we`ll win, I don`t even know if I`ll live to see the end of it but... I`m gonna work my ass off. Sucks that Kyle`s too fuckin` busted up to join us, be nice to have someone I could ramble with out there..."

A pause. Then half-hearted snort that sounded like it wanted to be a laugh, followed by a worn down smile as he shut his eyes and corrected himself.

"Then again, maybe it`s better one of us isn`t gonna be out there... If worst comes to worst, you`ll at least have a damn good pilot around to keep the lot o` ya safe... And, I guess this ain`t the kinda shit I can really joke about anymore. I tried to make Beck promise me he`d survive, but he told me to take care of everyone for him."

Another pause, finally, he started to get up, standing with joints that felt almost slowed and achy from exhaustion, stress and labor, but still standing nonetheless.

"I`m gonna try and do that. I don`t know if I`ll pull it off, I do know I won`t be alone out there though. Hameros is good, Pierce is good too, no idea about Bill but he`s got a freakin` Geno Breaker so he has to have some skill," he said, stepping around the chair and scooting it out of the way, then just standing there and watching her.

"I don`t know if I`ll get to say this again and... God, I prob`ly sound like some kinda fuckin` chick flick nightmare right now..."

A shake of the head. He continued once again, having to work to get the words out.

"I love you, Abbie. Always have, always will. You`re one of the greatest... Hell, the greatest woman I`ve ever met, and I`m proud to say I lucked the hell out with you," he said, honestly shocked he could manage to speak the words with a straight face and a level voice. At that though, he reached up, pulling his baseball cap off and dropping it down on the pillow, just behind her head.

"I know I probably... Won`t be able to carry it out, but I promise... I promise I`ll be back for that. See ya around, and sleep good... You`ve earned it more than anyone else has around here," he finished, and meant every single word of it to the end.

With that complete though, he turned around, heading for the door. It opened automatically with another gasp of air, and an eye aching change in the lighting, though he managed to ignore it enough that he was able to get out into the hallway and recover from it in a matter of seconds. It still kept him from noticing the other visitor, currently leaned painfully onto wall bordering the doorframe.

A jolt, it looked as if his hair stood on end for a few seconds before Marcus Harlock finally turned around, finding himself a few inches above eye level with Kyle Mazemia. Bandaged and banged up as he was, the silver haired pilot, and the literal butt of so many endless jokes, stood there with the look of a hardened leader of men, even if it was only visible in one of his eyes. A white wifebeater and a pair of dark blue hospital pants were the only clothing that the Liger pilot wore, and even in that aspect, the two were a sharp contrast.

"If I have to, I will," Mark replied after a few seconds, utterly serious for once. In that aspect, if nothing else, they matched almost perfectly and complimented each other to a degree that was usually only seen in veterans who could practically intuit each others` actions six steps ahead. There could be no doubt as to who was in charge though. In experience, skill and charisma, Kyle was the better between the two, the leader.

For the first time, Mark was acknowledging it. Not with words, not even with gestures, only expression. They understood each other well enough that that was all they needed.

"Good luck out there," Kyle finally said, straightening up off the wall with a slowed jerk, in no rush to aggrevate his already severe injuries. A lesser man would`ve been bedridden for a week, Mazemia was on his feet after only a few hours at most.

There was only quiet for a few seconds, intense enough that it could swallow someone whole.

And then, Kyle extended an open hand, not even slowing from the pain the gesture caused his shoulder and elbow.

Mark replied in kind, not bothering to shake hands, but instead throwing his arms out and wrapping them around the shorter fellow as if he were a brother. As far as these two were concerned, that`s just what they were - brothers. Different parents, they didn`t look a damn thing alike, but that didn`t matter, and Kyle seconded that notion by returning the gesture in kind, even if he had to bite back a wince to do it.

"Take care man," Mark ordered sternly, finally letting go and taking a step back after several seconds. "If we`re not back by noon, get everyone and haul ass outta here."

Kyle only nodded, replying after a few seconds with another gesture - an extended fist.

Mark lightly punched it twice, once up, then down, then Kyle returned the act. From there, each of the men turned away, Mark heading down the hallway towards the hangar or the planning room, Kyle heading back to the infirmary where he`d left Katherine sleeping only a few minutes earlier.

Dawn. Seven-thirty in the morning, to be precise. The early morning sun was only just now to the point that it was halfway visible on the horizon, casting long shadows from virtually anything that stood out against the bleak, uniform landscape of the desert.

[There was a stir in the hallway, fearful yet somehow reverent eyes shifted up in regards to the four figures heading for the hangar. They almost seemed like gods walking among men, none looked dirty and though all of them appeared ragged and war torn in their own ways, none were lessened by it. Those same eyes tracked them, a few voices spoke up but died down, and within a minute, they had vanished from sight as quickly and collectively as they`d appeared.]

It had been a sickeningly long night, millions were dead and the only things that stood in their memory were the enormous crater that had once been Farentown, and the lone, statuesque figure of a small Blade Liger, standing gloriously in the desert with his beaten head thrown back in one final, eternal cry of defiance and sorrow.

[The hangar itself was completely void of human life, and only the Zoids themselves stood by, the optics of four of them lighting up one after the other as each pilot filed in. Gloves were tugged and tightened, vests and jackets alike were shrugged into place, zipped, buttoned up or left to hang open as footsteps lead the four apart. Within the span of another minute, each pilot had taken his or her seat in the cockpits. Hydraulics gasped, harnesses were fastened and gutchecks went by in the span of seconds that seemed like individual eternities.]

