The Golden Age: Reclamation War

by Maderfole

Book 3 of The Golden Age Trilogy. How far would you got to reclaim what was lost? What would you do to get your old life back? The culmination of the epic story. Over two million words of history leading in, and at least a million more to go.

34. Valley of Giants

Author Note: Well, I could only keep you guys guessing for so long on the Lacus/Akira/Aoi thing. So no more guesswork about them being alive, though there seems to be PLENTY of speculation about Akira and my comments from the last Author Note. Excellent. All is progressing as planned. There's a lively forum topic on it as well, in addition to a posted outline, of chapter and arc titles at least, of the first half of the story. Check it out if you like, tell me which chapters, based on name alone, you're looking forward to seeing, and what you think they pertain to. Well, enough about that. Now for a chapter that will have many eyes agoggle, mark my words. It's one of those that I've been waiting to get to for a while. I mean, I love writing all my chapters, but some stand out above the rest, even if they aren't always exactly "climactic". Valley of Giants, Plains of Blood and City of Tears this arc are the ones that I like the best. Next arc it will be Indigo Release, Black Ghosts and Silver Hell. The arc after, Innocence and Corruption, Predator and Prey, as well as Damnation and Redemption are ones I've been dreaming of doing for more than a year.

xxxx

New Eden, Eastern-Cental Africa, Lower Slopes of Mt. Kilamanjaro, November 30th, Midmorning

"Goddamn it..." Lain swore under his breath, coming to a halt in the thigh high underbrush and shifting from leg to leg in irritated agitation, taking one hand from the appropriated Cutlass LAR that he'd taken from a rack back at the forward observation post so he could scratch, completely in vain of course, at the inner part of his legs, where his Survivor pattern armor had gotten all sweaty, sticky and least pleasantly of all, itchy in the past hour or so. And of course the armored surface of the environment suit was too thick for his fingers to provide any scratching comfort through, hell, he could barely even feel it when he thumped his bunched fist against his leg in a desperate attempt to provide even a slight bit of relief! The cooling systems inside the armor were turned up all the way, but even so, under the dense canopy of the mountainous junglescape, the ambient air was so hot and moist it was like he had a hot spring venting steam directly down his spine at all times. He was drenched with sweat, and it was making the armor, already unpleasant, nearly unbearable. And of course, if he removed it he would either die a horrible, withering death from Green EDEN infection, or worse, survive and become an Edenite and be discombobulated by his own side for "research materials"!

"Do you think you could make any MORE of a target of yourself, Debora?" Mechael commented from a few meters away, where he was hunkered down in the midst of some thick stemmed, leafy foliage that practically drooled sap, that was, knowing New Eden, probably extremely toxic, acidic, or both. "Bad enough that you stump around like you're wearing a string of tin cans tied to each foot, making enough racket to wake the dead, but you're right in the middle of the only cleared space for a hundred meters in any direction, and that is where you choose to make a pit stop? I can't decide if you really are that inept, or whether you're just stupid, or maybe, and this is the least likely option mind, that you're actually way better than this and you're just playing dumb to fuck with me." Unlike Lain, or Stella for that matter, who was browsing through the trees a few meters away from Mechael, though also sensibly in cover instead of scratching herself in the middle of a clearing, Mechael wore no environment suit, though he did have on a camouflage, lightly armored set of BDU's, with the shirt sleeves rolled up past his elbows as a minor concession to the heat and humidity. With a camouflage bandanna tied sloppily around his forehead, Mechael looked very much the vintage jungle warrior from wars of centuries past.

Since over seventy percent of his body was fully cybernetic, including all four limbs and his entire external surface area, Mechael didn't need a self contained environment to protect him from contamination, breathing filters in his nostrils and throat sifted out any residual Green EDEN he happened to come into contact with, and internal resevoirs of anti-Green Red EDEN waited to be released into his bloodstream and remaining body tissue should any sign of infection become apparent. In truth the rolled up sleeves of his jacket were more a fashion statement than a concession to the environment, plus it let him show off his rippling, precisely forged muscles to the cute female Extended. Sure, she was involved with Debora, but showing off for girls was so hardwired into Mechael's brain that even the conversion into an ICMS Augmented hadn't been able to purge it in the slightest. Some personality traits were just there to stay.

Mechael scanned their surroundings one more time, his eyes cycling through several different vision modes, though since it was midmoring, lightamp was worthless, and thermal sensors were worse than that with all the residual heat. Magfield only picked up their own gear, everything else nearby was purely biological, though that didn't make it any less deadly, Mechael reminded himself, idly fingering the ding in his leg where he'd been grazed a few days ago by one of those scorpion-monsters that had invaded Gibraltar. Though his external body was made from special alloys very similar to those put into armored vehicles, but much lighter of course, that hadn't stopped that damn bug from all but slicing him open down to the structural bones with just its own pincers! After seeing the damage those selfsame pincers had caused to the hapless regular human infantry around him, Mechael had once more been REALLY glad that he was an Augmented. It really sucked to be weak and vulnerable.

"Bite me, Mecha." Lain retorted, his groin still itching something terrible, but he belatedly found a few trees on the edge of the clearing to hunker down by, where he wouldn't be easy meat for any passing Eddie with a gun to potshot. Instead he had to worry about whether or not he was crouching in some plant that would try to suck his blood, or melt his armor, or cut him into bite sized cubes with razor edged leaves, or strangle him, or fire volleys of steel hard, poison soaked spines through his faceplate, or any of a half dozen other ways the damned plants had of killing you in unpleasant ways. Lain was very rapidly coming to hate his home world, if this was how it was going to be to him.

