Reign of Chaos Chapter 35, a Zoids fanfic by Sh33p

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

Foreword:To Zinou: I know I said I was gonna toss this to you to beta read and all, but I finished it at 7-something in the morning. And had to post it. Author madness 03nz my soul.

Scene One: Big O - Sin
Scene Two: Big O - The Holy
Scene Three: Metallica - Sad But True
Scene Four: Zoids - Any End of the Land
Scene Five: Godsmack - Awake
Scene Six: Harry Chapin - Cats and the Cradle
Scene Seven: The Matrix - Neodammerung
Scene Eight: GooGoo Dolls - Long Way Down(or AFI - Girl`s Not Grey)
Scene Nine: G Gundam - Intense Battle
Scene Ten: Metallica - Sad But True
Scene Eleven: Hack Sign - To Nowhere
Scene Twelve: Inuyasha - Hanyou Inuyasha/Inuyasha Intro
Scene Thirteen: Linkin Park - Breaking the Habit
Scene Fourteen: Big O - Stand a Chance

Boosters flared, Mark`s left ear twitched slightly from the sound as the Raynos JT and Storm Sworder both pulled up and to either side, gaining speed in their ascent from the battlefield. The plan had been simple enough, the fighting hadn`t even started yet, but his gut had already tied itself into an absurdly tight knot that threatened to expand all the way to his chest. Cold sweat dribbled across his face and his hands felt clammy and cold against the make of his gloves.

He was tired, hungry, scared as Hell and twice as nervous because of it. In short, he was experiencing the same kind of warping emotions that could make or break a soldier waiting to go into battle. The Hellwalker was approaching - had it gotten faster or was the stress finally starting to get to him? Regardless, with exception to its hump of a back, the manmade Demon approached just beneath his line of sight, obscured greatly by a steep hill that lead to an equally flat plain.

Another howl of thrusters, this time more subdued as the Geno Breaker lifted back off the ground and blew away, strafing to its left for a good hundred or so meters before turning in that direction and continuing along on a wide arc.

"Almost go time," he thought to himself, mouth breathing without even realizing it. His knuckles faded white on the Shadow Fox`s controls - they`d changed since he had piloted the thing last. Where before, the cockpit had been set up similarly to a Command Wolf, now it was almost the same as the Liger Zero, barring several key differences in color and style.

The message blipped across the main console soundlessly, but his eyes caught it anyway. The scanner was set to start beeping at 275. The ground was starting to shake, he could almost feel it in his bones as the Shadow Fox seemed to tense up on its own, flexing gears and spinning stabilizers and gattling barrels alike before assuming a posture similar to a statue.

"I hate radio silence," he gulped back, taking a look up from the scanner to watch a series of energy bolts and a thin hail of missiles careen up towards the clouds in the sky. A mixed sign, it meant that Hellwalker had noticed Hameros and Pierce, but it also meant that it probably hadn`t noticed he and Chapman yet. It also held the hope that the thing was low on missiles after the virtual blitzkrieg it had probably executed to try and get rid of Harabec last night.

The shaking was accompanied by the sound of footsteps now, beeping entered into his ears and his mouth turned from too moist to too dry, the muscles in his throat almost wanted to constrict.

A howling shriek almost made his ears want to bleed as dust and dirt tore from the front of the hill he was hiding behind, the gun-covered snout of the Hellwalker exploding into view in perfect synch. For a moment, Mark was unable to make out details since the creature`s head moved with too much speed, giving him an ever expanding glimpse of only its neck, and then it finally stopped, ignoring the Zoids in the sky and craning its head to look straight down at him from a mile or more up.

This time, there was a beep alerting him to look at the console, which he did in a flash of nervous movement, only to be drawn to look back up at the monster before him as the information registered. His breath caught itself in the back of his throat, eyes widened just barely and he had to crane both his neck, and the Fox`s too, just to get a glimpse of the Hellwalker leering down at him so mightily.

"Hi there," he said finally, knowing he wouldn`t be heard. Tension became unbearable, silence seemed to dominate everything after the roar as even beeping stopped. His words were but a whisper against the amusement the Demon must`ve felt at the sight of a lowly rat standing in its way.

The world blurred and the Hellwalker`s head lunged straight down, jaws snapping open. The Shadow Fox replied in kind with a synthesized shriek.

Beams shattered the calm that had formerly reigned several miles up off the soon-to-be battlefield, instinct honed through countless hours of in-flight practice, simulations and actual battle guided Pierce into a series of simplistic, natural turns, dives and twists, banking hard from left to right and varying her speed. Jamie seemed to hold his own just as well, weaving between lethal bolts of plasma as if it were almost a second nature for him.

A warning alarm sounded into her helmet, eyes narrowed and her body reacted before her mind even finished processing what to do. Her engines cut off after a few seconds, the Raynos blasted off its afterburners and fired its forward thruster at the same time, the sudden bursts of heat and energy alike promptly overshadowing the heat and Core signatures of the Storm Sworder.

A swarm of missiles all began to form up into a cluster, set to enter her line of fire in a matter of seconds once the Raynos seemed to almost stall in front of her. The Sworder`s wings tucked in, her finger rested a bit heavily on the trigger for a moment before pulling it. Instantly, the falling Zoid jolted precious inches back as the gattling gun situated in the Storm Sworder`s mouth whirled to life and sprayed some of its deadly payload out.

Engines flared back to life, the silver Zoid hurtled forward again and blades deployed as explosions shredded the numbers of the missiles down to three, all of them still bylining for the semi-stalled Raynos JT before their warheads were neatly severed in one barrel rolling pass. The sonic boom threw them off course and several more blasts echoed through the sky as the Raynos cut its forward thrusters off and again surged ahead, forming up on the Sworder`s wing in a wide arcing turn.

Both Zoids barrelled up and held straight, upside down, for several seconds before radio silence broke.

"Going in," Jamie replied with an odd lack of emotion as the Raynos dropped, pointing straight down for a second before slightly angling his approach. Blue turned white several times, then solid orange and various other desert colors blended into view, finally giving way to the details of the Hellwalker`s frame, its body rumbling while its mile long neck tore back up out of the ground with a howl.

"Thank God for small miracles," Pierce thought to herself, charging up those blades and readying to fire missiles and gattling rounds alike once the Sworder had gotten more towards the Raynos JT`s belly than right behind it.

Too late, the Hellwalker finally noticed the pair of incoming Zoids and also too late, it craned its head to face them. Guns as big as a dozen Gustavs blazed to life, the equivelent to house-sized flack shells poured out into the sky, but Pierce held her shots back.

The JT barrel rolled through the stream of fire without taking damage, cutting its speed to almost nothing as it stopped at a virtual right angle, then flared forward again, ready to meet the Hellwalker face-to-face. Only now did Pierce notice that the Demon`s right eye had the broken, sparking and slightly melted blade of a Rev Raptor lodged into it, but Jamie was all over it by then.

Pulse lasers and fire from all three of the JT`s back mounted guns hurtled into the Walker`s eye, Hameros closed in and ended his first pass with a sonic boom to the face, climbing back up while Pierce closed in for her own.

Several turrets went flying, gattling rounds shot into the Demon`s eye and a missile followed. The Storm Sworder whirled under the Hellwalker`s neck, plasma bolts following it at every turn before it broke off, arcing wide after the Raynos.

"Did we hurt it?" Jamie asked from above, his voice sounding over the comm almost too blandly to believe that he was in the middle of a fight for his life. Pierce banked to the left and dodged a series of bolts, craning her neck to get a look around while the Sworder slipped ever higher.

The Hellwalker shook its head in disorientation, but remained silent from any expressions of pain.

"We`ll know soon enough then, get ready to make another pass - let`s try and take out some more of its guns this time," Jamie ordered. For whatever reason, he had taken over the role of leading the attack, designating Mark as the sacrificial lamb who would keep the Walker occupied, then coming up with the tactics that he and Pierce were using now.

"Why not try and take it out?" Pierce questioned for the umpteenth time since the planning room, even as she rode into Hameros` jet stream.

"Because it looks like we don`t have the firepower. That`s where Chapman comes in."

"Shit," he thought as the explosions rattled across the Hellwalker`s face, smoke tearing away in the aftermath of a sonic shockwave. The great beast`s head lumbered slowly to the side, a thunderous growl issuing from its sharply toothed mouth - one that could be felt as much as it could be heard. Counterattacks followed the two aerial Zoids, it was all he could do to try and keep his stomach from doing flops and twists from disbelief.

