Zoids: Battlescars

Setting: two years after the Berserk Fury/Liger Zero panzer fight.

Disclaimer: I don not own a damn thing except a computer and the stereo in my room.

Main Characters: Sykes Krousen, (pronounced the same way as Lightning Saix,) who pilots a customized Liger Zero. The Phoenix in this story is more along the lines of an automated Zoid with parts of a CAS for Liger zero. By the way, I know, I got the name for the Murasame Liger wrong, I know it's not Masamune, but Masamune is just easier to type, which is why I enjoy typing Final Fantasy VII stories so much.

Chapter 1: Ready, Fight!

Sykes Krousen looked, bored, through the Zoid shop, seeing rundown Zoids that had existed for decades. It was mostly Command Wolves, the all purpose wolf-Zoids that had a tendency, unfortunately, to overheat during long battles. Why was Sykes looking for a new Zoid, anyway? He was ex-military, after that hadn't had the action he wanted, he'd quit and signed up for the Zoids Grand Championship as a Team pilot.

He took a long time at an Elephander, considering the size and armor, but decided not to, as it was a heavier Zoid than Sykes could really use. He gaped at the appearance of a Death Saurer in this rundown shop, but it was too big to be piloted effectively by Sykes.

He entered a new section of the garage that contained mostly Liger Zoids. He passed on two Blade Ligers, not agile enough, even with the boosters, and a Shield Liger with a Beam Gatling rifle attached. It would've been okay, but was still too slow to meet Sykes's expectations. The next one was different. At first, he mistook it for a Red Blade Liger with an opaque white canopy, but then he realized the body was completely different.

"Hey! That's not for Sale!" the clerk yelled, and began to run at him. As she pulled up next to him, she stood in front of him, but she was a head shorter than he was, so it didn't work much.

"What kind of Liger is this?" Sykes asked.

"It's a Liger Zero Schneider, and its got an organoid system that nobody can reason with. Nobody can pilot it." The clerk said hotly.

"Oh, let me try. Hey, Schneider!" The Liger moved, on its own, not to Sykes's surprise, and looked down at him, then roared. 'What do you want?' it said, inside Sykes's mind.

"What the hell?" he said in a whisper. 'Did you understand me?' the Zoid roared, and Sykes's brain seemed to understand him.

"Yeah. That's weird." 'Growl.' 'No kidding.'

"Who are you talking to?" the clerk asked.

"Can I take this Zoid for a test drive?"

"Didn't you hear me earlier?" The clerk asked, as the Zoid lowered its head to near ground level and opened its cockpit canopy.

"Take a look." The clerk turned and dropped her jaw.

"B-but, that Zoid's never—"

"Sorry, looks like it just did." Sykes said. "Well?"

"You can have it, free of charge. I've wanted to get rid of that thing for so damn long. And you can buy any other Zoids you want at half-price, as long as you take that damn Schneider."

"Well, I'll take the Zero Schneider, but that's really all I want, unless you've got some speed enhancement parts."

"Well, I can show you the trashed CAS I recovered along with the Zoid. There were two, a half-completed Panzer, and a full suit of Jager armor. The Panzer, as far as I know, is a heavy weapon's platform to give the Zoid more ranged weapons fire. The Jager, however, is designed completely for speed. I attached some of the Jager gear to a Command Wolf, and it tore the poor Zoid apart the exhaust was so strong. I tired to test it on my Lightning Saix, but somebody bought it before I could."

"I'll take them." Sykes said quickly.

"Uh…okay. Let's go to my desk and fill out the forms."

Sykes had to rent a small Carrier Zoid to carry the parts, but he took his new Liger Zero Schneider out of the garage on its own four legs. The cockpit was somewhat complex, for a Zoid of its size, but only because of the blades, the rest was fairly simple. Sykes would have loved to push this Liger to the red line and blazed across the desert at two hundred and forty miles per hour, but he needed to watch his carrier, who was following his Liger.

He'd bought a few things to install as well, wider laser-charged blades, for the Schneider swords, and some special cooling units off of a run down Dark Horn, for the Panzer unit.

Sykes took the time to think about looking for a team. He would probably find a few spots where pilots liked to cool down, get a break. So, find a good team and he was down.

Man, he wished he felt more confident than he sounded.

He sat down in the bar, his black overcoat and whole, "warrior goth" thing immediately marking him an outsider. He sat down at the bar and put his back to the crowd.

"What'll it be, stranger?" the old man behind the bar said, not impressed by the newcomer.

The bartender set the shot glass of the liquor in front of Sykes, who swallowed it whole, and turned away like it was water. That was all Sykes would get tonight, it was the law.

"Sykes Krousen?" asked a female voice, and he turned to see a childhood sweetheart.

"Eve?" he asked, unbelievably. She was shorter than most women her age, but she managed by having a very curvy figure, the hourglass-shaped one men like. She was very goth, more goth than Sykes was, and Sykes was happily aware she was wearing a short skirt. She was wearing fishnet hose that only went up to her thighs, showing off her garter belt, with knee-high boots that were heavily padded on the inside. She wore a sleeveless shirt and elbow high fingerless gloves with red stitches-like markings on them.

"Hey. You got out of the military?" She asked, sitting down beside him.

Sykes only nodded.

"What are you doing now?" she asked.

"Well, looking for a team right now, I bought a new Zoid, a Liger, and—"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, you bought a Liger? But you love speed! I would've thought you would've gotten a Lightning Saix or a Saber Tiger."

"Well, its…special."

"Like a retarded kid or like a love interest?"

"Uh… for the time being, I say love interest, but, uh, I could be wrong about this." Sykes said, feeling awkward for a second or two. (Wonder why?)

"Okay. Well, I have a team, but it's kind of full of newbies. We've got one Pilot, Vincent, who has fought in a Zoid, he owns a Masamune Liger. Its weaponry is kind of limited to melee blades. Well, one actually. He installed a double-barreled shock cannon on the Liger's underbelly, but that's about it." Eve said.

Sykes thought about it for a minute. He hadn't heard of a Masamune Liger. There was a Murasume Liger, and the Energy Liger, but aside from Liger zero, Blade Liger, and Shield Liger, that was it.

"I want to try him? By the way, do you have a carrier? I don't want to haul around my custom armor parts on a wagon everywhere I go."

"Carrier? Sure. We got a hover cargo. We wanted to get a Whale King, or maybe an Ultrasaurus, but we didn't have the money. My Zoid's a Dark Horn. Customizing the damn thing took all the money I had, too."

"Yeah, well, I got plenty. Let's see this Hover Cargo."

Eve and Sykes left the bar, and Sykes headed towards his Schneider and directed the carrier Zoid to follow him.

"That's your Zoid? Do you have any idea what kind of Liger that is?"

"Yeah, Liger Zero Schneider, with my own paint scheme."

"Okay. I guess you do know. Come on, it's this way." Sykes made the Zoid follow Eve.

"You're okay with this, right…what is your name?"

'I'm okay with following her into the depths of hell, as long as I get to see her butt bouncing around. You can call me Blaze, it's a cool name, and I'm not sappy anyway.'

"The fact that you said all that in one roar is just plain weird."

'Shut up and follow the damn Goth.'

Of all the Zoids in the world, Sykes picked the one with a smart mouth organoid?

"Gods, What did I do wrong in the past life?"

'You were born, weren't you?'

Walked into that one.

Yep, he's got a smart mouth organoid. If anybody wants to try and write a chapter, just wait, because I have more pre-typed and don't want to have to rewrite because you were getting bored. Remember to review.