"That's her job, I reckon." Mechael replied with a irreverent grin, nodding his head in Stella's direction, where she was still, to all outward signs, engrossed in watching a procession of ant-like bugs crawling up the the trunk of a tree. The bugs in question were colored bright yellow and red, and were a good two inches long from jaws to stinger equipped abdomen. They were hellacious biters, and could easily chew through Survivor armor and into the soft flesh beneath if you let them get on you, so Stella watched them from a few feet away, and frequently looked down to check her boots, to make sure no scouts had crawled up her legs. Mechael had come to realize that while Stella often gave the impression that she was an airheaded bimbo, she was actually anything but, and was actually very observant and intellectual, if one knew how and when to approach her. And she was a positively diabolical hand with her combat knife, which was definitely one reason he kept his hands off of her, despite moments of temptation. Lain having a Mobile Suit while Mechael did not was another good reason to be chaste. And Lain wasn't actually too bad a guy, for a normal human.

Needless to say, after the humiliating debacle springing from the disaster that had been his first combat deployment with the Omega-Panzer, Mechael had been doing a lot of learning about humility, and had come to the realization that, no matter his individual power, without strong allies, and maybe even friends, he was always going to be vulnerable to letting his own ego get the better of him. And one such mistake was more than enough for him, another critical embarassment and old man Roanoke would melt him down and make him into trash can! By Roanoke's orders, Mechael and Lain were stuck together for the foreseeable future, so it was probably for the best if they could get along. Something which hadn't been helped by Mechael's original crass behavior, but fortunately Lain seemed to be the sort who could live and let live, especially when approached with humility at first. So while he might yet entertain a few fantasies of bumping into Stella while she was in the shower blocks, that's all they were to Mechael, happy fantasies, rather than true desires.

"I don't bite." Stella replied casually, looking over her shoulder and leaving the ant-things to their food gathering as she made her way stealthily across the clearing to stand near Lain. She moved fluidly and easily in her Survivor armor, like it was a second skin, despite the physical discomforts, which really hardly registered through her Extended conditioning, making Lain feel acutely self conscious about the way he stumbled about, his inexperience with the infantry armor being all too easy to discern. "Though I have been know to leave bruises during uncareful moments. And there was that one time when I almost clawed your cheek off..."

"Shush, you!" Lain said with an embarassed cough and a glance at Mechael's broadly grinning face, since Lain had no scars or marks on his face at all, leaving only one other set of cheeks for Stella to have accidentally clawed. At one point in time he might have thought Stella just didn't think before she spoke, or was being inconsiderate, but now he knew how to recognize when she was teasing him. Stella carried one of the heavier and more powerful Mauler LSG's, as did Mechael, the Extended and Augmented hardly bothered by the additional mass of the powerful guns, which they lifted as lightly as if they were mere sidearms. Also they were experienced in the use of the weapons, and while Lain had taken a Cutlass to the range a time or two, he could hardly be called an expert with it, or even fully proficient. The only gun he was used to firing was his backup pistol, and even then, he'd never actually had to use it to defend himself. That was what his Vindicator was for.

When he'd first seen Mechael with the Mauler, Lain had been somewhat surprised. After all, the Augmented had a plethora of weapons already built into his body didn't he, including a heavy machine gun and a goddamn beam saber! Why the hell would he need extra firepower? In truth the answer was fairly simple, not only was the Mauler significantly more powerful than the built in gun, but it could be reloaded much, MUCH easier than the .30 cal squad support weapon built into Mechael's left arm, which required a laborious process involving practically disassembling the entire arm in order to replace the integral 800 round magazine. At one point in time Roanoke had apparently considered equipping the Augmented with a Cutlass or Mauler linear weapon, instead of a chemically propelled machine gun, but power conflicts with the fuel cells that kept Mechael's cyber-body working and his meat organs alive had prevented it. The beam saber was also powered by seperate battery systems, since it was a significant drain upon his life support and motive power systems otherwise.

Of course Mechael still had a few more surprises up his sleeves, or, in this case, in his shoulderblades, which contained a micro RPG launcher, one per shoulder, as well as extendable armor piercing spikes that could appear from elbows and knees for close range brawling, plus the fact that his body was more or less artificial and MUCH stronger and more durable than human flesh and bone, meaning even a punch or kick from Mechael could be pretty devastating. Definitely a good guy to have in your corner when things got up close and bloody, that was Mechael all right. And in the depths of this hellish tropical forest, there simply wasn't room for much ranged combat, the tree trunks and undergrowth limiting fields of vision and fire to less than a few dozen meters at best, meaning any opposing forces would practically stumble into their arms before they were close enough to exchange fire.

There wasn't supposed to be any opposing forces in the area of course, but what the USN forces didn't know about the habits and particulars of the deep forests of New Eden could fill several full encyclopedias, so Lain was less than reassured by that estimation. Even if there were no organized Eddie forces operating in the area, there could still be irregulars, deep forest hunters or isolated farmers with guns, not to mention the plants and the animals themselves! The Forward Observation Base, Camp Albert, was in theory still a secret that the Eddies didn't know about, despite being situated only a hundred or so kilometers away from the outskirts of Victoria Spaceport, now know as Urbanis by the local residents. There was a major Eddie military buildup around the perimeter of Urbanis, but as yet the Eddies seemed content to hunker down and wait for the USN hammer to come crashing down upon them, rather than follow their usual doctrine of sneak attacks, hit and run strikes and guerilla warfare. Which was just fine with Lain, since Mobile Suits were crappy in pretty much all of those combat scenarios, unless you had really good commanders and well trained troops.

Lain and Stella, with Mechael tagging along more or less uninvited, had come to Camp Albert under the pretense of assisting the scouts in observing the Eddie buildup and reconnoitering the surrounding areas for any signs of ambushes or hidden forces that might be lying in wait to attack the USN forces while they were en route to Victoria. The actual mission, codenamed Operation Royalty, was due to begin sometime in late December, in the meanwhile there was plenty of prep and intelligence work to be done as the commanders waited for all the disparate units involved to muster at Gibraltar. Lain had heard rumors that the Orb contingent would include one or more of their newest Gundams, and he eagerly awaited the arrival of his countrymen. Though he was no longer the celebrity in Orb he had once been, when during the Second Valentine War he had downed several Nazca class vessels during the Australian Maneuver against Carpentaria base, he was still an Orb patriot and he would love little more than being able to hobnob with his countrymen and women once more. He might even be able to talk his way into the presence of the Gundam pilots themselves! He wondered who it would be? Perhaps even the Queen herself, assuming she was recovered from whatever nasty illness that was keeping her out of the public eye for the time being?