There were scratches, burn marks and part of the broken blade lodged in its eye had been melted, but for the most part, no damage had been done.

"We`re alike, you know," he finally voiced out, shifting slightly to watch as the Shadow Fox tried to draw the Walker`s attention with a stream of pulse lasers, raking hard across the Demon`s throat. It did little more than damage a few turrets and leave a trail of black pock marks across the Zoid`s mile long neck.

An orange optic focused, the tail began to come about and he was immediately drawn back from the already obscured view of Harlock`s Zoid. The Breaker`s presence tensed in mind and jump jet engines churned, waiting for the cue.

The batteries of guns on the tip of the Hellwalker`s tail locked into place on the Geno Breaker, even through the obstructions of the terrain between them. Turrets lining the Demon`s neck, body and tail soon followed, but its head refused to turn fully, which in turn left only one eye to regard the smaller Zoid, an eye which now glowed like a fire from Hell.

It came down to fractions of seconds as the guns started firing - the hill between the two turned into a charred, glassed memory by the time it was over, but the attack had been faulty. The Geno Breaker shredded through the smoke in a rocket jump, flying through the air and into view with seeming impunity to the virtual wall of firepower being directed at it, mouth open, tail straight.

"You`ve lost your conscience," Bill Chapman pointed out at last, firing the charged particle cannon and feeling his Zoid threaten to fly back from the recoil. The beam, solid white lined with frantic strings of violet and blue lightning, ripped through the distance between the two combatants, striking into the Hellwalker`s side and snapping down across it, leaving armor to turn into molten slag or explode outright.

The cannon cut off, the Breaker flipped over into a barrel roll and weaved through fire to the ground, landing in a crouch and leaping forward. Dirt turned to flying shards of glass, engines blasted back on and the Zoid became a blur, streaking in with leg guns blazing. The Hellwalker replied in kind, shrieking its war cry and turning to face the incoming Geno, each step causing the ground to shake in every direction.

Explosions tore across one knee, the Breaker swerved to the side and the Shadow Fox came back into view, slipping to a halt and firing its only gun up into the front of one of the Walker`s hips.

"I can`t get a response from it, it`s like the god damn nerves`ve been shut off," Harlock`s voice rang out, putting an end to radio silence on the ground. It had served only to hide Bill, and with him exposed, it no longer had any use.

"Keep trying," Bill replied tersely, again swerving to avoid being turned into a molten crater by the guns that could reach beneath the Hellwalker`s legs, legs that now seemed to move with a new liveliness that hadn`t been in any of the files in the Shadow Fox`s data, limited as it may have been.

"Pierce and Jamie should be making another pass soon, try and keep it focused on us," Mark ordered, the claws of the Fox glowing and its vulcan lowering. Bill didn`t need to be told twice, though he couldn`t really comply either, seeing as how he was too busy dodging to actually get any solid attacks off.

The esteemed Champ Family Hangar in Champton. In peace time, it served as something that the Champs used to keep their own personal Zoids in, doubling as both a showroom and a maintenence area. At present, it was a structure housing a few Champ family Zoids and about a dozen Zoids that had earned their way in for belonging to a select group of incredibly skilled, ace pilots. Leon Tauros` Blade Liger, Naomi Fluegel`s Gun Sniper and others were all being kept here for the time being, along with those few Zoids that anyone in the Champ family actually owned.

Chief among these was the pink Iron Kong Mark II standing at the ready on the farthest side of the hangar, along with the recently recovered Dark Horn HT, the Zoid that she`d come to get. The Zoid had been in the hands of the Backdraft Group right up until the organization had folded under renewed, intensified pressure from just about everyone and their mom, at which point, a few members had saved their own skins by giving away the whereabouts of some rather priceless Zoids.

The hangar itself was close to being empty of people, most of the workers who usually manned it during the day were off having breakfast and showering.

For a few seconds, she paused to take a look around, then almost jumped out of her own boots at the sound of the door automatically slamming shut behind her.

"Must not`ve triggered the motion detectors for too long," she thought with a sideways glance, taking several steps forward and looking around. The Zoids were all set into three rows, Harry`s Kong at the farthest wall from her, closest to the front, the Horn in the row behind it and an as yet unseen Zoid occupying the position in the row furthest back.

"Hopefully the controls won`t be too hard to figure out," she mused walking onward with a stiff stride. The boots she wore had never been broken in at all, just like everything else she was currently wearing. The hair she usually left to cascade down her back like a waterfall had been put back up into the same ponytail it`d been in when she`d first piloted an Iron Kong, one which had since been handed off to someone else. The clothing she wore was still somewhat uncomfortable, but it was a start.

Pink laced black leather combat boots and a dark gray-blue pilot`s jumpsuit with her name distinctly tagged on the left side of the chest. Plain leather gloves hung out of the pocket on the right side, for all intents and purposes, she looked like any other pilot.

Except that she wasn`t. The nametag alone clarified that much. Marry Champ wasn`t exactly known for being the pilot in the group of Champ siblings, more like the peacekeeper. She`d been the one who helped to keep everything together before their parents had died, the go-between, for lack of a better term. Now, she was going to climb into a cockpit for the second of third time and try to prove useful.

Suffice to say, she wasn`t just another pretty rich girl at the moment, she was also a complete bundle of nerves as well. More than anything, she didn`t want to accidentally drive the Dark Horn right into the Iron Kong standing in front of it.

It was somewhere between thinking about the controls, walking down the wrong row and pausing to try and stretch the ankles of her boots that she noticed she wasn`t alone. A man in a black trench coat, gaudy purple shirt worn underneath, brown slacks and a pink tie. With a pointy head that looked like it could double as an anti-Zoid bullet. Staring at whatever Zoid it was standing in the row behind the Dark Horn.

"Hello?" Marry asked finally rousing out of her self-absorbed stupor in time to slow down and avoid slapping into the guy.

"Eh? What do you want?" The man asked with a shrug, his hands in his pockets as he turned to glance her way.

"Oh. Nothing, just a funny lookin` Shield Liger," he answered, raising a hand up and thumbing in the direction of the Zoid in question. Once Marry got close enough to actually see it, she could easily understand why he`d been staring. It didn`t look that different from any run of the mill Shield Liger, but it was slightly larger, more robust, as if this one were actually alive. Colored black with a green cockpit, its claws were golden, its teeth as well. From what Marry could see, aside from size and coloring, it didn`t appear any different from an ordinary Shield Liger, barring the strange sense of boredom that she imagined being projected by it.

"Hm. I think one of my uncles or aunts owned that, don`t see why we never got around to throwing it away or anything," she sighed, finally coming to stand next to the man with a raised brow.

"All I know is that some of the mechanics said it won`t let anyone pilot it anymore, and that they said the last guy who tried to reprogram it with a different personality got ejected into the ceiling and then fell to his death," the man replied. "Mind you all I know is heresay that I got from the few mechanics I`ve actually spoken to..."

"Oh, no. I remember hearing something about that. It was the first work-related fatality in the company`s history, although I can`t remember the specifics," she explained with a shrug, finally turning towards the Dark Horn. "It`s unimportant, really. My name`s Marry Champ, by the way, and you are?"

"Leyon Martin," the man answered without bothering to extend a hand for her to shake, simply continuing to stare at the Shield Liger as if it was going to start talking anytime now.

"... Right. Nice speaking to you," Marry politely said, walking back towards the Dark Horn after a few more seconds. She might`ve been nervous, but at least she wasn`t insane like Leyon seemed to be.

Charged particle beams flared as if they were being fired from a machine gun, pulse lasers danced across a mile of solid armoring, missiles and anti-Zoid slugs rained down from above, sonic booms thundered in and Strike Laser Claws dug into cracks and splits like burning splinters.

The Geno Breaker was the only real threat, but the others were proving just enough of a combined annoyance to keep his attention focused at least partially on them. Still, he watched it through one good eye, envisioned it through use of the same sixth sense that had allowed him to home in on Farentown like a bat zooming in on an unprepared insect. He watched with more interest than he gave anyone else, putting the Fox, Raynos and Sworder all on a mental backburner and throwing only token potshots at the three of them.

He saw every move, watching as the Breaker all but danced through his attacks, burning its way between countless beams and bolts, stopping on dimes and bursting straight up, sliding to a complete stop along its feet and jumping into a sideways strafe with its hip guns blazing almost harmlessly across his ankles.

"You`re wrong," he finally thought, his lumbering body jerking with a swiftness that defied its formerly sluggish pace, weight heaving back and to one side as one of his forelegs slung up. "We`re exactly alike. One and the same."

