Author's Notes:
What happened to my updates?
I had originally planned for this to be up at the end of the year. Then the laptop went squirrelly and I lost part of the chapter. Rewriting is my kryptonite (I am totally OK with striking out whole pages... but asking me to redo text I was happy with makes me crazy. Its like once I've written something its out of my brain never to be seen again) so its taken me awhile to reorient and go back over stuff I'd already covered.
I'm not sure if the finished chapter is better or worse for the double time, but at least its done. Future updates are back to being scattered all over the place and dependent on my finding time and inspiration to work on this. I'm stubbornly keeping at it though, even if its at a dreadfully slow pace, so no worries of reckless abandonment need be had.
Story stuff:
I've tried to stay away from calling the guyver's "Guyver 1", "Guyver 2" etc. too often in this fic, largely because they originally picked up their designations based on who activated their unit first – and since I changed that order here their titles and the guyvers themselves don't match up to canon.
I probably should have made this note sooner, but in case it comes up again:
Risker would now be Guyver 1, Agito Guyver 2 and Sho Guyver 3. Hence – Guyver 3 being dead.
Summary: Self-defense mode just isn't what it used to be...
Chapter 11 – Walking Dead
Thancrus grinned down at his fallen adversary. The whole of Chronos was in awe of these creatures, but his team was the best of the best and it was no surprise to him that he had been able to fell the armored man with a single blow. It would be a cold day in hell when anyone or anything could hope to stand up so easily to one of the hyper zoaniod five.
Nearby he could see Makishima now being overwhelmed by the remaining brute force attackers. Crude zoaforms to be sure, but in large platoons they could still overwhelm most any resistance. Without the pale guyver to run interference they seemed to be doing just that.
He turned back to the fallen unit, wondering if he should send Gaster or one of the Ramotith to Relic's point for a transportation unit for the body. Dead or not, weak or not, he had heard enough rumblings about the guyvers to know that Chronos would want to study the carcass.
He kicked at the lifeless form absently. It had stopped bleeding, though the grass around it was now stained an appealing shade of red.
Best to send one of the Ramotith ahead for pick-up he decided finally, and motioned for Gaster to pull out one of the remaining zoaniods for recon back to the mountain.
Something grabbed his ankle and he looked down, startled, to find a blood stained hand wrapped tightly about his leg. For a moment he failed to process the fallen body grabbing hold of him – the next he was on the ground, pulled off his feet by the dead guyver that was now rising to stand.
It made no sense. The guyver's head was destroyed and staring up at it, he could still see the fragmented edges of skull, brain tissue hanging loose from the edges in places.
There was no way this thing should be alive.
The odd metal sphere in what was left of its forehead pulsed unsteadily with an eerie blue light and Thancrus had a moment to wonder just what they did not know about the guyver yet before he died.
Masaki approached the girl slowly, wrapping his arms around her and placing a firm hand over her mouth to prevent any further screams. With Sho down their odds of victory had dropped dramatically and through the faint sense of panic that was starting to set in he was already calculating possible ways to retreat. The last thing they needed was for her to scream again and bring the zoaniods attention back to them.
Pulling Shizu with him, he backed slowly into the relative cover of the tree line. She stumbled as they moved, her entire body shaking with the shock of what they had just witnessed.
At the far side of the clearing he could see the pack of zoaniods once more move to swarm the dark guyver. There were too many of them for Masaki to have a chance at controlling them with any sort of confidence, and if he had to make a run for it with the girl he wanted to still have the energy to transform if and when they were followed.
Much though he hated to loose both of the units, they were going to have to leave the dark guyver behind. Perhaps later, when the bodies were at Relic's Point they could retrieve enough genetic material to make some effort of cloning, but right then they were outnumbered and out gunned and Masaki sensed that if he wanted to see another day of his rapidly shrinking lifetime then it was time to leave.
In his arms, he felt the girl abruptly freeze, the hand still covering her mouth muffling a gasp. He glanced down at her, and then out at the battlefield, searching for what had her spooked now.
Only moments ago the pale guyver had lay dead at the feet of the hyper zoaniod. Now he watched as the blade-handed hyper exploded in a shower of blood. One of its severed hand swords flew towards them, embedding itself in a nearby tree and Masaki could not stop himself from flinching away from the bleeding limb.
The guyver did not turn to face them, though even from their poor vantage, Masaki could still make out that its head was almost half missing.
With an ominous sound like metal on metal the guyver extended both of its arm swords, tensing as it turned towards the remaining zoaniods who had not yet seemed to notice what had become of Thancrus.