But the real reason Lain had come here was more personal. Back during the latter stages of the Eden Disaster incidents, during the Brotherhood attack upon the Victoria Spacepot and the nearby Solar Knight base, Lain's best friend and fellow Solar Knight, Eric Kellson, had been shot down by the then mind controlled Shinn in the Vengeance, right over this very area. Though Eric had gone down pretty hard, Lain had faith his friend could have survived the crash landing, however, before he could check, the Solar Knights were ordered to evacuate the area in preparation for the Battle of Cape York, leaving Eric, plus several other pilots who had been shot down but not confirmed KIA, hanging out to dry. Of course Lain had gone a little bit nuts, but with his precarious position in the unit at the time, there was only so much he could protest about without getting a bullet in his brainpan, and he'd been forced to abandon his friend to fend for himself. Lain had held out hope that Eric would turn up among the legions of wounded evacuees during the months following the destruction of the Great Endeavor and the execution of Noah Borander, but his friend had never returned, and Lain had eventually come, with a heavy heart, to acknowledge that Eric had likely passed on.

However, likely wasn't the same thing as certainly, and so Lain had taken advantage of an opportunity and vowed to search out his friend's crash site and comb it for any signs of Eric's fate. Unfortunately the crash area was far too close to Urbanis for them to be able to scout from the air, either in helicopters or Mobile Suits, not without attracting a whole bunch of the wrong sort of attention from the Eddies anyway, so they'd had to take the stealth shuttle to Camp Albert and then got dropped off by a Gladiator patrol at the outskirts of their search area, with an agreement to return to that spot in four days, radio silence also being a necessity given their location and the need for secrecy. A few called in favors from some friends in the Solar Protection Fleet had yielded some focused orbital scans of the area in high detail, and Lain had poured over these images to construct his map of the search area, hi-lighting high concentrations of magnetic resonance as likely belonging to crashed Mobile Suits, as well as identifying ravines, valleys and rifts where a Suit might have crashed out of easy sight.

Armed with a list of the serial numbers of the various pieces and parts of Eric's Archon, Lain was determined to discover which crash site belonged to his friend. And from there, though it was doubtful there would be much sign left after seven years on New Eden, he would look for evidence of Eric's survival or death. It might be that all he would find would be a few gnawed, bleached bones, in fact that was likely, but damn it all, he would have closure on this if it was the last thing he did! Eric deserved much more than just being abandoned and forgotten! The least he could do was bury any remains. For that matter Lain wasn't the only one who needed closure, if Lain remembered correctly, Eric had mentioned having a younger sister somewhere in Orb, she must be desperate to know what had happened to her brother. And so it was that Lain was about as far out of his element as he could possibly be, in sweaty, itchy armor, holding an unfamiliar weapon and baking alive in the wet heat, as he squinted at his data screen and did his best to decipher their location and progress towards the next crash site.

They'd already found three such sites, all Archons that were little more than crumpled, scattered hunks of half melted slag, but none of the intact pieces with serial numbers had matched up with Eric's machine, so the search was still on. Their current destination was secluded in a small ravine about three quarters of a kilometer further up the mountain slopes, where there were two promising looking mag-resonance returns within a hundred meters or so, one sizably bigger than the other, too big in fact to be a single Mobile Suit, but Lain was determined to check it out regardless, in case it was an erroneous reading. Their progress through the rainforest was frustratingly slow, about half what he'd estimated it would be back at Gibraltar, but since he was the one doing most of the slowing down for the group, Lain made sure to bite his tongue and avoided pointing it out.

At least they were fortunate in that they hadn't encountered any large predatory animals, such as Direcats, Garms or snakelike Wyrms, which the scouts had reported to be thick on the ground in nearby scouting sectors. In fact Lain hadn't seen large animals of ANY sort around, and though he knew he was no woodsman, neither were most of the larger fauna particularly wary of humans, so he would have thought they'd have seen SOMETHING! The lack of foraging animals, and animals preying on the foragers, made the rainforest feel strangely empty, and also pretty damned creepy. Almost like the place was haunted or something like that. Lain forced himself not to think thoughts like that, knowing it was probably just his imagination running away with him, just like the troops at Porta Panama were doing. Course, no one had heard ANYTHING from Porta Potty for almost a week now, and that was passing strange. And a little creepy. Okay, a lot creepy. But it wasn't his job to worry about things like that, Lain reminded himself sternly.

Stella's hand closed comfortingly around his own free hand a moment later, and she squeezed him hard enough to be easily felt through the thick gloves. She'd obviously noted his distress, such as it was, and had moved in with her usual protectiveness, while Mechael mumbled to himself and kept his distance, uncomfortable, as many Extendeds also were, with public displays of affection. Lain squeezed Stella's hand back and nodded his thanks for her presence, reluctantly letting go of her hand since it would be almost impossible to move jointly through the undergrowth, and pointing the way forward. Mechael grunted and took the lead, the Mauler slung across his back now, a heavy mono-machete in his hands that he used to cut away the worst of the heavy brush so that Stella and Lain could follow him more easily. It left a fairly obvious trail of course, but it was either leave a trail, or make even less progress than they already were, and with only four days in which to search, covering ground efficiently was of the highest priority.