Weight shifted again, the Breaker was caught in a shadow and instantly screeched to a halt, only to strafe sideways instantly. There was a split second of delay, during which time, the Hellwalker`s foot continued down like a sledge hammer. The Shadow Fox skidded to a stop and shrieked, its pilot yelled something over the broadband and the Geno suddenly threw its mouth open, bursting out with a charged particle beam and flinging back from the recoil.

The Walker`s foot smashed into the ground, hard packed dirt and sand flew up in a shockwave and the hundreds of thousands of tons of weight in the leg continued downward for no less than eighty feet. Pain finally shot through his senses as the beam kept firing, plowing through first the top layers of armor, then beneath that.

"If I was as much of a tool as you are, I wouldn`t just be piloting him," came the inevitable reply, just as the beam cut off. There were a few moments of silence. The debate paused, the fighting itself seemed to grind to a halt as he turned his massive head on its even more massive neck, arcing across a country mile in a split second and facing the infinitely smaller Zoid with his good eye.

"I am not a tool ANYMORE!" The mind of the Core component once known as Henry Rommel shrieked telepathically, its words underscored by the shocking sting of a column of fire erupting from the point where the Breaker`s particle beam had sliced through his wrist, exploding out several dozen feet before the flames ceased and turned into nothing but a scorched puff of smoke, charred black.

Restructured programming kicked back into action, the wrist numbed completely and internal measures designed to prevent further damage from fire or the environment kicked in, causing foam to leak out through the open wound. Slowly but intimidatingly, he tore his foot back from the broken ground beneath and around it, sending off another cloud of smoke.

"You really have lost your conscience then," Bill replied in a slow, methodically driven voice, his words ringing through the Hellwalker`s mind.

"I`d be lying through my teeth if I said I`d ever even had one," Henry replied in kind, still ignoring virtually everything else on or above the battlefield. It was a mistake that proved painfully easy to regret.

The words hadn`t really been heard as much as they`d been howled in a rage over almost every short range frequency that the Walker could pay attention to, punctuated with a swift, stinging sensation across the inside of his wrist, just outside of the areas damaged by the Breaker`s particle beam. Almost on cue, the Shadow Fox darted into his field of vision, its gun swinging forward and giving a spin before he felt the sting once again, this time lancing like a short tipped dart across his only working eye.

Vision clouded briefly with hot, red static, the Hellwalker`s head lifted up in pained annoyance, and attentions shifted.

Marcus Harlock had just painted a bull`s eye across his back. What was once Henry Rommel intended to put a bomb through it.

The Breaker growled, the Walker began to shift, stomping forward and quickly beginning to gain speed that it simply had not had the previous night.

"Be my guest," Bill replied smoothly enough, watching three mile long body of the Demon storm away, even as the Geno calmly began to turn of its own accord, only to finally stand still, footlocks slamming into place as the pincers flipped forward, its shield flaring into existence as another message rang through the Hellwalker`s thoughts.

There was a sound of an old fashioned hinged door opening and closing, Leon greeted it with only a backhanded wave of his index finger, speaking up with a quiet tone as his head straightened up. Naomi was still passed out against him, having eventually flopped down with her head and shoulders laying sideways on his lap, facing the windows. Accordingly, her body had shifted up until it was entirely sprawled out across the width of the padded bench they were sitting on.

"Hmph. I`d been hoping to catch you while sleeping," an older voice replied casually as a man in his late thirties or early forties walked around and sat down to Leon`s other side.

"Not happening, Dad. One too many wet fingers jammed in your ear makes you a light sleeper," he replied flatly, staring out at the landing pads and runways with disinterested, dry eyes that were hazed from sleep. Leon was usually only a step above being legally blind whenever he woke up, his eyes were always so dry they couldn`t quite focus for a good number of minutes.

"I`ve only been living away from you and Leena for four or five months now, Dad," Leon Tauros answered with a blunt tone, giving his father a sideways glance with a raised brow for emphasis.

"Not my fault you lost your sense of humor while you were gettin` around," the older man shot back with a similar expression.

"Well... What can I do for you?" Leon finally asked after a few more seconds, both turning back towards the glass as Steve threw his arms up over the the back of the bench and leaned back. Unconsciously, Leon mimicked him with one arm a few moments later.

"Just came to see how you were doing... I can count off the times I`ve seen and heard from you since you left on one hand," Steve replied simply enough, head lulling off to the side. Again, Leon mimicked him, this time in reverse, tilting his head to the opposite side.

"Pretty good actually... Aside from getting my butt stomped in back at Romeo by a blue Geno Breaker."

"... Shiny," Steve mumbled, completely missing the point about his son losing the battle and instead trying to visualize something as cool looking as the Zoid he`d just mentioned. After a while, a thin trail of drool snaked down from the side of his mouth.

"... Got a little something on your face there, Dad," Leon pointed out blandly. Steve paused, dabbed the drool away with his labcoat`s collar and finally got around to replying.

"I ran up into battle against an opponent completely out of my league after using all of my ammo and a good bit of my energy slapping around Scout Foxes. The guy fought like Bit in a Geno, almost, except he... Turned on his own support towards the end. Not until after he`d taken me down with one of his pincers. Then I was saved. Twice," Leon explained in short order.

"Sounds like you had a pretty good streak of luck, minus that part about losing," Steve commented. "Who ended up saving you?"

"Pierce Summers, you might`ve met her at some point... She saved me the first time, got shot down though. Then Naomi pinned him down and almost killed him, but then an Organoid popped up and teleported him away. Sounds nuts, huh?" Leon asked, letting off a slightly cracked, Steve-like grin at his own luck. How close he`d come to being a burnt shadow on the sand was still enough to make the hairs along the back of his neck stand on end and cause involuntary twitches to his jaw muscles.

"Did the pilot sound like Bit?" Steve asked in return, more serious now, with brows slightly furrowed and his jaw set.

"It sounds like you took on Bill Chapman," the older Tauros stated about as bluntly as a baseball bat. "He was a member of the Thunder Team, kidnapped in the middle of our battle a week or so before the crap started hitting the fan."

"... That explains that," Leon replied, now feeling even luckier than he already had. "Did Chapman have a blue-and-red Organoid?"

"Yep. From what I`ve seen of him, he looked just like Bit with black hair tilted to the right, instead of the left. And brown eyes."

Silence held for a few seconds. Leon finally shifted to look back to Steve, who met his gaze halfway with one of those rare expressions he had when he was in a dead serious frame of mind that precursed a 180* turnaround. This case was no exception.

"Soooo, meet any future wives?" Steve asked bluntly, with a near mirror of the same cracked grin that Leon had had just a few moments before.

"Well, Rina`s not here and Leena doesn`t give a damn so long as you give her money on her birthday... Someone has to make up for it," Steve replied simply enough, leaning back again and staring out as a Hammer Head slowed to a stop over one of the landing pads and began to lower down, with a pair of Redlers with Booster Cannons and a gunned up Pteras followed suit, casting long shadows across the lobby for a few seconds.

"What about Naomi?" Steve asked with a near matching tone. "You two seem close enough..."

"You fluked into it with Mom. Besides, Naomi and I are too platonic for anything to develop," he added as a counter to what his father had just suggested. Unlike Steve, Leon wasn`t enough of an idiot savant in the art of romance to literally botch into a relationship with the girlfriend of one of his own best friends. Besides, he didn`t want to have to slug it out with someone over an old grudge in twenty years.

"Can`t wait to meet her," Steve replied, his question already answered before his son had ever said a word.

Simple enough order to make when you were being chased by a three mile long death machine fast enough to catch up to you at roughly two hundred miles per hour - especially when the damn thing was gaining on you more and more with every second. It was like a rat trying to outrun a stampeding bull elephant, only proportionately worse in just about every way. Elephants usually didn`t carry around hundreds of kilotons of firepower, nor did they have a love of trying to use it at virtually every chance.

For all intents and purposes, the Hellwalker had completely forgotten that everyone else on or above the battlefield exists, it was dedicated solely to destroying the Shadow Fox. To prove the point, it was using just about every gun in its arsenal to do so, causing the nimbler, smaller Zoid to have to weave and draft between hundreds of explosions, which in turn put a very visible dent into its overall speed since it couldn`t keep moving in a straight line.

"Remind me to buy a gun," Pierce`s voice apathetically rang over the comm, she was either completely unworried or simply didn`t care at all. Either way, the Storm Sworder was quick to come into view, swooping in alongside the Raynos and firing on any one of the numerous gaping craters in the Hellwalker`s side, drawing no real attention other than sparse interceptor fire.