In the distance, the dark guyver stumbled, the taloned hand of one of the zoaniods wrapping in a strangle hold about his neck. The pale guyver shifted minutely, and then it moved... faster than Masaki would have thought possible. He struggled to keep up with the attack, as in a flurry of humming swords and flying limbs the three zoaniods nearest to the dark guyver were very suddenly in several pieces.
Only two of the creatures remained standing now and they were backing away from the disturbing sight of the walking carcass that had so easily dispatched a hyper zoaniod and three of their counterparts. The air vibrated all the way back to Masaki and Shizu as the pale guyver let loose with some kind of sonic attack, the sound harmonized by the pained shrieks of the zoaniods as their bodies were shredded mercilessly apart by the sound waves.
The remaining head orb of the guyver swiveled and it raised one arm, the strange orb at its waist pulsing as a series of hollow spheres formed and rocketed out of its cupped palm towards where Masaki could just make out the retreating form of the remaining hyper zoaniod. It shrieked in pain as one of the hollow cannonballs punched through its shoulder, exploding the mass of liquid explosives within.
The violence of the explosion rocked the ground, and Shizu huddled against him as the only stable object in the rumbling chaos, fighting hard to keep her footing.
When the debris cleared, he looked up towards the guyvers once more. The dark guyver was seated on the ground, blood bubbling unsteadily from its breather vents and dripping sluggishly from a series of nearly invisible wounds in his neck. Beside him the pale guyver stood unmoving, its own devastating injuries had stopped bleeding now, and though it seemed impossible Masaki would swear that the damage to the monster's skull seemed less than it had moments before.
"Agito..." Shizu pulled away from him slowly, her eyes focusing on the dark guyver. Unsteadily she took a step towards the two.
The sensor orb on the pale guyver's head swiveled abruptly towards them at her movement.
Hamical Barcas watched the slightly grainy feed coming in from one of his scouts, his face impassive.
On the monitor before him the unknown guyver faced off against Thancrus, one of the members of his own Elite team of hyper zoaniods. It would have been a simple thing to reach out with his mind and contact the blade-handed zoaniod, to demand information, but he held back – his mind debating what the presence of two members of his best team meant.
Without more information on Guyot's contacts he couldn't know for sure if Thancrus and Gaster were present because they had betrayed him or because another of his generals had sided with the commander. And while he could very easily break into either of their minds and tear out the answer, doing so could tip his hand to the youngest Zoalord and would almost certainly cost him the life of the zoaniod he violated.
There would be time yet to determine their loyalties. Now.. now was instead an opportunity to see how some of his finest creations held their own against a Guyver unit.
Thancrus turned, his attention focusing on something that was outside of the limited range of the feed and Barcus reached out with his mind to request the scout to turn the camera. The view tilted and he could make out two humanoid forms, one partially obscured by the foliage that he guessed to be male.. the other a girl of maybe seventeen.
The hyper zoaniod charged the female, sword raised in attack and Barcus wondered for a moment just what the hyper zoaniod hoped to accomplish by killing a civilian. Then the pale guyver was abruptly there, having moved too quickly for the camera to catch more than a blur and Barcus found a small ironic smile on his lips at the foolish defense of the girl.
It was more than obvious to him that the pale guyver had a strong advantage over the contingent of zoaniods that Guyot had sent out. But the small armored form had dropped most of it to protect the girl. That was a weakness that was well worth noting.
He watched as Thancrus pushed his advantage, his free arm swinging up into the guyver's guard. For a moment Barcus couldn't tell from the camera vantage if the strike had connected, but as the hyper zoaniod stepped back and away the damage became clearly visible.
The doctor leaned back in his chair thoughtfully, watching as the nearly decapitated guyver swayed and then collapsed. It would be hard to identify the host now, with half its face missing, but with enough tissue he was sure they could get a reliable DNA sample. Assuming the host was associated with Chronos, something that seemed likely, they should be able to match it within the internal database.
He was reaching for the comm button to summon a team to send out for cryogenic retrieval when movement on the screen drew his attention back to the still live video feed.
Thancrus was down and the pale guyver was up.
Its animate carcass held out a negligent arm towards the fallen zoaniod and the once elite hyper was suddenly in pieces. The air seemed to shimmer slightly in the aftermath and Barcus thought he recognized the pressure cannon attack.
Then the dead guyver was moving again and the remaining zoaniods fell quickly, the camera showing flying blood and limbs for a minute at most before it was over. A spectacular explosion threw a retreating Gaster into the trees, though Barcus sensed that the other hyper zoaniod was not yet dead.
For a moment everything was still, then the pale guyver turned and for a moment, the doctor was possessed of the unsettling sensation that it was looking directly at him, its remaining eye glaring as if in silent threat.
It raised a hand and the feed fell to static.
He did not need to reach out to the scout to know it was dead.