About two hours of hiking later, Lain felt like he was swimming inside his armor from all the pooled sweat pouring off his body, though both Stella and especially Mechael appeared absolutely none the worse for the wear, damn them for their fortitude. He was doubly frustrated because he'd spent most of the hike trying to take his mind off his physical exertions by trying to get Stella to talk to him about whatever it was that Dr. Dostanya was having her do. The end result of that particular endeavor being that not only was he sweating like a horse, and beat to hell, but now he was pissed at Stella because she just wouldn't talk to him about it, despite how much he could see whatever it was, was bothering her! He'd encountered areas of her life she wouldn't discuss with him before, such as details on her earlier life in the Extended program, but he'd been under the impression that she knew she could come talk to him about anything that was actually bothering him with no fear of being ridiculed or judged! Now he was less sure of that estimation.

So for the moment Lain actually found himself crowding closer to Mechael, leaving Stella to sulk or brood or think or whatever it was she was doing at the moment, to the rear of their little formation. If Mechael noticed Lain's disgruntlement and disatisfaction, he was polite enough not to make a big deal of it, for which Lain was grateful. At first impression Lain had thought Mechael was a grade A dick and manwhore, and while he might still be a manwhore, his dickishness had faded, at least around Lain and the Extendeds. Mechael had a lot to be proud of, but he'd burned off a lot of excess ego after the debacle at the Asteroid Belt. Now Lain could see him for what he really was, a guy standing on a razor's edge, who's very existence depended on him basically becoming a hero in the middle of war. Yeah, he had a lot of rough edges, but most of it was because he was trying so damned hard to be the best, because of the consequences of not being the best. Once you settled straight with him and got to know him, he wasn't a bad sort, he just had a shell he used to keep most people at a distance, much like most of the Extended, who tended to regard anyone outside the Program with suspicion and disdain.

Mechael swiped his machete across a curtain of hanging vines, half drenching himself in watery sap, tuning his skin sensors to filter out the unpleasant sensation, and they found themselves staring down a short but steep slope towards an impact crater with a surprisingly intact Archon torso in the middle. Lain's heart speeded up as he thought he recognized some of the battle damage on the torso, but he cautioned himself not to get his hopes up too high, that he might just be seeing what he wanted to see. There was no way to tell until he found a serial number to check. Lain's first instinct was to slide down the slope and check out the site, but Mechael grabbed him by the shoulder and held him in place for several long minutes as the Augmented carefully scanned the surrounding area for threats or signs of ambush. Finally, after his comprehensive search came up with zilch, Mechael grabbed Lain up like he was a small suitcase and physically leapt down the slope in a single bound, landing with bent legs and depositing the sputtering Solar Knight down beside him.

Stella vaulted down behind them, landing one both feet and one hand before straightening and sweeping the muzzle of her Mauler around the site slowly, her eyes darting around as she did her own search for threats. Gathering the remnants of his pride, Lain stepped forward and clambered up onto the scarred, limbless torso, his hands searching out one of the maintenance access ports on the back, underneath the main thruster exhausts. It took a good deal of heaving to pry the carbon scored and slightly crumpled panel open, during which time Mechael and Stella continued to prowl around the site, both of them on edge for a reason neither could precisely define. Just a crawling sensation between the shoulderblades, like being watched, though no matter how hard they looked, they could not discern where the watcher, if there was one, was hiding. Finally, with a tortured shriek of rusted hinges, the panel snapped open, almost sending Lain staggering backwards onto his ass. Recovering his balance just in time to avoid an embarassing tumble, Lain stepped forward and dusted off a layer of blown dirt from the interior of the access port, his breath catching painfully in his throat as he matched up the serial numbers for Eric's Archon.

"This... this is it!" Lain called down, in a mixture of weariness and exultation. "This is Eric's machine!" Lain ran forward along the Archon's remaining spine before jumping to the ground near the shoulderblade, which was denuded of the weapon normally mounted there, ripped or blown off sometime during the crash along with the Archon's limbs and head and wings. Though the torso was lying face down, there was a small distance between the cockpit hatch and the ground, big enough for a man to wriggle out of the cockpit from, though it would have been a hell of a tight squeeze for someone of Eric's size, and even worse if he was injured. Lain, being significantly shorter and slightly thinner than his friend, was able to shimmy up to the cracked open hatch with relative ease, though the Survivor armor made things tight once or twice, and with a grunt and a heave, Lain pulled himself up into the darkness of the cockpit.

Belatedly, Lain realized that a small, dark, enclosed space like the cockpit would have made an ideal lair for various animals, none of which he would want to encounter without plenty of room to maneuver, but while the cockpit did show signs of animals, droppings and what looked like half digested bones of some sort, whatever lived here currently wasn't in, much to his relief. Unfortunately the animal presence had completely obliterated any obvious signs of his survival Eric might have left. That is, until Lain thought to check the emergency survival cache beneath the cockpit seat, and found it empty, the case of survival rations, camping supplies and medical kit gone from their flat storage locker! Lain sat back in the dirt crusted command couch and felt like either crying or laughing... Eric HAD survived the crash! He'd survived, only to find himself abandoned and alone and most likely injured, perhaps badly, in the midst of what was rapidly becoming the most hostile environment to humans in all of recorded history!

Assuming his friend had managed to survive his transformation into an Eddie, which was by no means assured especially given the unsanitary conditions and his own likely physical condition, he would then have been faced with surviving, alone, in this jungle for seven or more years, surrounded by and competing with who knew what sort of predators for survival. Eric was a tough guy, but he was a pilot, not a survival specialist, and a gun was only of use for as long as you had bullets, and not even always then, against some of these beasts, to which a pistol round was barely worse than a bad gnat bite! Lain extracted himself from the cockpit, his heart alternately buoyed up and clenched in pain, and discovered that Mechael and Stella were already sweeping the area for any signs of where Eric had gone, or if he'd even gone anywhere. Unfortunately, seven years in the jungle had destroyed any signs that might have been there, and after almost a half hour of searching, neither supersoldier had come up with even a direction that Eric could have gone.