Smoke still blotted out part of the early morning sky, casting its own colossal shadow in the distance, but something was still moving. It seemed almost as if Zi itself shook with the passing of each step, one more gigantic figure casting an equally large shadow of its own. The fossilized Blade Liger rattled as it passed by, ignorant of what remained of the small but violently intense battle that had been waged there in the hours before.

[Consoles lit up, viewscreens hummed to life and combat and command systems alike started activating. One by one, the Zoids turned towards the closed hangar doors.]

Only the Blitz Team Base, Tauros Farm as it was sometimes known, stood before it, ten or fifteen miles straight ahead, beyond a large rock arch.

The same base`s main doors, one of which was pockmarked from a makeshift repair job, began to open a few seconds after the Demon became visible in the distance. At first, only darkness could be seen inside, dim silhouettes standing out here and there, defined only by the glows of several aerial thrusters warming themselves up.

And then the Zoids began to emerge. First came the Shadow Fox, stepping out into view with what could be best described as a soldier`s stride, serious in every aspect. Its optics glimmered with a mixture of emotions that could only be related to by its pilot and several others.

Then came the Geno Breaker, walking out at a slow pace, menacing in its own way even when it was on the right side for once. Pincers remained undeployed for a matter of moments as it came to stand next to the smaller Shadow Fox, all four blades finally flipping forward and into attack mode from there.

Then came the Storm Sworder, and finally the Raynos. Both of the last Zoids tilted forward, and almost at the same time, began to lift from the ground.

"Whatever happens from here on out, stick to the plan," Mark`s voice echoed over the comm. It was an odd thing to hear coming from him, but it only drove the point him a bit further. "Nobody plays hero when we`re out there, and if the plan doesn`t work..."

"We improvise," Bill cut in, the Breaker`s hoverjets churning to life and sending it careening forward at full speed. The Shadow Fox followed within a matter of seconds, letting out first a synthesized shriek of a battle cry, then taking off with its own boosters blazing a hot white. For a few moments, the two Zoids were alone, and then their aerial cover caught up.

The Storm Sworder streaked overhead, the Raynos trailing it by only a scant few meters.

As the unlikely team of Oscar Hameros` son, Harabec David`s nephew, Michael Summers` daughter and Bit Cloud`s broken mirror image began its approach, their target began to pick up speed towards them, and the sound of an enraged Ultrasaurus from Hell rippled through the countryside, met only with determined looks and activated weaponry.

Author`s Note: Hot damn, ladies and gentlemen... 100k! This is officially the single longest frelling chapter I`ve ever written for anything! O_o!

And it`s also, hopefully, going to be one of, if not the only chapters in all of ROC so damn filled with flashbacks o_o; But I needed to fill up some space to keep with the 90-or-more kb rule I set for myself and it`s about that time where I feel I can start dropping the Bombs of Plot-ness.

Also, next chapter will likely be the last one to focus so frelling heavily on the Suicide Crew.

Tilly: Glad the OCs have come off so well @_@ And also glad that you liked the scene with Leena and Marry. They`re both becoming increasingly easy to write O_o

Illidan: Hopefully this at least stayed at the bar level I set with the last one. As for Marry being a secretary-type person... Feh, you think I`d give her the decency of being left alone? Just because she may become a go-between doesn`t mean she`s going to catch a break once the time comes for me to start pulling out all the stops I have left for her... In fact, even if she becomes a secretary-of-sorts, she`ll probably still be pretty important O_o

Also, since you seem to be a country fan, I advise downloading/buying the Trigun soundtrack. It`s somewhere between country, jazz, a smidge of techno and some rock tossed in as well. Methinks you`d like it.

The Big Fisch: It`s not you. The last few chapters have been moving slower than most of the story, primarily because I`ve been using them to build up to what I`ve got planned. ROC started with a simple gshot, TOD is going to start with the whirling of a gattling gun.

Chaotic-Swordsman-Brad: Wow o_o Someone actually seems to have caught almost everything without me having to point it out to them in some way. Cool.

First off, thanks for all the compliments regarding the series I`ve set up so far. Means a lot to me to know people think that highly of it, and second off: Yes, the Diamond Fox was originally meant to go to Brad. Now, it may end up in the hands of either Leyla or Naomi, I`m still conflicted about it. The Gun Raptor(as Leena renamed it to no truly sane objections) isn`t quite as significant, but it still has a pretty good role to play. Both will probably continue to collect dust for a while longer, Champton isn`t getting the AHBL treatment until a ways into TOD...

And that Demon that took out the Death Saurer was just the King Gojulas. During the Endtimes, there were a specific number of gigantic Demon Zoids tasked from 'birth' to death with hunting and killing other Demons until nothing was left. The King Gojulas was one of them, but it probably won`t be appearing again anytime soon, at least not outside of flashbacks.

Akino Ame: ... Holy shit O_O! *Hands Akino a cookie or eight for burning through ROC so quickly.* Leyla`s still a bit of a hassle for me to write, but soon enough she`ll break into line with what I have planned for her. Emphasis on break. Leena has become pretty likable though, eh? Scarred to Hell and overclocked right back by GigaBeke, she`s got a nice role to play as well...

As for not liking Madison because her story hasn`t been told... It may very well never be told, at least not in more than sparse hints. Half the reason I enjoy writing her when I can is because it forces the readers to have to speculate on her origins :p

That said, I have... Lessee... At least four more casualties planned for the remainder of the trilogy. Gee, there`s only four people going up against the Hellwalker...

Oh, and note the heavy Trigun influences. Originally, Zero Hour was supposed to be the song used for the last scene but... War of the Last Wolves just marched right up to my brain and demanded to be used instead. Ph33r music, y0 o_o;

That`s all for now folks. Merry Christmas, Happy New Years and see ya next time! R&R, enjoy, Sh33p out!

Reign of Chaos by Sh33p

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

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