TWENTY FIVE
DRAGON HEART
Review Corner:
SulliMike23: what is Saskia's role in all of this? Without a zoid, it's difficult to get involved in an armed conflict, and without Organoid, it's difficult to revive a 330-ton old relic. But I don't want Organoid. I don't want this story to be another Van Flyheight ripoff, where a teen befriends an Organoid, revives the most powerful zoid ever, and beats up the bad guys since Chapter 2. So what can a 18-year-old academy drop-out like Saskia do to get a zoid without Organoid (or some extreme luck like Bit Cloud)? She'll have to do it manually, painfully, one step after another, with blood, tears, and sweat. That's what you've been reading for 25 chapters, and that's what you'll read for a few more, before Saskia finally gets a role in the main conflict.
I know this story has been going sloooooooow, but that's the way I want it. True friendship doesn't build overnight. You have to invest a lot of time and energy in your friendship to make it last. And this story is, after all, about true friendship. I hope this explains everything.
Aspencade Fortress,
Helic Republic, Delpoi Continent,
Planet Zi,
November 7, ZAC 2121
Saskia understood the repercussion of waking up the Gilvader. The zoid had been dormant for 60-plus years. It might wake up looking for its master, and instead found somebody it didn't recognize. It might go into panic, throwing a destructive tantrum inside the cave. If the cave didn't crumble and bury everybody, people at Aspencade would see the thrashing zoid and instantly shoot it down. Or, it might see her as its enemy, and killed her instantly. There was no way to know what would happen. Each zoid was unique, and Saskia had never dealt with a Gilvader before.
So she let the day exhausted itself until works at Aspencade Fortress ceased, and the darkness hid most of the entrance to the cave. The night was overcast, thus worked for her advantage. She waited until the lights from Aspencade dimmed to the point of non-existence, then proceeded to the depth of the cave for her ultimate quest.
The cave was dark, and the access door to the Gilvader's core was located at the lower part of its torso, blocked by its own neck. The only way Saskia could reach it was to hoist the neck, but that part alone was as heavy as a Command Wolf. She needed an enormous amount of lift to reach the access door.
"Alright, Mantis, I will need everything you've got," she coaxed her Demantis to take a stable stance at the base of the Gilvader's neck. "I need to crawl underneath the big boy's body to put these rocks at his core. Can you lift his neck?"
The Demantis emitted a hesitated purr. The lumbering hulk alone was enough to spook it to its core. It took several steps back as if the Gilvader was ready to bite.
"Don't be afraid, he's not alive just yet," Saskia tried to encourage the one-armed zoid. "He will not do anything. All I need is half a minute under his neck and you can leave." She pushed the joystick forward, but the Demantis resisted. "Trust me, he looks mean but he's not dangerous."
The Demantis took a few steps forward then saw the teeth of the large zoid and froze. The memory of the Gunbluster gave it a bitter taste of death, and the Gilvader was almost three times the size of the Gunbluster. Saskia's urging wouldn't make it budge. It just stood in a distance, refusing to come any closer to the dormant zoid.
"Mantis, I can't do this alone," Saskia pleaded. "I can't access the Gilvader's door without any help, and you are the only one that's strong enough to do it. Please, give me a little hand. I promise, this is the last time I ask anything from you. You're free after this one."
Slowly, one hesitated step after another, the Demantis tiptoed forward, flashing its jets in a paranoid fashion. But after minutes of no action from the big zoid, the Demantis started to believe Saskia. It advanced more confidently with each step, gaining cockiness and trust from its pilot. When it made contact with the Gilvader, it even grazed and pinched the big zoid, noting confidently that the Gilvader didn't do anything.
"Good boy," Saskia kept giving it support. "Now try to give me some room to the access door at the lower torso."
The Demantis tried to lift the Gilvader's neck, but with just one arm it was impossible to do. The neck wouldn't even move an inch. The small infantry zoid added its jets to play, trying to move the monster, but it was clear that they would need a different approach.
"Let's push it!" Saskia commanded. The Demantis changed strategy; using its shoulder it pushed the neck as hard as it could. The massive neck was still too heavy, but it started to shift. The Demantis added some boost by blasting its jet. The neck started to rock back and forth.
"Keep it up!" Saskia said and exited the Demantis. She dragged a decent-sized rock and pried the neck up so it wouldn't fall back. The Demantis released its pressure, and the Gilvader's neck stayed on its place. There was a gap at the base of the neck, but it was still too narrow. Saskia could slide inside the gap and touched the core's access door but that was as far as she could go. She needed more leverage.
"Push his head as far as you can," Saskia said. The Demantis shifted to the head section and did as instructed. Its feet sunk deep into the water, and its rear abdomen flickered with light. With a loud rumble the Gilvader's neck started to curve to the right. The access door was still mostly blocked, but Saskia gained some extra room to slide down deeper into the gap and open the door.
"That's it! Keep it like that for one minute!" she yelled, then opened her box. The warm glowing Zoid Magnite pieces was in contrast with the furious fire from the Demantis' jet. She threw everything inside the access door, then locked it and climbed outside the gap as fast as she could.
"Let it go!"