Lain leaned against the side of the Archon torso, his head bowed as he struggled to keep his eyes dry, the near certainty of his friends gruesome death haunting him fiercely, as he tried not to think of how vulnerable and tasty a single wounded man would have been in the days and weeks immediately after the transformation of Earth to New Eden. A gentle hand on his shoulder told him of Stella's presence behind him, and then she put her arms around him in a hug as he spent a few minutes purging his grief as quietly as he could. At length, Lain disengaged himself from Stella's comforting grip and turned to look for Mechael, eyes red but now dry, and his voice and breathing once more under control. The Augmented was making his way around the perimeter of the crash site, still trying to pin down that uncomfortable feeling. Seeing that Lain had recovered himself, Mechael glanced down at him and shrugged uneasily.

"Hate to say it like this, but you seen what you needed to see, Debora?" Mechael asked gruffly. "This place gives me the fucking creeps, if you're done with your memorializing, I'd like to get the fuck out of here post haste."

"Not just yet, Mecha, bear with me here." Lain replied firmly. "I wanna check out that larger return we saw on the Mag-Res sensors first. It's not that far from here, and it might be someplace where Eric could have found shelter or something. After we check that out, we'll get the hell out of here."

"In horror flicks, its that sort of thought process that gets all sorts of people killed." Mechael pointed out grumpily. "Let's just go check out the abandoned old house in the middle of the primordial jungle... there's no WAY anything bad could be lurking there waiting to bite off our faces and slurp down our organs, oh no! Next you're gonna tell me you wanna strip down for a shower scene with Stella!"

"I'm always down for a good shower scene with Stella." Lain replied snarkily, clapping her on the shoulder. "But I can hold off on that until we return to Gibraltar. Stop being such a pussy, Mecha. If this is the set of a horror movie, then I've already GOT two monsters right here with me, and they're on my side, think of it that way. C'mon man, it'll take like an hour tops and then we'll beat feet. You may be surprised to know this, but as the token weakling human cum redshirt officer of this trio, I'm not very comfortable walking around in this deathtrap of a jungle, and I'd prefer to do it for as little time as possible, before something comes up with my number!"

"Poor Lain, so helpless." Stella observed with a smile. "Don't worry, Stella will protect you from the bad things. You just hide behind her if you get scared."

"Hide is a bit strong of a term..." Lain protested, though he knew that should a situation arise, he probably would spend most of it facedown in the dirt behind Stella while she and Mechael took care of the fighting, he'd just get in the way and distract them. It was a real blow to his pride, but they WERE called supersoldiers for a reason. "If I was gonna hide behind anyone, it'd be the tin man there. Forget stopping bullets, he'd stop a goddamn RPG and walk away whistling."

"Tin man, huh? I'll remember you said that next time I need someone to grease some of the harder to reach spots on this body. You'd hate for your mobile cover to rust up and get frozen in place, wouldn't ya?" Mechael retorted with a leer. "Though I'd like it much more if Stella was doing the greasing, ya know what I mean?"

"I do, and you will not say such things again." Stella came back, her voice unexpectedly cold, wrongfooting both men, who had been enjoying the lighthearted banter. "Stella does not want to touch men other than Lain. Please do not joke about this, I do not find it humorous."

"Um... yeah..." Lain exchanged mystified glances with Mechael. Stella had never minded ribald joking before, but he wasn't going to question her change in tastes. That was one of the privileges of being female, you got to be whimsical with your tolerances for the antics of your male friends and they didn't get to argue with you about it. At least, not if they knew what was good for them. Lain pointed out the location of the large Mag-res return on his map, and Mechael led the way into the jungle once more without another word, careful to keep Lain between himself and the still scowling Stella. For his part, Lain thought about asking Stella again what was bothering her, but after considering her stiff spined walk and the stony expression on her face, he figured discretion was the better part of valor, and silence was the better part of not getting ripped a new asshole by his moody girlfriend. Sexist as it might be, if Lain didn't know it was impossible for Stella, he might have wondered if she was having PMS. She'd open up about it eventually, and in the meanwhile, he'd do his own investigations on the side, and by Hameya, he'd get his answers!

It was a blessedly short hike through the jungle to their newest destination, though it was so well camouflaged by the surrounding vegetation that Lain had to look twice when Mechael stopped before he realized they'd arrived. Whether the camouflage was intentional, or merely a result of the place being overgrown in the years since the Eden Disaster, Lain could not tell, but either way, if you didn't know it was there, it would be damned easy to walk right by it! And considering that "it", was some sort of half buried bunker type complex, the visible parts easily the size of one of the company sized barrack halls back at Gibraltar, that was saying something! The outside of the bunker seemed to be made of some sort of stone, though it didn't look to be made of individual pieces of rock, but rather a cohesive whole, and Lain recognized the telltale smoothness of Nano-manufactured materials.

They slowly circled the bunker, Mechael always leading, his Mauler ready in both hands, until with a upraised hand for silence and stillness, Mechael crept forward alone, taking out his machete once more to carefully probe ahead of him through a tangle of brush and vines, slicing it away in sections until a slight depression was revealed, the shallow slope leading down to a cave like hollow in the side of the bunker, obviously one of the entryways. Amping up his eye's sensitivity to light, Mechael crept forward into the dim space, finding it empty, the ground changing from loose dirt to a cement like mixture after a few feet, though the cement was badly cracked and partially overgrown with grassy weeds. He stood stock still and scanned with his full suite of sensors for almost two minutes, but the reinforced structure of the bunker prevented his sensors from penetrating too much further than his eyes could already see. With a sigh, Mechael sent the provisional all clear, and was joined a few seconds later by Stella and Lain, their helmet and weapon mounted flashlights causing Mechael's eyes to flare before the polarization adjusted.