Masaki reached out to stop Shizu's forward movement. The girl froze as he did so, as is sensing for the first time that they were not yet out of danger. The dark guyver was on his feet now, backing slowly towards them and away from the animate corpse of Guyver 3. In return the pale guyver watched the three of them, its single eye seeming to emit an eerie glow as it tracked their movements.
Masaki tensed as the dark guyver extended one set of arm blades in defense, glancing worriedly between the two units as they stared one another down. After a pause that seemed to last an eternity the metal orb on what remained of the pale guyver's forehead pulsed, and Masaki saw the muscles of the jaw flex as if it were struggling to speak.
"Mine wishes you unharmed." The voice that struggled its way out of the ruined throat was harsh, flat and punctuated by gurgling breaths that pulsed fresh blood through its breath vents and set its neck wound to oozing. It sounded nothing like Sho's voice. Nothing like a humans voice, or even the distorted vocalizations of the zoaniods. It seemed hollow, lifeless like the corpse it came from.
"Do not draw weapons against us again." There was no inflection to the words, no tone of threat, but Masaki could read the implication easily enough – Attack me and I will kill you.
Slowly the dark guyver backed down, his swords once more sheathed, though he did not look at ease with the situation. Shizu pulled free of Masaki's grip and ran to the guyver's aid, propping him up as best she could when he sagged from the strain of his injuries.
The pale guyver seemed to have lost interest in them now that they were no longer threatening it. The remaining head orb swiveled back and forth, hunting for something, though Masaki wouldn't want to guess what. Still wary, he approached the girl and the dark guyver.
"We should get away from here, Chronos will send reinforcements soon." Out of the corner of eye, he noted the dead guyver's attention swiveling once more onto the three of them. Masaki only hoped it was feeling agreeable to them moving elsewhere.
"Who the hell are you?" The dark guyver, Makishima presumably, demanded. Masaki wondered if the man had even been aware of his presence until just then.
"I would like to say I'm with him," He thumbed towards Guyver 3, "But I'm not sure so much that the guy that was inside there and whatever is in control now are one and the same." The pale guyver tilted its ruined head slightly at the motion, but did not seem inclined to comment.
"The host is dead." Makishima agreed, staring past him at the guyver. "I sensed him die."
"Well, regardless, we should still be getting out of here." Masaki gripped reflexively at his gun, drawing what comfort he could from its presence. If Chronos found them now it would be very bad indeed. Two injured guyvers, a human girl and a mostly helpless experiment versus a small army of zoaniods was not how he wanted his afternoon to end.
"We should head back towards the cabin." Shizu suggested, studiously not looking towards their zombie companion. "We have a jeep hidden not far away, and I need to find out what's become of Grandfather."
"Yohei was out running an errand for me when we were attacked." Makishima informed her, and Masaki watched in fascination as his guyver unit fell away, revealing of all things another teenager. "He should just be getting back now if he hasn't been waylaid."
Masaki considered the man underneath the dark armor. His face wasn't hard to recognize, and now that he did, Masaki felt foolish for not guessing the connection before.
This was Agito Makishima, son of the head of Chronos Japan and not someone he was sure could be at all trusted. For the time being at least he was stuck with him, however, and he would have to make the best of it. On the positive, the kid looked completely wiped out so at least he wouldn't have to worry about a physical attack for awhile.
"Back the way we came then." He agreed, turning from his scrutiny of the two teenagers to consider their eerie watcher. Guyver 3 stared passively back at him. "What about you?"
"Healing." It informed him, the voice less gruesome than before, but still flat and toneless.
"I guess its your turn to follow us then." He mused, finding a spark of dry humor in spite of the situation.
It took longer than Masaki would have liked to make the hike back to the cabin. He'd pitched in with Shizu to help support Makishima, but the boy was a largely dead weight in spite of his efforts to stumble along. Inwardly, Masaki wondered how the youth felt about being carried. Makishima didn't strike him as the type to like being dependent upon others.
Behind them, a slowly healing Guyver 3 was a solid if unsettling wall against attack. It had said nothing further to any of them, only matched their pace, pausing to stand in unnatural stillness whenever they had to stop and reorient their wayward party.
More than once Masaki had considered just asking the zombie to carry their burden, but in spite of his earlier humor he couldn't shake the disquiet of the walking corpse or forget how easily it had dispatched a group of zoaniods. Always he talked himself back into simply ignoring it and hoping none of them managed to antagonize whatever was in control at the moment.
They circled slightly around the cabin to where the jeep was concealed in an old storage shed and Shizu helped Makishima into the rear seat before leaving in search of the missing grandfather.
"Who are you really?" Makishima asked after a moment of rest.