Her heart stopped as she held her breath, waiting for the Zoid Magnite to take effect. It didn't seem to do anything for quite a while. The Gilvader was still a lumbering giant that was nothing but a shadow of its former self some 60 years ago. And after several minutes with no action, Saskia started to believe that her wishful thinking would just be wishful thinking, and her hope trip would end here.
And then, things changed.
The black zoid moved, slowly at first but with increasing, terrifying rate. Its spiky legs pushed its body up above the water level, and for the first time Saskia had to tilt her head to look at its head. The neck and wings stretched so wide and so tall its Maser horns and wing tips grazed the inside of the cave interior, crushing stalactites. It realized it was confined in some sort of a dome, and panic seeped in. With a loud roar the Gilvader turned around but the cave was not large enough. Its tail blades hammered the ledge, and rocks crumbled into the water.
"Oh my…." Saskia felt her heart jumped into her throat.
The Demantis emitted a horrified chitter, and the Gilvader caught it. Its Maser horns glowed in purple hue. The Demantis blasted its jet, but before it could escape, the Gilvader's quartet plasma cannons zapped, spitting superheated gas at the hapless Demantis. The infantry zoid exploded in an orange fireball, and the burning remains crumbled to the cave floor. The Gilvader raised one of its legs and crushed what was left of the one-armed Demantis under its foot.
"Oh No!" Saskia yelped. She felt terrible for the Demantis, a simple zoid that had been loyal to her since their escape from the Gunbluster death grip. It did not deserve to meet a gory end like that. But she was powerless to do anything. The Gilvader was on a self-destructive rampage and everything in its path would have to perish. She was sure she would meet the same fate as the Demantis.
The Gilvader spotted her, and it trained all weapons at her. The mega zoid hunkered down to aim its 10 Needle Guns and 4 Plasma Cannons at her. Its Maser horn burnt in radiant purple, and its mouth opened wide, showing off a train of hardened-alloy teeth that could break even the strongest armor on any living zoid in Zi.
But it stopped, seeing that Saskia was just a mere human, and wondering if she was its pilot. The zoid watched her closely, but kept its weapons trained at her, ready to kill her whenever it decided that she posed some threat to its existence.
Saskia kept her stance straight, although it was not an easy thing to keep composed in front of the berserk killing machine. Sweat beaded in her forehead, and her knees wobbled. Her spine felt like mush. But her experience with the Demantis taught her that one thing zoids value most from humans was confidence. The Demantis was just a small, simple zoid that took anything she threw at it as confidence. The Gilvader was a massively complex biomachine. It would need every bit of her confidence to tame the big zoid, and then, it might never be enough. But she had no other choice.
"I know you're scared," she said with trembling voice. "But I am not your enemy. I am your friend. Lower down your weapons and let's talk about this slowly."
The Gilvader answered with an ear-splitting roar, then turned its guns at the cave. The plasma bolts ripped the cave wall and the needle guns turned the dimly-lit cave into a battlefield. Fireballs erupted at every corner of the cave. And as if it was not enough, the Gilvader tried to claw itself out of the cave. Four massive hardened-alloy claws tore the cave apart, and the ceiling started to came down. Rocks rained down on the thrashing dragon, burying half of its body. But it only made the Gilvader even madder.
"STOP! STOP! You're going to make both of us killed!" Saskia screamed from the top of her lung, aware of the fact that she wouldn't make a difference against the explosions and crumbling rocks and the panic roars of the Gilvader. But she underestimated the Gilvader's sensitive sensors. The metal dragon turned around, shouting some angry roars at her, then stopped moving.
"I do not know what happened to you," Saskia tried to reason with the Gilvader. "I found you here, and looks like you have been here for a long time. I found your pilot dead in your cockpit. Whatever you were going through by the time you were knocked out had long been over. You are waking up in a different era, with different zoids, and different conflict. I understand that you are anxious to get out, but we are in Helic Republic territory, and there is a large Helic military base near this place. If you go out alone, Helic zoids will hunt you down and kill you. Can you understand this concept?"
It was hard to see if the Gilvader actually understood human language, but it talked back with a series of low grunts and growls.
"Let me drive you."
The Gilvader burst into a loud roar of defiance that almost ruptured Saskia's eardrums. The idea of piloting the large zoid seemed to aggravate it more. It started thrashing again, but then realized that any movement less than subtlety would collapse the cave and bury everybody. So it mellowed out, but not before letting Saskia know that she was not to come near it.
"You probably miss your pilot but he's dead. I am the only one who knows your existence. I am familiar with your stats and your capability. I know how to turn you back into a machine you were once, if you just let me sit in your cockpit and take control. How about giving us a chance? I promise I will do your old pilot justice."
But the large zoid pulled away from Saskia and turned its head around, refusing to make contact with her any further. It broke her heart that, after everything she had done, the zoid didn't accept her the way she anticipated. But the Gilvader might not be fully aware of the situation and still thought it was living in the pre-cataclysm period, and the fact that its pilot had perished for 60+ years and it had been lying commatosed ever since. She had to make it understand….
… though communicating with zoids had been her bane since she learnt to pilot one.