Whatever this place had once been, it was now clearly abandoned. Mechael inspected the walls near where he surmised the door had once been, but instead of a heavy blast type door that was usually found in bunkers like this, it was more of a porticullis, a gridwork of bars that retracted into the walls and floor, which would have prevented physical access to the bunker, but would have done little to nothing against weapons fire. That made Mechael think that despite the doughty construction, this was no military facility. The further they ventured into the place, the more Mechael became convinced of this observation. Hell, it didn't even look like the place was designed to be occupied by humans, there were no living quarters or sanitary facilities, just more of the porticullis type doorways blocking off large rooms that looked more like storage spaces than anything else. It was only after inspecting a pile of moldering debris in the corner of one such room, and realizing it was some form of synthetic straw-replicant, that Mechael realized what the rooms were. "This was a cage." Mechael announced suddely, causing both Stella and Lain to jerk in surprise.

"What?" Lain asked, staring aroud the bare stone walls, which were pierced in places by metal piping and ducting, the water and air conditioning systems of this place obviously long defunct, the floors breaking apart under the remorseless attack of the weeds, the ceiling beginning to crack from the efforts of vines and more brush taking root upon the roof of the building.

"These large rooms with the gridwork doors." Mechael explained. "This wasn't a military bunker or a warehouse, this place was some sort of farm or zoo, and these rooms are where they kept the animals. The power must have failed or something like that, and all the doors opened, so all the animals got loose."

"I don't think the power failed." Stella commented, brushing away a mass of creeping taproots that were crawling down one wall of the room, revealing a cunningly built vidscreen and wall mounted keypad. A few waves of her hand across the front of the vidscreen cleared away layers of dust, and obviously activated some sort of motion sensor, because the screen hummed to life almost at once, some power source deeper within the structure obviously still operating just fine. The screen dimmed and then brightened again, changing from blackness to reveal its programmed base background, revealing the terminal as a computer rather than a mere vidscreen. All three of them sucked in harsh breaths as they recognized the prominently displayed symbol on the vidscreen, the vivid green field with the golden, winged eye being personally familiar to both Lain and Stella, and drilled deep into Mechael's memory banks as well, though only second hand. It was the symbol of the Brotherhood of Man, the terrorist organization created and led by Noah Borander that had caused the Eden Disaster seven years ago!

"A Brotherhood facility?" Lain wondered, confused as all hell. "What the hell is going on here? Why is there a Brotherhood bunker way out here in the middle of nowhere? I don't recall the Brotherhood ever building any ground facilities, they didn't need them, they had the Great Endeavor!"

"This was built before the Great Endeavor ever landed." Stella said, typing queries into the computer system. Much of it was password protected, and the security systems were far beyond her ability to hack, but some parts were open use, and from them she could pull up basic facts about the bunker. "This is Ark number 653, one of over a thousand similar facilities spread throughout the world, constructed by BoranderCrop subsidaries in the years following the Second Valentine War. If Mecha is right and this place was a zoo or holding pen for animals, I don't think they broke out at all. They were deliberately released after the Green Zone covered this area. It would account for the wide variety and density of animals reported in the area, and for the general resurgance of animal populations across Earth in the wake of the Disaster, despite most of them being near extinction in the wild pre-Disaster."

"Let me see this thing." Mechael said, stepping forward, one of his fingertips folding open to reveal a cluster of data input feeds, from which he selected a match for the input plug below the keyboard. Mechael was trained in basic computer hacking, all the supersoldiers were, but his internal computers carried much more advanced programs than he could ever devise himself. Unfortunately, they too were ineffective against the security coding of the Brotherhood system, much to Mechael's surprise and disgruntlement. It was commonly said that Noah had been a genius among geniuses, but still, for security programs at least seven years out of date to so easily defeat modern milspec hacking software, Mechael was damned impressed. That kid really had been WAY ahead of his time. Mechael jerked his finger away from the port with a frown, his finger recombobulating in seconds.

"Well, if Eric did find this place, he might have had a chance of surviving, especially if he figured out how to work the cage doors." Lain said, trying to be hopeful, though he again knew it was probably just self deception. They had seen no sign of a human presence thus far. However, Lain wasn't of a mind to give up just yet, there was more facility to explore. Venturing deeper into the bunker, they reached a wide open area that had obviously once been some sort of automated veterinary clinic, with a large plexiglass window built into one wall that showed a view of a medium sized cage-enclosure that was probably used to quarantine sick animals from the rest of the population. At one point in time the ceiling of the quarantine room must have collapsed, because the floor of the room, what they could see of it from the door to the vet clinic, was strewn with dirt and rubble, and long snaking vines draped down through the roof in thick tangles. The vet clinic itself looked pretty beat up, obviously wild animals had been rooting around inside at some time.

The real discovery came only a minute or so later, when Stella was rummaging through a tumbled stack of empty boxes that had once held basic medical supplies like gauze and sterile needles. She cried out in shock, and both Lain and Mechael were at her side in an instant, Lain afraid she'd found a body, Mechael afraid she'd punctured her suit somehow. It wasn't precisely known what happened to an Extended infected with Green EDEN, but he was betting it wasn't pretty, the drugs used to turn them into supersoldiers probably wouldn't play well with the nano-bots. Fortunately, neither of their worries proved founded, though Lain was closest. Stella had uncovered a discarded flight suit, in the Solar Knight colors, the durable fabric shredded and torn by the paws and inquisitive jaws of animals, though Lain could not tell if that had happened before or after the flight suit was taken off. The suit was already disintegrating in Stella's arms, the materials degraded after years in New Eden's environment, but enough remained cohesive for Lain to locate the name tags, which very definitely read "Knight-Ensign Eric Kellson".

Lain sagged against the wall, his vision blurring with moisture all over again. Eric had definitely survived the crash, and then found his way to this bunker, where he'd either stripped out of his damaged flight suit, or got eaten out of it, but Lain much preferred to think it was the former. If only they had some other clue as to what had happened next! There didn't appear to be any bones or body parts lying around, but with all the animal activity, there probably wouldn't be. So engrossed were all three of them in the unexpected find, that none noticed the large, hulking shape drop down through the hole in the roof into the quarantine chamber in eerie silence. The first sign that any of them had that they weren't alone was when huge, leathery skinned hands, each nearly the size of Lain's upper chest, descended upon Mechael's shoulders and clamped down tight.