The Breaker still stood back, either recovering from its recent frenzy of charged particle beams or simply waiting for the right time to attack.

In short, Mark was utterly alone even amongst his own comrades. It was an alarming, and somewhat disorienting feeling as he tightened his grip on the Fox`s controls for the umpteenth time. He had been letting the Fox take over almost everything for the time being, seeing as how the Zoid could anticipate and adjust to the mass attacks far better than he could right now.

At least, he had been. Around the same time as the Hellwalker came within range of trying to snap its jaws shut right on the Fox`s black-and-gold hide, the control shifted from the Fox to Mark, and the Zoid`s performance and tactics showed it, one foreclaw stabbing into the ground at the proper angle to act as an anchor, swinging the Shadow Fox right around and skidding it to an ungainly, but unpredicted halt. As Mark had hoped, the Walker`s guns failed to keep track, but dodging those teeth wasn`t going to be an easy thing to accomplish.

"Luck don`t fail me now," he thought in earnest, driving the Fox forward and to the right, then left and then right again. The Walker`s head shifted with the first change, slugged into the second and was unable to make the third in time, the impaler teeth in its mouth slamming shut on thin air and dirt as the Demon`s head drove into the ground, only to violently tear back out in an effort to swing itself at the fleeing Shadow Fox, which was now already halfway towards the legs on the Walker`s left side.

Gunshots rang out once again, Mark wondered how much more abuse his hearing could take and the Fox tweaked into action, gracelessly hopping towards the side in mid-run and causing a hail of plasma-packed instant death to streak by with a scream of heat and pressure, rattling the senses of both Zoid and pilot at once. Guns across the Walkers neck and tail finally began to kick into action as the body started to turn, but by then, Mark had already passed the first foot and was coming up on the second.

The Demon shifted its weight with a heave, forward and to the left, its back left leg slinging up with deceptive speed only to fall right back down like a hammer. The Shadow Fox barely avoided the foot itself, but was promptly thrown over by the resulting shockwave that its impact caused, ground shattering as raw force blew through the air, flinging the Fox up and to the left.

Mark was silent aside from the stereotypical hissing yell of any pilot in battle, eyes winced shut as the Fox somehow flipped itself upright and landed on both feet, coiling down into a crouch and springing back up sideways and towards the right once again, only to dart left and forward on its second landing. Mark opened his eyes with a shudder and took control back once again, feeling rather than seeing when the Hellwalker readjusted its weight once again, standing straight.

The main monitor promptly switched out of conventional viewmode, dust clouding its basic optics, and instead generating an eerie looking view of the battlefield composed solely by sound, hazed slightly from the dust but still virtually crystal clear in comparison. Mark briefly rose a brow, seeing as how that hadn`t been a feature he`d known of the last time he`d piloted the Fox, but quickly readjusted to the blacklit world of squiggly glowing outlines, his eyes finding the sudden movement of the Walker`s tail to be of particular interest.

Like a great whip, it swung from one side to the other, gathering momentum before curling around and slightly upward, then coming down with all guns blazing. The Fox tore out of the dust, someone shouted his name and the optics flared back to normal.

"Fucking son of a bitch," he growled out, swinging the Zoid up and over the initial line of shots, almost all of which exploded right behind and beneath the Shadow Fox, throwing it ever higher into the air as that colossal tail came crashing down with the crack of a false sonic boom, sounding almost like a maniacal jet engine than anything else. Either way, the Fox again curled itself upright, charging the claws before Mark had even figured out what was going on.

By the time Mark glanced down at the console, he felt the entire Zoid jerk from a spin, coming down at an angle and passing between a pair of quick-tracking turrets near the back of the tail. The Strike Laser Claw stabbed into the base of one with a precision that was literally inhuman, slitting into an inches-wide gap in the actual armor and tearing through it. The turret broke away, pulse lasers streaked and its companion exploded as several shots went right down the main barrel and lanced into its firing mechanism.

The Shadow Fox artfully touched down with a skid, stabilizers spraying out a hail of sparks in its front legs as the Hellwalker continued running, unable to so quickly change its course.

"How the HELL?!" Mark yelped, still staring down at the Fox`s console screen.

The only response he got was a somewhat amused sounding growl from the Zoid, which promptly turned around on its own, the laser vulcan gun swinging back into place. The Walker finally managed to get over what had just happened and sharply tried to turn to the right, shifting virtually all of its massive weight onto its back and front left legs in the process, tail and neck alike shifting here and there for added stability.

For a few seconds, Mark held his breath, wondering how much longer it would be before the Hellwalker got around to firing on him again. Not like it couldn`t already, it seemed that the pilot - or whatever kind of intelligence drove the damn thing - was having trouble comprehending what had just happened. Not that Mark blamed it, but still.

"We`ll take it from here," Hameros pointed out as both the Raynos and Storm Sworder literally blew into view, sweeping down from overhead and opening fire like death from above. "Take a break, catch your breath and come back in after Chapman joins back up."

"We won`t be the ones needing it," Pierce replied before Jamie could utter a word, catching the Walker`s attention by hitting it with a missile near the remaining functional eye.

"That`s what you think," Mark thought with a shake of the head, letting the Fox decide whether it wanted to stay nearby or haul ass to a safer vantage point.

[Initiating Stopgap Repair System. Estimated time to maximum stabilizer performance: 2 minutes...]

[You never thought to ask.] Came the simple, silent reply on the console monitor.

"Keep missile usage down a bit, we can`t exactly stop off at a transport and reload here," Jamie bit out as the Raynos banked gently to the right, dodging a stream of anti-air pulsefire in the process.

"I`ve seen little old ladies be more reckless than you," Pierce replied simply, her own manuevering far less restricted than that of the JT. Where Jamie was trying to keep movement to a minimum to keep his aim steady, Pierce acted on a mixture of impulse and premeditation, dodging without hesitation, taking potshots with whatever was available and generally just trying to be a thorn in the Hellwalker`s side.

"You don`t know anything about me," Jamie retorted with about the same tone, squeezing the trigger and feeling his Zoid shudder subtly from the recoil of its new long ranged rifle - with no small amount of satisfaction. Comparitively minor explosions spread across one of the lesser armored joints in the Walker`s neck, barely even causing minor dents there.

"And I can say the same to you," Pierce shot back yet again, swinging the Storm Sworder down towards the ground at an almost insanely low altitude, then popping up its headblade and slowing down. For a moment, Jamie swore he could hear her taunting the three mile deathbringer as if it were an impotent golf player in a mid-life crisis, and then he heard the screeching of metal against energized metal, only barely able to watch as a silver-and-red blur ducked under the Walker and arced back up into view on the other side, barely able to dodge through the shriek of plasma bolts that it met in reply.

"You`re nuts, I can say that much," Jamie finally muttered, swinging the JT towards the Walker`s head and pulling the triggers again - three of them in a row. The Zoid again shuddered subtly, pulse lasers and two types of cannon shell streaking through the air with several cracks and hums - the cannon rounds each hitting around the back of the Walker`s already injured eye and the lasers managed to further slag the broken Rev Raptor blade into it.

Jamie swooped up, the Storm Sworder crossed into his vision and his ears almost instantly went deaf as the Hellwalker threw its head this way and that, howling with pain, teeth gnashing ferally as electricity lanced out of its already wounded eye, crackling into the air and causing a surge of smoke to follow. The guns briefly stopped firing, Jamie`s hearing managed to return right as Pierce made yet another wisecrack.

"Well duh... Knew we should`ve aimed for the gimp eye," she commented a bit blandly, whipping back around in a tight U-turn and heading back in with her gattling gun blazing.

"Just be careful about wasting ammo on it - we don`t know just where we have to hit it to kill the thing..."

"In the head. His main core`s in the body, but a second, more important one`s situated in the head, and a third, less important one is in the base of his tail," Bill Chapman calmly chimed in, his voice sounding somewhat disinterested in the cold, surgical strikes that the Sworder and JT were throwing out.

"... And how do you know this?" Pierce asked where Jamie was still trying to comprehend that the Walker had three cores just to function.

"How DARE YOU?!" A voice screamed through the stark nothing between minds, only a step beneath shattering thought from its intensity alone.

"Pretty easily, actually," Bill replied with a slight wince, feeling the Geno Breaker`s protective presence following the more hostile one right into his mind. "You don`t murder a million people and not expect some karmic retribution when you go spouting your mouth off about your own weaknesses, dumbass."

