The day had begun with Snowbell asleep on his face, and it had only become more odd since. At the moment he was contending with – of all things – a cult dedicated to the worship of Alkanphel. Under other circumstances, of course, he would not have had problems with such an idea; Lord Alkanphel was the supreme ruler of Earth, and as such he was indeed entitled to a certain amount of adulation. But the lengths that these people, not all of them Zoanoids, had gone to was simply disturbing.

Admiring someone, even for something as ultimately meaningless as their physical appearance was one thing; but to go so far as self-mutilation…

It was not something that Lord Alkanphel would have condoned in the slightest, something he knew even in spite of the fact that just over a year had passed since he had been in contact with Chronos' Supreme Overlord. All of the other members of the Council had reported thusly, and given what Fried'rich now knew about Lord Alkanphel – the affliction he was prey to – Fried'rich felt that he knew where Chronos' Supreme Overlord was and what he was most likely doing.

Young Ingriam had even begun to tell Fried'rich what he had seen when Lord Alkanphel had placed him in a special healing pod – as Fried'rich had come to understand it, something akin to an ancient processing-tank – to recover from the injuries he had incurred in the battle between his father and the Gigantic Dark. However, in what had seemed to be an effort to protect Lord Alkanphel's remaining privacy, Imakarum had attempted to dissuade him from speaking about such things.

It was only after he had demonstrated his quite genuine interest in knowing what had occurred that Imakarum had allowed Ingriam to speak; the boy had proved more than willing to share the tale of what had transpired on the day that the Advents had left Earth.

Finding out that they had attempted to slaughter both Lord Alkanphel as well as all life on the planet when they had fled from it disgusted him; it was a despicable, cowardly act, and he detested them for it. However, when young Ingriam had opted to share the memories he had received of those events – feeling himself unsuited to expressing the true depth of what he had seen with his, admittedly limited, verbal eloquence – Fried'rich had found just what it was about young Ingriam that made their Lord so fiercely protective of him. Truly, Lord Alkanphel had behaved in nearly the same manner with the Advents as young Ingriam behaved toward his father.

Only Lord Alkanphel had not been cherished by the Advents in the way that young Ingriam so obviously was. Instead, the Advents had tried to murder him after one of their own foolish experiments had gone completely awry. In fact, as much as the memories that Imakarum's son had received during his recovery on Silha had helped to explain Lord Alkanphel's attitude toward the youngest member of Chronos' Council, they also shed a great deal of light on his antipathy for the Guyvers.

The last experiment that the Advents had conducted – the very one that had lead them to attempt to destroy not only Lord Alkanphel but all life on Earth, and even the very planet itself – had been the bonding of a Guyver unit to one of the primitive Zoanoids that they had created Lord Alkanphel to rule over. As was the case with all Guyvers, it had proven to be completely uncontrollable; however, unlike them this Guyver – the first even before Sho Fukamachi – had not seemed to be willfully malicious.

The primitive Zoanoid had, in fact, seemed to be more confused by what he had found himself facing than anything. It was odd; to think that the Guyver unit was capable of controlling itself to some unknown extent, however the reports that Dr. Balkus had made seemed to lend credence to that idea.

Perhaps, then, Sho Fukamachi was not such an implacable enemy as it seemed. Knowing that the Guyver was capable of controlling itself… perhaps it was not such a leap in logic to surmise that the Unit exerted some form of control over its host. Fried'rich had been given a chance to peruse the reports from those forces not directly under his command, and combined with his own observations during those times he had been directly overseeing his Zoanoids on the battlefield, Fried'rich's impression of be boy was – overall – one of gentleness.

Even when the boy had been fighting to protect those Thunderbolt transports and their loads of stolen cargo, Sho Fukamachi had merely fought defensively; only those Zoanoids who had attempted to directly attack either the transports or the Gigantic Guyver itself had been cut down by the First Guyver's weapons.

In stark contrast had been Guyver III, who had hunted his Zoanoids down with a merciless and single-minded passion whether or not they had presented any direct threat to either his forces or their objective.

It was possible that Agito Makashima gave his own Guyver a great deal more latitude in determining his own course of action and choosing his targets. Certainly, the Third Guyver's physical appearance was nearly as far removed from the First's while still making it clear that they were the same type of creature.

Settling back into his command chair, Fried'rich returned his attention to the reports that sat so innocuously on his desk; those that dealt with the cult who went so far in their worship of Lord Alkanphel that they were willing to physically damage themselves in an effort to resemble Chronos' Supreme Overlord all the more closely. He wondered, for a moment, just what young Ingriam was getting himself up to.

It was not like the boy to be so quiet; he was respectful, yes, but in the manner of all children he was easily bored and so would seek companionship if none presented itself to him.

Imakarum had left some time ago, to follow up on another sighting of the Gigantic Guyver that had been reported, and he had honestly expected young Ingriam to have contacted him some time ago. To ask when his father would come back, if nothing else. This prolonged silence on the child's part was starting to become somewhat worrisome.