Mechael weighed a good three hundred pounds of mostly synthetic material, but he was still lifted and heaved across the room like a billiard ball, thrown so hard that when he struck the plexiglass of the observation window, he didn't just crack it, he smashed entirely THROUGH it and bounced out of sight into the rubble strewn room beyond, an airborne distance of almost ten meters! Lain and Stella spun, their shouts of alarm and worry dying on their lips as they found themselves looking at Mechael's assailant. Lain had never been the tallest of men, he was used to having to look up at others, and he tried not to have a complex about it. Right now though, he was feeling positively dwarflike, looking up... and up... and up some more, at the creature towering over him and Stella like a mobile hill of ropy muscle! The thing had to be at least nine feet tall, maybe more, and almost as broad across the shoulders! It... he actually, since the leathery, retracted bulge between its legs could mean only one thing... blinked angrily at them as their flashlights blazed into its eyes, making them glow golden as they narrowed dangerously.

A chest rattling rumble echoed forth from the creature's wide mouth, filled with huge peg like teeth that looked like they were used for chewing rocks, along with a large set of what could only be called tusks protruding upwards from the sides of the lower jaw, like the incisor teeth of a hippo. The beast was covered in a shaggy pelt of silvery-green hair, marked along the upper arms, pectorals and shoulders with encrustations of mud or sap, looking almost like a silverback gorilla with moss growing on his skin, but this thing was MUCH bigger than any gorilla Lain had ever seen, and the Orb National Zoo had a giant as their prized alpha male. Ole Tarzan, as the great ape was named, would have been a juvenile delinquent compared to this creature though! The creature's posture was less stooped than that of a gorilla, though its long arms suggested that it could probably move just fine on four limbs as well as two. It was amazing the details you noticed when your brain was being flooded with fear adrenaline!

Lain's attention was drawn away from the creature's body to its arms, which bulged with muscle, the hands ending in blunt claws that looked like they were used for climbing or digging, rather than shredding meat. Perhaps the thing was herbivorous, Lain thought wildly, since Gorilla's tended to prefer a vegetarian diet if he remembered correctly. Of course they COULD eat meat too, he recalled, and even if it didn't want to eat him, it could still kill him, since Gorilla's were highly territorial creatures and not prone to fits of mercy against trespassers. Lain's eyes bulged as he saw the outside of the creature's forearms, which were equipped with knobby ridges of thick bone running from halfway down the forearm to the wrist, where the bones spiked upwards into a jagged peak, basically turning the creature's arms in spiked maces! Probably used for climbing, Lain figured, but equally good for busting heads and bodies into limp piles of meat.

Stella was less caught up in shocked apprasial of the beast, and she dropped Eric's disintegrating flight suit and whipped up her Mauler and pointed it point blank at the creature. Fast as Stella moved, the creature moved faster, one arm lashing out, the forearm bone blades aimed for Stella's head, forcing her to interpose the Mauler in favor of being decapitated. The linear shotgun shattered like it was made of clay instead of machined metals, and the force of the blow hurled Stella backwards, off her feet, into the stacked jumble of empty boxes, which at least broke her fall, though she was buried when they fell over atop her, and pinned until she could recover her dazed senses, leaving Lain alone against the creature. The Cutlass pressed against his back, but judging by the size of the creature, even if he could bring it around before it killed him, even a full auto burst might not kill the creature, which would also end with Lain dying a very early and unpleasant demise.

Before the snarling beast could batter him into gelatin, it was tackled hard from behind, Mechael having recovered from his ignominous toss and leapt back through the hole he'd broken through the observation window. He'd lost his Mauler sometime during that process, but Lain was too close to the monster for him to risk gunfire anyway, too close even for the beam saber to be an option, so Mechael had settled on the most basic option, extending the spikes on his elbows and knees and resolving to wrestle the damn thing to death if need be. Which was a good enough plan in theory, even if the thing had a good three feet in height and about nine hundred pounds of armored bone and muscle on him, since Mechael's artificial thews were much stronger than a flesh and blood man of size could ever hope to be. He could probably bench press this creature!

And it could probably crush him like a beer can, Mechael realized, as the creature shrugged its shoulders and broke his bear hug grip like his arms were made of silly string. A thrusting elbow actually dented his chestplate inwards about two inches, and sent him tripping backwards halfway across the room, a plethora of alarms ringing inside his skull as the structural compression came close to endangering his delicate meat-organs. Mechael bounced back to his feet at once though, determined to draw the creature away from Lain and Stella, so he could risk deploying the beam saber, which would make quick barbecue of this monster! He came charging back with an extended elbow, digging the spike into the creature's left side, about where the kidneys would be on a human. The flesh of the creature was incredibly dense and durable, and the spike sank in less than an inch before Mechael was quite literally swatted away, an open palm slap that sent him sailing across the room, flipped head over heels, to crush a partially destroyed desk. Something in his spine bent, and though emergency nano-repair bots went to work at once, for the next minute or so, he was immoible!

Seeing that Mechael was down, and staying down this time, the fearsome neo-Gorilla turned his attention back to Lain, who was suddenly glad that his underclothes were already soaked with sweat, since it ade it easier to pretend he couldn't feel himself wetting himself. Technically the armor was supposed to have a hookup for liquid waste to prevent that sort of situation, but Lain didn't know how to attach it, and he sure as hell wasn't going to ask for Stella or Mechael's help! He'd planned on figuring it out when they stopped to camp for the night, but now it was a moot point, wasn't it? Lain started to raise his hands in the universal gesture for surrender, before belatedly realizing that it was an animal, and might interpret raised arms as a prelude to attack. Indeed, the creature suddenly bared its teeth at him and lifted its own arms, bellowing out a deep throated howl of challenge that palpitated Lain's heart inside his chest, the volume so loud in the enclosed room that he felt like he might have been partially deafened! His faceplate and chest armor was splattered with strings of drool, and he had a much TOO good of a look down the creature's gullet, which looked more than big enough to accomodate. oh, his entire fucking HEAD, say.