The Raynos and Sworder each swooped up and over the Hellwalker`s back hump, corkscrewing into a rapid ascent and dodging fire with virtually every second that ticked by.

"Pierce, Jamie," Bill began, his voice terse and completely stripped of the morbidly casual tone it had carried when he`d first arrived at the former Blitz Team Base. Both aerial Zoids promptly hit their boosters and straightened out, the fire from the Walker`s defensive guns ceased instantly and the Demon`s attention shifted.

"Trying to get the drop on me? WELL IT ISN`T WORKING!" The great beast`s Voice declared, jarring Chapman`s vision for a few crucial seconds. Guns began to shift, but the head had already gotten into position, the battery of heavy weaponry on its snout promptly screaming to life as the colossal Zoid let out a war cry that could easily deafen someone. The Shadow Fox had been lucky to have moved out of the way.

The Breaker, on the other hand, was presently immobile, its footlocks in place and its shield holding strong as anti-Zoid plasma bolts the size of Command Wolves crashed into it, an almost gleeful sense translating into Bill`s thoughts as his sight returned. Neon blue eyes set onto a target point as the Walker began to open its mouth, the Geno`s particle intake fan hummed to life.

"Surprise attacks usually aren`t my style anyway," he finally muttered out as the heavy gunfire came to a grinding halt, the smoke promptly drifting into his field of vision. It didn`t matter, the Breaker could still see through it anyway.

Duelling spheres of supercharged particles formed up in the mouths of either Zoid, the Breaker`s tail went rigid and the Walker`s body fumbled to try and keep up with the aim of its head. Bill had the edge though, where the Hellwalker was still gathering power just to carry out what, to it, was only a mid-level particle beam, the Breaker`s own shield energy was being funneled into the particle fan on its back, causing the charge time to decrease rapidly.

In short, while the Hellwalker`s vastly more powerful cannon was still charging up, Bill`s shield had already finished dropping and his own gun was ready to fire.

Pincers flipped back, the Geno issued a loud roar and its pilot echoed with a shout, while the smoke first burst forward and then split right open from the initial pressure wave of the Breaker`s charged particle beam, which itself screamed straight through the miles of space between both the blue Geno and the colossal Demon, impacting into the Walker`s own building energy and hammering it into the massive Zoid`s throat.

A mix between a human scream and a Whale King`s shriek blistered through the ears of anyone within a dozen miles of the battle. The Hellwalker - all three miles of it - staggered as it charged particle cannon overloaded, overheated and exploded, the blast erupting as a fiery belch from the Demon`s gigantic mouth. Gun parts the size of cars slagged into the air and hit the ground like molten lava, the fire tilted like a sideways mushroom cloud for several seconds before the Walker threw its head back towards the sky, balance seeming to waver slowly from side to side. Several of its once imposing teeth had been melted away into nothing, a few others had been broken, while the jaw itself seemed to only barely be able to move.

"You talk too much, blowhard," Bill replied simply, disengaging the footlocks and mentally turning down the power of the charged particle gun. Boosters kicked on in synch, the Breaker hurtled forward and up, slinging through the air in a blue blur with claws flipped forward and their arm mounts fully deployed and extended. Rockets and machine guns fired from the hips, its grappler claws seemed to fidget and its head blade flipped forward.

"Focus fire on the hole in its foot - I know," the Fox pilot`s voice replied before he could even finish speaking. Almost with perfect timing, laser vulcan shots lanced by the Breaker`s side and the Shadow Fox made its presence known again with a synthesized howl of battle.

"Pierce, Jamie, aim for the throat," Bill calmly ordered, feeling the surging build of more charged particles in the Geno`s mouth. With near surgical precision, the Zoid pointed itself towards the Walker`s wounded leg ankle joint, sliding above the ground in a slightly different direction as guns finally began to fire at random. Even in all of its pain, the Hellwalker still seemed to have the presence of mind to at least try and defend itself.

His sight blanked red and warning signs flashed across every field of his limitless vision, every single part of his head burned to such an extent that not even the selectively numb programming he had installed into himself could keep the pain away. It seared into every mechanical nerve, brought mortality back to his senses and reminded him, for countless nanoseconds, that he was still vulnerable.

"FUCK YOU!" Came the instant reply, a telepathic shockwave lancing across frequencies unknown to most fields of human science. The Geno Breaker let out a groan and slowed briefly in response, reacting solely to the instant migraine that almost levelled its pilot out of his senses. "AFTER ALL THAT I`VE SUFFERED THROUGH, YOU DON`T HAVE THE FUCKING RIGHT TO LECTURE ME! YOU`RE NOTHING BUT A GOD DAMNED RODENT TO ME!"

Grinding teeth and a seething hiss somehow reached his ears as the warning screens faded away, one by one, and gunfire resumed. Bolts of plasma threw off of the Hellwalker`s massive body, neck and tail in random directions and at random times, some guns firing single shots, others completely going berserk, while the heaviest cannons, the ones on its main body, jolted around and fired off at random, artillery and externally fired charged particle beams and bolts alike literally gutting the surrounding battlefield and turning the skies above into a virtual hell zone.

"I was wrong about you," Bill finally growled out telepathically as the Breaker recovered, swinging through a dozen plasma bolts and boosting over a dumbfired missile that would`ve been put to better use trying to strike at the Sworder and Raynos.

"What the fuck are you blabbering on about you little RAT?!" Another telepathic surge, this one met with a vastly weaker defense, mental static literally filtering the attack into nothing.

Sight finally finished returning, the Walker almost instantly started to throw its head blindly towards the ground like a gigantic ball and chain, the weight of the tail swinging into an awkward counterbalance.

"You`re nothing but a spoiled drug addict throwing a temper tantrum because he doesn`t like his new toy."

The Breaker slipped almost artfully out of the path of the downward headswing upon landing, boosting to the side and swinging back around in a half-orbit towards the Walker`s chest. Gunfire obliterated virtually everything around it, yet the Geno itself seemed virtually invulnerable, its charged particle gun firing again with a quick burst.

"And your puny little lizard is reaching its limits already, you pathetic excuse for a runaway farmboy."

The Shadow Fox appeared in the Hellwalker`s line of sight, claws glowing like golden death as the smaller Zoid and its hellbent pilot suddenly realized that they had just made a fatal error. If Chapman had any comeback, he didn`t bother with the concentration to send it, instead blurting out with two other voices across a broadband frequency of some kind. Even as the Core fluid leaked from both of the pits that had once been his eyes, even as the pain continued to burn into his consciousness like a cattle brand, what used to be Henry 'Surak' Rommel let out a depraved mental laugh.

The ground exploded in dust and smoke. Miles away, a young woman with green hair shot up in bed with an ear piercing scream...

Silence dominated the hangar of the former Blitz Team base, underscored by the sole presence of a boy dressed in a shaggy white t-shirt and a pair of khaki shorts, holding a pair of electrobinoculars to his eyes. His expression could be described only as neutral, there was no fear in it, nor was there sorrow or joy, only an apathy that could only barely be understood.

["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."]

The words still rang in his ears, long after the man who`d spoken them had gone. The emotion behind them had been well hidden, but there`d been an underlying sense of desperation that he had been able to detect, although it didn`t quite fit the definition found in a dictionary. Most defined desperation as a suicidal gamble when faced with an utter lack of hope.

What he`d seen earlier hadn`t been desperation from a lack of hope, it`d been from a surplus of it.

["I couldn`t save anyone back there, but I can at least try to keep it from happening again."]

How that worked was anyone`s guess, most certainly not his own though. That a simple phrase, articulated through a half-lie that he`d recognized in an instant, could drive a man to gleefully confront a harbinger of nothing short of instant death was something that he couldn`t quite wrap his mind around in the slightest. He tried though, tongue in cheek, brown eyes narrowed in thought, black hair rustling a bit in a breeze as a distant cry flittered at his ears, audible only just barely. It was the sound of the Hellwalker`s screams.

"What will you do now?" He wondered to himself, finally putting down the binoculars with a look that was worn far beyond his years. Coincidentally, the door into the hangar slid open without warning, the sounds of a young woman yelling from behind him coming into his ears.

"He`s not here," the boy finally said, before she could even pause and notice that he was present. The Shadow Fox, Raynos and Storm Sworder being gone should`ve tipped her off enough as it was, but sleep and emotion seemed to cloud her thoughts enough that she shouted again anyway.