Masaki considered him for a long time before he responded. There were things he wasn't ready to say to this man, and plenty more he wasn't sure he should.
"An enemy of Chronos." He offered finally. "My name is Masaki Murakami." He studied the youth for any sign of recognition at his name, but none seemed forthcoming.
"I suppose that's fair enough." The boy told him. "You haven't asked who I am yet."
"I know who you are." He told Makishima, turning his attention to Guyver 3. The pale monster had moved back into the surrounding foliage somewhat, and you could almost overlook its stone like presence.
"Do you?" Makishima wondered, half under his breath. Masaki chose to ignore the comment.
"Anything from him?" He wondered, nodding towards their disturbing sentinel. The gaping hole had mostly covered back over with armor again, the wound healing at a frightening rate. It still looked warped somehow though. Unhealthy maybe.
"No."
Masaki wondered, as they both regarded the zombie, just who or what would wake up when it had finished healing.
"Master Agito!" Masaki turned at the call to find Shizu had returned with a box of supplies and an elderly man in toe. "When I returned to the damage I feared the worst..." The old man continued, greeting Makishima with a worried frown, but no hug.
Not for the first time that day, Masaki found himself wondering just what the relationship was with a son of Chronos and these two seemingly normal people.
"Every thing's fine, Yohei." Makishima assured the old man. "But we do need to get away from here quickly."
"Now, ideally." Masaki put in, and the old man turned, noticing him for the first time.
"Ah, we haven't met, Mr...?" The man began hesitantly.
"This is Mr. Murakami, Grandfather." Shizu introduced him as she hefted her load into the back of the jeep. "He helped us to get away from our attackers."
"My thanks for protecting Master Agito, and my granddaughter, then." The old man bowed deeply to him and Masaki found himself flustered at the gesture in spite of himself.
"I was mostly a bystander I'm afraid." He assured the old man, feeling awkward and frustrated at the situation all over again.
No one had ever accused Masaki Murikami of having stellar people skills after all, and his extended time out of Japan hadn't helped with his ability to handle formal social niceties. He found his hand itching for his gun and an enemy target. He really dealt so much better with things when shooting was involved.
"Now, now, don't be so modest, Masaki." The all too familiar voice cut into the awkward silence before he could decide how to rush them all along. "You took out at least two zoaniods completely without aid."
Guyver 3 stepped forward, his sudden movement startling everyone gathered. Masaki stared at his head – where there had once been a grotesque wound, there was now smooth clear armor. Even the blood that had soaked his pale form seemed to have fallen away.
"Good to see you alive again." Masaki offered at last, not at all sure that it actually was. "We weren't sure what to expect."
"Ah yes." The pale guyver cocked his head to one side slightly, the gesture a familiar echo to earlier that day. Masaki wondered if he really was hearing something they couldn't. "It seems you've had a chance to talk with my better half. You'll have to forgive us. He's not used to speaking to other people."
"He?" Makishima wondered under his breath. Masaki silently echoed the sentiment. He had not signed on for multiple personalities.
"I suppose its not really a 'he'" Guyver 3 answered the whispered question and Masaki made a mental note of the guyver's hearing for future reference. "But calling him 'it' seems so impersonal."
"Fascinating as this is... we were leaving in a hurry?" Masaki pressed, the seconds ticking by in his mind. Chronos wasn't going to slow down just because they were busy having some weird reunion with Sho's crazy killer zombie alter ego.
"Of course." The guyver's head orbs swiveled in a rough 360. "We're clear for the time being, but that can change quickly."
The armor broke apart silently and Sho stepped forward, looking just as he had that morning, snotty grin and all. The only evidence he had been injured at all was a long slice in his sweatshirt, trimmed in what could only be dried blood.
"You!!" Makishima's yell broke into Masaki's contemplation of Sho and he turned to see a look of shock on the young man's face.
"Its been awhile," Sho's smile at the other teenager's reaction was positively wolfish. "Hasn't it, Makishima-senpai?"
Author's End Note: I went through a whole back and forth argument with myself over using the Japanese honorific at the end there. As a rule of thumb I find it annoying to have bits of Japanese crop up in a fic written in English, and though a few instances of it have snuck out into my writing this story in spite of my attempts to avoid it I would still always prefer to stick to a single language unless I have a specific point to make by using an alternate one.
On the other hand "senpai" doesn't translate well and I kept sounding out "Upperclassman Makishima" in my head and thinking – 'gee that sounds really silly'. I considered dropping the designation altogether, but then I felt like it lost some of the tone I was trying to get...
Anyway, I expect no one actually cared about this but me... but these are the things I agonize over when writing. One of these days I need to get a Beta so I can just say "Should I do this or this?" and then get over it.
Next Time: Mom! My pet alien ate my homework!