He let out a wince, finally. Her voice sounded wracked, raw and strained to levels that could cause a week`s worth of irritation if she didn`t quiet down soon. The stress behind it though, that was something that no amount of silence could fix, at least not that he knew of.

With a speed that defied human legs, she had run up and come to a grinding halt next to him, breathing unevenly. She must have run all the way through the base looking for the man that he had just watched get hammered into a potentially bloody pancake in the desert. Still, he remained calm, perhaps even unsympathetic, as he spoke up again.

"Marcus, your sister, Jamie Hameros and a man named Bill Chapman went to fight the Hellwalker out in the desert. They have until noon before Kyle is set to send us all off and away from here, assuming they don`t stop it somehow. Even if they do, they`ll probably all die."

A sting shocked through his cheek, the air of the hangar echoed a crack of skin against skin.

"Don`t you dare talk like that around me!" Abigail Summers yelled with the authority of a mother who didn`t even fully recognize her own position yet.

"I`ll make a mental note of that. I was simply stating a likely outcome," he replied after a few moments, not even rubbing his reddened cheek or shedding a single tear. "They`re already down to three."

"... It wasn`t him. Or your sister," he finally lied, though his tone wasn`t comforting in the slightest. The lie itself worked a bit though, and finally, he brought the binoculars back up to his eyes, listening only disinterestedly to the sounds of the woman he was rapidly coming to think of as his new mother speaking, more to someone who wasn`t even there than to herself or him.

A depraved cackle shot through the mind of Bill Chapman. His jaw hung open in shock, the broadband was silent and the Breaker itself seemed to pause for a moment in response to its pilot. The Sworder and Raynos straightened out at several thousand feet and the Hellwalker finally threw its head up towards the sky, letting out a shrill, ear piercing shriek, all guns going silent for but a few moments, its wounded jaws on the verge of breaking from the force of its own roar as more smoke blew from the burnt hole that used to be its main charged particle cannon, flame retardent foams finally being deployed.

What everyone was in shock about, however, wasn`t that the Walker had managed to succeed in taking out one of their own. It was that exactly the opposite had happened - as evidenced by the tiny black-and-brown speck currently dangling from the side of the Hellwalker`s already banged up head.

"DID YOU HONESTLY THINK YOU`D GET RID O` MY ASS THAT EASILY?!" Marcus Harlock demanded with an utterly absurd sense of glee shining through in his voice, meeting a reply that Bill felt more than he heard, with the Hellwalker screaming so loudly that the ground rattled in protest and clouds up in the sky were blown apart into an imperfect circle. Still, the Shadow Fox hung on, covered in dirt and grime, charcoal red optics glowing in a battle frenzy and golden claws embedded fiercely into the remaining eye of the great beast as its pilot continued blurting out random insults.

The Demon threw its head from side to side, screaming still, yet the Fox continued to try and claw into place, back legs kicked away at the colossal Zoid`s armor while the laser vulcan gun fired off aimlessly, raking shots across the top of the eye in question. Eventually though, one Strike Laser Claw was torn out and then swung right back in, shattering feet worth of glassteel that could`ve taken a full fledged artillery barrage without cracking, plunging all the way in to the wrist as stabilizers spewed out bolts and sparks of electricity.

"That man is utterly fucking insane," Bill finally managed to mumble out, his jaw still hanging open as the Geno again began to dodge - now just trying to avoid being stepped on as the Hellwalker`s entire body flailed and stomped in every direction, desperately trying to throw off the lone Zoid clinging to its rapidly damaging eye.

"Pierce, Jamie!" He managed to get out, only to look away and hear incoming sonic booms as both Zoids passed right overhead, firing missiles almost at random and tagging right into the Hellwalker`s damaged wrist on luck alone, then barreling out from under the huge beast and soaring away as if they`d never even been there at all. Bill was inclined to follow their example.

"How many shots we got left, buddy?" He asked, to which the Geno replied with only the mental equivelent of a single raised finger and a verbal growl. The Zoid boosted back, the Shadow Fox howled its war cry and the Walker finally began to slow down, even as its mental Voice echoed through Chapman`s thoughts.

Bill could only let out a warped grin all his own as the Blue Geno Breaker slowed backwards and to a stop, standing squarely in front of the shaking Hellwalker. Footlocks clamped into place, the particle intake fan hummed and churned, the Zoids optics lit up fiercely and its tail went rigid. The jaws flipped open, the barrel extended out into view and power began to gather from both the impact and the rim of the weapon itself.

It was the last charged particle beam that the Breaker was going to be able to fire at full power without needing a rest to regain its already drained energy reserves. He was going to make it count.

"But isn`t he just a pathetic, harmless rodent?" He had to ask, just out of sheer, unfamiliar spite. The only reply was a long string of curses as the Hellwalker started to stomp forward, now heedless of the weight it was putting on any of its limbs, and equally heedless of the Shadow Fox still clawing its way through the now viciously red glassteel eye, which already outsized the Zoid itself by several times.

Gunfire sprayed at almost every angle from the huge Zoid`s body, an explosion finally caught Chapman`s attention, and it wasn`t the explosion of one of the shieldclaw arms blowing off, or the sound of plasma beams being distorted and sucked down into the fan at near light speed, already on the verge of overloading the power systems of the Breaker`s particle gun. No, the explosion that Bill finally paid attention to was that of a lancing bolt clip off one of the JT`s wings, then the other right after it, leaving only the burnt bases to remain.

"Shit, JAMIE!" Bill found himself yelling right alongside Pierce, whose Storm Sworder swiftly broke away entirely and swooped down after the JT, the green Zoid`s pilot yelling out a colorful string of curses that`d make a nun blush in the process.

"Pierce, get aft-" "I`m already on it," the woman replied before he`d even finished speaking. A warning alert flashed across the Breaker`s screen, a mental slap upside the head drew his attention back to the actual fighting, just in time to watch as the Hellwalker began to stampede forward.

Footlocks disengaged, the Breaker`s charge continued building to levels that threatened near instant burn-out. Boosters flared, the Zoid hurtled forward, kicked its legs straight out and ahead in a clumsy V, while the Walker threw its weight back and swung up with its front right leg, going for a near repeat of the soccer kick it had used against Kyle Mazemia the previous night.

"Too bad, I was about to tell you to watch this," Bill managed to snappily shoot back, just before giving the mental command for the airborn Geno Breaker to finally release its destructive payload with a blast of both forward moving energy with enough intensity to vaporize a battalion of Gojulas units and have power to spare, as well as the instant surge of recoil that came along with it. Jets burned to their maximum, Bill Chapman let out a howling scream and the Blue Geno Breaker flew back, held aloft by its awkwardly positioned legs and propelled by its own main gun.

The beam slammed into the Walker`s already wounded leg, slagging off an entire Elephander-sized toe and plowing right through the already damaged wrist before raking up the rest of the limb and ending at the shoulder, leaving behind a charred trail of devestation in its wake. The Hellwalker shrieked and threw its foot back down with a stumble, just before flames erupted from it, both from the earlier entrance wound that had been left by the first major hit that Bill had gotten, and from beneath it, as the explosion funneled down into the ground and liquified its way out through the dirt, which promptly became lava.

Foam sprayed out of both entrance wounds, but the armor across the leg still scorched and burned, letting off superheated steam and smoke as the Demon tried to keep from tumbling over.

"FUCK YOU!" The Hellwalker`s Mind cried once more. "FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU!!!"

"My, what an intelligent thing to say," Bill replied in kind, just as the cannon cut out with a burst of smoke from both the barrel and the fan, as well as jets of steam erupting from its tail vents. The Breaker`s leg boosters stopped firing, its back thrusters shut off as well. Both legs then bent back as if in a mid-air crouch, straightening downward with a kick as the jets fired off again, throwing the Geno into a backflip.

The Blue Breaker landed hard on its feet with a skid, digging out a pair of trenches that were each longer than football fields by the time it came to a stop, the thrusters in its legs again cutting out. Both pilot and Zoid let out matching wheezes, Harlock`s voice cut into the mental frey unknowingly.

"I think ya pissed `im off even worse than me!" The Fox pilot practically cackled like a deranged lunatic, his smaller, straining Zoid still clinging to the Hellwalker`s head as if it had some sort of death wish.

"Bad news, Mark," Bill replied simply, flipping both his killing spike and remaining shieldclaw blades forward, the latter closing tightly as if to be used like one big knife with a few gaps in it.

"... What?" Harlock asked, just as the Hellwalker began to stumble forward like an enraged drunk.

"WHAT?! How the fuck can an energy gun run outta ammo?!" The other pilot yelled, somehow managing to remain coherent even as his Zoid, and by extension himself as well, was being flung around like a rag doll with an attitude problem.

"The gun blew out. It`s useless `til I can fix it," Bill answered in short order, tongue inching towards his cheek at the sight of the incoming Hellwalker.

"Can`t you just... Work some o` that funky shit you did earlier on it?" Mark groaned out with a jerky voice, obvious evidence as to the conditions he was dealing with. Audio-only made it somewhat impossible to gauge Harlock`s actual physical conditions, but Chapman was willing to bet they weren`t very comfortable.

And with that calm phrase, the Breaker jumped back, spun around with a swing of its tail and reignited its leg and back thrusters for the umpteenth time in the past few minutes, blasting away at full speed before it had ever even finished touching the ground.

"You think that`ll help you?" The Hellwalker asked, even as sparks and smoke started to leak from its once uninjured right eye. "Do you honestly think that running away will help you?!"

"I DON`T EVEN NEED TO SEE YOU! I CAN HUNT YOU DOWN WHEREVER YOU GO, NO MATTER HOW FAR YOU RUN!"

With all guns blazing, and with the Shadow Fox coming along whether Mark wanted to or not, the Hellwalker stampeded forward, chasing after the infinitely smaller Geno Breaker with absolutely no regard for its own wellbeing.

Falling to one`s death at mach two or three from over a mile off the ground really wasn`t as bad as some people made it out to be, at least no the eyes of one Jamie Hameros, currently half-pinned back against his seat from the G-forces and the fact that he presently weighed roughly two or three times as much as normal. Not to mention that little technicality about all the weight being pulled in a completely different direction than what his body was suited for.

"I guess there`re worse ways to die," he mused, knowing full well that it wouldn`t have taken too much effort to just reach up and pull the emergency lever for the ejector seat.

It was a simple mixture of guilt and apathy that kept him from doing it. The angle of the fall was so shallow that he might end up surviving it anyway, assuming the crash didn`t cause the forward thruster to clog up with debris, suffer an engine jam and explode. Even if the thing had been useful, it was still somewhat of a hazard because of that annoying little catch.

Breathing was somewhat strained, the air was being forced aside almost visibly as the screaming Raynos dipped a bit deeper towards the unforgiving ground below.

"Just wish this one would hurry up," he thought to himself, staring straight ahead with impatiently gray eyes winced almost shut, his hands lying in his lap with an almost perverse sense of dignified order to them. He had no regrets. None that he cared enough to stop from allowing himself to die, anyway.

Those same eyes finally fell shut as he realized, much to his own chargrin, that he still had regrets after all, ones that he really did care about. Unfortunately for his potential future, they still weren`t enough to make him want to pull the ejection lever, or simply hit the forward thruster and used it to slow himself down, then hover his way to the ground below.

With no real amusement, he gave a passing thought as to what the Wild Eagle - Will - would have thought of this whole mess. Would the other have laughed at him? Cried because his own sacrifices had all been in vain? Shook his head in disgust? Tried to take over and survive?

What would his sister have thought? For that matter, what would his mother and father think? And what about Brad, Bit and Leena? Even the Doc?

The voice on the other end of the comm jolted him from thought, and reflexively, he complied.

"Pierce?!" Jamie finally managed to yelp, glancing back over his shoulder and jerking forward with enough force that the harness dug at his shoulders, just as the Raynos JT`s forward engine cut on, fire bursting out of it and instantly beginning to slow the clipped winged Zoid down.

"You were expecting Saint Bob?" The woman calmly answered , the Storm Sworder finally swooping up into his line of sight.

"Why the hell aren`t you back with the others?! No heroics, remember?" He growled out, wanting to just cut off the forward thruster and go back to drowning in his own self-pity on the way towards oblivion.

"Since when have I bothered following orders, dumbass?" She asked, her Zoid rapidly approaching from above and behind, swords drawn back, legs slung forward.

"You`re not gonna do what I think you are, are you?" He asked a bit dismally, realizing now that she wasn`t going to just let him drop no matter what he said. It would`ve been disturbingly easy to just shoot her down with the tailguns, it wasn`t like she was ready to dodge or anything...

"No," he finally bit at himself, belatedly realizing that he`d already grabbed the trigger and started to swing the guns up to make the attack. Without thinking, he removed his fingers from the trigger, waiting for an answer as the Sworder moved into place overhead.

And with that, the silver Zoid drifted downward, long toes singing into the remains of the Raynos` wings as the ankles clamped down, holding the green Zoid in place relative to its larger ally. With that, Pierce took full control, starting to slow herself and the JT down in a wide, gentle turn, with Jamie silently playing the part of an aerial brake to keep his own mass from throwing the Storm Sworder off balance. The unseen road back down to the ground was going to be long, but at least he had an eagle`s eye view of the chase playing itself out in the distance...

Hellfire split up from the ground, dirt turned into glass and dust boiled into putried smoke, yet the Blue Geno Breaker, missing one of its shieldclaws and suffering from an overloaded charged particle gun continued onward, weaving through salvo after blindfired salvo as the Shadow Fox gouged into the eye of the Demon, virtually everything in sight letting out some sort of war cry.

It had all come down to the wire, only one side was going to walk away alive. Marcus Harlock, who`d lost an uncle to the previous battle, and Bill Chapman, who`d gained personal insight from it in ways he himself would`ve found impossible to articulate, or the former Henry Rommel, who`d gained only new depths to a rage that already burned like an out of control wildfire, consuming what little was left of his humanity in the process.

There was something in the air within the Geno Breaker`s cockpit, a tension so thick it could`ve been cut with a knife and duct taped back up again. The Shadow Fox howled a cry of battle in the background, it only barely registered in Chapman`s ears as he swerved to avoid the umpteenth plasma blast, just as an anti-Zoid round the size of a Gustav plowed into the ground in front of him, tearing out a dozen tons of dirt and dust, yet the Breaker simply hover-skated over it. A growl finally hit his senses, tunnel vision threatened to set in at every single second where firepower wasn`t needing to be dodged.

"I know that already," he bit out at the Zoid, which again swerved to the side to avoid an errant missile.

"Where`s that gritty courage now you fucking scum?" The Hellwalker spat into his thoughts with a vile tone, somehow managing to shut out the unspeakable pain that Marcus Harlock and the Shadow Fox were causing. Apparently, Henry had only bothered with surface programming when it came to numbing the eyes.

"If you`re so deadset on trampling me, stop shooting," Bill retorted instantly, feeling the Zoid rattled all around him as a shot lanced into its back, blowing chunks out of the base of the particle intake fan.

Blue tinted to black as a missile corkscrewed into the remaining clawshield, gouging into its outermost layer of armoring and exploding. The blast did more to throw the Breaker off course than to actually damage it, although a gigantic black mark was left as a result.

Lips curled into a snarl, brows furrowed, the Demon let out a roar and the Breaker pilot responded only with more running, again swerving to avoid a blast of plasma, and again almost biting the big one as another Gustav-sized anti-Zoid round slammed into the ground and exploded next to it.

It almost felt as if the landscape itself were starting to give out from the way the Hellwalker was stampeding, running after the infinitely smaller Geno Breaker as if it were a mouse in the path of an enraged bull elephant, heedlessly swinging its weight from left to right with every heaving dual step. A small shockwave lit off for a mile in every direction as a result - it was starting to lose ground.

"I don`t choose to live, Rommel, I just do," Bill finally managed to reply, cutting the leg engines for a moment and letting the Geno skid along on the ground, back thrusters also giving out after a few seconds.

The guns cut out, the Hellwalker continued to approach and the Shadow Fox continued to fire and stab at random, coming ever closer to stalling out with each passing second of the abuse it was inflicting on itself to keep fighting.

"Convenient thing to say when you give up," the Walker replied with the notion of a sadistic little grin, sparks flying out of virtually every limb as the Demon pushed itself to the limit and beyond.

"Who said I was giving up?" Bill asked, spacing out the Breaker`s feet as the Zoid issued a fierce, challenging growl.

The clawblades split for a moment, seeming to tense up before closing back together, pointing down. The defiant Geno brought its busted side towards the charging Hellwalker without the slightest bit of fear, though anxiety threatened to consume its pilot alive and screaming.

Sweat poured down his face, the killing spike flipped forward again with a gleam of silver. The Breaker`s blue optics lit up and matched the ferocity of his own eyes, which narrowed in preparation as he leaned forward along with the Zoid, feeling its weight shift with his own, feeling the Core light up until the beast`s emotions matched up to his. Almost nodding to the huge Demon to attack, the Breaker tilted its head back, tapping the spike against each of the remaining clawblades and opening its smoke filled mouth in what almost looked like a fanged grin.

"What the hell are you doing?! MOVE!" Mark`s voice cracked across the already fuzzy radio, while the Shadow Fox finally stopped gouging into the eye of the Walker with one last straight punch, literally anchoring itself into the great Demon`s optics in anticipation.

"GET OUT OF THERE!" Jamie`s voice finally echoed into his ears as the Storm Sworder and Raynos - one carrying the other - reappeared on scanners, just as a 150mm slug punched through one of the gaping holes that the Fox had already punched into the Walker`s formerly good eye, followed by one last Triple Sworder Missile.

"We all have choices," Bill finally muttered out, the Breaker`s tail arcing towards the shrieking Hellwalker, just as shield energy gathered around the remaining clawblades, then the shield arm itself.

A small explosion blew out part of the glassteel and the materials behind it, leaving a clear view of the shell around the second Core.

Marcus Harlock didn`t hesitate, neither did the Shadow Fox for that matter, in pouring what was left of its energy into one last Strike Laser Claw, then knifing it through the gap, slagging glassteel and literally burying the Zoid shoulder deep. With almost unbelievable ease, the claw slapped against the outer shell and shattered it onto the Core.

The Breaker threw every ounce of its weight and power behind the remaining clawblades and the shield they projected, eyes literally burning with blue energy that fogged away into the air. Footlocks clamped down and the Hellwalker`s front right foot gave at least, damage layering onto damage in an impossible display of humanity`s technology mastery toppling forward on the last step before it would`ve been able to bite the Geno into mutilated chunks.

It was a scream heard and felt by anyone within a hundred miles who was even remotely telepathic. It made Bill Chapman`s head ache, it awoke Katherine Takahori out of a sound sleep, causing several people in the former Blitz Team base to erupt into screams of their own, or simply wince in unexpected pain.

With a shockwave of pressure, dust and debris, the Hellwalker hit the ground, yet its own weight and momentum forced it onward, skidding towards the Geno Breaker for a few short seconds before the smaller Zoid`s boosters kicked on. The shield met the armored snout and metal that could`ve taken a nuclear bomb crumpled like tin foil, rupturing in an instant, while the lower jaw snapped off just moments before.

Like a tide of once invicible metal, the Walker`s body continued onward, sliding like a dead snake down a hill in the middle of a landslide, yet the Breaker held its ground, and the shield stayed steady, punching through ton after ton of armor and internal circuitry. Guns fired, the shield broke the barrier into the primary Core chamber and the already dying beast tried to writhe out a series of death throes, only continue skidding along.

A leg broke off, the Shadow Fox yelped and fell, hitting the ground with a roll and instantly suffering a complete command system freeze as energy drain and the fresh loss of a limb finally did in the stubborn dog. Its leg remained in place though, sliding closer and closer until the still bright golden glow of its claws slid into the secondary Core chamber, piercing into the actual Core itself after several seconds.

Another scream echoed through Bill Chapman`s mind. It was primal, desperate, the scream of a beast whose time had come. Henry the Hellwalker died with that scream, the chance to find salvation elsewhere was born with it.

The shield stabbed into the base of the now limp tail, tearing through the third and final Core chamber as the footlocks broke. The Geno Breaker literally swam upwards within the confines of the Hellwalker`s still skidding body, finally tearing out through top armor of the tail, just as the shield overloaded and blew out, severing the second clawshield in an instant and sending it spinning through the air, where it stabbed into the ground and stayed there.

The Breaker landed on both feet, stumbled a few steps and regained its balance, the killing spike flipping back and the beaten Zoid turning with a jerk to watch as the Shadow Fox flipped through the air and crashed back down, narrowly dodging the slowing body of the dead Demon.

"Rest in peace, you sorry bastard," Bill let out with a wheeze, letting his head hang down before reaching up and using a leather sleeve to wipe the virtual gallon of sweat from his face.

Somewhere in the back of his thoughts, a delirious Marcus Harlock could swear he heard a gruff, country accented chuckle, topped off to the background growls of a Rev Raptor.

Oh, and if anyone`s wondering, the Stopgap is just an accelerated healing system that can repair damage to a very minor degree(such as overheated/overloaded stabilizers) in a matter of minutes. It`s literally just that though - a stopgap. It can`t fully fix a Zoid up.

Akino Ame: Well, we had one casualty, but it wasn`t one of the Big Four that I`ve got planned. Either way, you have no idea how much I enjoy torturing my readers. *Hands Akino a cookie for having read all of ROC in three days.* Congrats. You`re insane :P As for the missing characters... Well, they`re basically going to be the friggin` focal point of at least the first few chapters of TOD, if not more(minus the Renegade Mad Scientists we all know and ph33r). Suffice to say, everyone has a fate. Even Leyla. As for the final chapter of ROC...

Oh, and remember that mail you sent me on the alternate descendent theories? Sorry about the lack of a reply, I just got caught up in stuff and by the time I was freed up, it was a wee bit too late since AOhelL mail had thrown it out for being over seven days old. That said: Most of them were actually quite plausible after I put some thought into them.

The Big Fisch: Mark may`ve turned more serious than he had been, but it hasn`t really set in with his fighting style yet. I`m also glad you enjoyed the confession scene, as I`d been wanting to write that for a while now. Hopefully his seriousness actually showed through in this chapter, and if it didn`t... Well, I`ve got a flashback planned in the next one to help ease it along. And yeah, the Rommel Brothers are actually normal, once you get past the insane wealth, the luxury lifestyle, the seemingly genetic tendency to want to blow up the planet...

Illidan: If you thought Bill kicked ass in the last chapter, here`s hoping he knocked you on the floor and burned down your house in this one :P And yes, MyRiese is quite a bitch. She`s Queen Bitch, in fact, and I`m proud to say that. As for the Harry water scene...

It`s Harry and Leena for god`s sake. At least she didn`t shoot him this time, right? XD And yes, that 'voice' belonged to the kid. From now on though, anything ominously involving him will not be hinted at by me. I intend on mindfucking you all to hell with that kid when he gets older.

And how did you like how I pulled the Suicide Crew`s sorry collective ass outta the fire this time? XD

This Guy: Rest assured, I`m a guy :P And yes, I do feel special. Every review I get makes me feel special because I don`t get showered by countless reviewers like some authors do. I`m proud to say my readers(especially those who review or even just send me mails) are loyal folks with taste, intelligence and a good sense of humor. Especially since they haven`t lynched me for torturing them like I do XD

And if it makes any difference, once I finish Zoids, I actually intend to take a shot at going pro :P

Chaotic-Swordsman-Brad: Your longer review didn`t make it onto the list, but thanks for putting time and effort into it anyway. I`m also glad you still like things so far, hopefully this chapter further 03n3d ROC into the record books.

Vega Obscura the King: I`d bet anyone with control over the Micro-Sworder hivemind would do the same thing Vega did XD You`re also as insane as Akino for reading that much in 4-5 hours. If not more so. *Hands Vega a cookie or two.* O_o;

And if you think I`ve commited numerous AHBLings all through NA/ROC before, wait`ll ya see the shit I got planned for TOD... *Cackles like a deranged lunatic.* And glad you understood the L33t Sp34k. I was actually somewhat hesitant to use it at the start, didn`t know how many of my readers understood it, but it seems to`ve gone over pretty well, I`d say...

With all that said, we come to a rather obvious announcement: THERE IS ONLY ONE CHAPTER LEFT FOR REIGN OF CHAOS!

Hopefully, it`ll at least keep at my 90kb lower limit for these past few chapters... I don`t know if I can keep raising the fecking bar like this every damn time I post x_x

Reign of Chaos by Sh33p

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

Best Fanfics on the Web, selected by Tim

Tim Seltzer's page www.seltzerbooks.com/tim.html

Discuss books at Blogging about Books http://www.seltzerbooks.com/blog/
Other book reviews by Richard Seltzer
Opus authors -- contemporary writers whose entire work is great
The Readers' Corner and Writers Showcase

This site is published by Samizdat Express, 213 Deerfield Lane, West Roxbury, MA 02132-002. (203) 553-9925 seltzer@seltzerbooks.com

Book collections on CD and DVD. A library for the price of a book.
Limited time offer: 2 for the price of 1

Return to Samizdat Express


	Webseltzerbooks.com

Reign of Chaos

Chapter 35

Endgame