That was when Stella rose from the boxes like a corpse from her grave, wickedly sharp combat knife in one hand, shrieking her own wordless challenge at the neo-Gorilla, and thrust herself protectively between her beloved Lain and the creature threatening him, disregarding any thoughts for her own safety. Seeing Stella stand in front of Lain seemed to confuse the beast, or maybe it was the terrifying expression of determined rage on her face, but whatever it was, the neo-Gorilla took a long step backwards, closing its mouth and narrowing its eyes. Lain knew a golden opportunity when he saw one, and the Cutlass was off his back in a bare second, and he had it aimed at the creature's face the moment after. At this range, even he couldn't miss! Lain's finger was just tightening on the trigger when the Neo-Gorilla suddenly thrust its right arm forward, palm raised with fingers spread, in a warding gesture that looked uncannily like a traffic cop making the "Stop" signal.

WAIT! An inhuman voice bellowed, so loud it made Lain's brain hurt as he spasmed in place, and it as only after a second or two of rapid blinking that Lain realized the creature's mouth was still locked closed in a toothy grimace. It had spoken into his mind! And it had used a word, a real human WORD! Lain had already pissed himself, but now the other end of his waste system was starting to feel very uncomfortably loose, because if this thing was TALKING to him, via its mind, then it could only be one thing. A Chimera. No one EVER had a good story to tell about encountering a Chimera. Most people didn't have stories at all, since most people that encountered them were dead shortly afterward. Lain checked to see what Stella was doing, and it was plain from her stance that she hadn't heard the Chimera speak, which was nothing less than expected for an Extended. Mechael was safe as well. Lain on the other hand, was all too vulnerable to all sorts of mind-fucking! WAIT. The Chimera commanded him once more, moving its arms with deceptive slowness, and taking another careful stride backwards, away from them.

"I'll wait if you will!" Lain retorted, feeling foolish a second later as he realized that the Chimera couldn't hear him, since his helmet mic was off, and even if it wasn't, chances were slim that it could actually understand human speech. But then he felt even more foolish, when he realized it could just pluck the thoughts straight out of his mind, as soon as he thought of the words, it knew them. He kept the Cutlass trained upon the Chimera, his finger tight on the trigger, but the Chimera made no more threatening moves. Indeed, from the squint of its eyes and the way it was rolling its bullet shaped head back and forth on its shoulders, Lain thought it was studying them intently. The Chimera lifted one hand and reached towards Stella, but a swipe from her blade and Lain's jerking of the Cutlass made the Chimera back off at once.

STELLA? LAIN? The Chimera queried, looking at Lain again. For his part, Lain shivered, wondering how the creature could know their names, before remembering the thing was privy to his thoughts, and could probably root up all sorts of information that way. Keying his radio, Lain sent a warning to Stella and Mechael.

"Guys, don't panic, but this thing is a Chimera. Its talking to me right now. I know it sounds strange, but I don't think it wants to fight anymore, so don't make any threatening moves, 'kay?" Lain then turned to look at the Chimera squarely again. "Yes, I am Lain, and she is Stella. The guy across the room is Mechael. We don't want any trouble. We were just about to leave actually. So don't feel like you need to prove anything territorial wise, you are the boss here, we're the people running away with our tails between our legs."

ARE YOU SCARED OF ME? The Chimera cocked his head at him, and seemed to be smiling. Though with all those teeth and tusks, it was anything but a friendly looking gesture.

"Fucking terrified, if you must know." Lain admitted freely, his voice shaking almost as much as his knees. "Given what I've seen you do just with your fists, I have every right to be, I think." Hameya, but it felt strange to actualy be no shit conversing with a non-human entity!

"Stella is scared too, but that won't stop her from eviscerating you if you even slightly hurt her Lain!" Stella announced ferociously, brandishing her combat blade with a vicious twirl. "Stella will not forgive you that sin, no matter what sort of creature you are!"

"Speaking of, do... you have a... uh... a name? Do you understand that concept?" Lain asked, trying not to sound condescending. Less than succesfully, judging by the snort the Chimera let out as he spoke.

OF COURSE I HAVE A NAME. I UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT JUST AS WELL AS YOU DO. DESPITE APPEARANCES, I'M NOT AN ANIMAL. The Chimera paused and seemed almost bashful for a moment, if a nine foot, 1200 pound neo-Gorilla could seem such. MY NAME AMONG MY PEOPLE, THE WENDIGO, IS NOT PRONOUNCABLE WITH THE HUMAN MOUTH AND THROAT, BUT I DO HAVE ANOTHER NAME, ONE I HAVE NOT USED IN FAR TOO LONG A TIME. ONE I NEVER THOUGHT I WOULD USE AGAIN. ONE THAT YOU WO...

"I don't suppose you could whisper, could you?" Lain protested, his head ringing with the deafening cadence of the Chimera's mental speech, which was shockingly fluent in human-speak. He somehow doubted all Chimera were this fluent in English, but this one was an ape, or ape like, and apes had long shown they were capable of understanding human words, if not of reproducing them themselves. "You're giving me a migraine."

I AM WHISPERING. The Wendigo rumbled in its upper throat and chest, probably a version of a laugh or chuckle. DO TRY NOT TO INSTANTLY DISBELIEVE ME WHEN I TELL YOU MY NAME THOUGH.

"Given that I've lasted this far into the conversation without screaming and soiling myself... any more than I already have that is... I submit that I'm pretty damned open minded when it comes to this psychic shit." Lain replied with a despairing shake of his head.

YOU ALWAYS WERE A MOUTHY SON OF A BITCH, LAIN. The Chimera seemed to heave a sigh. MY NAME IS ERIC, BUDDY. ITS BEEN A LONG TIME.

Lain stared at the Wendigo for almost a full minute, barely aware of Mechael rising somewhat unsteadily to his feet in the background, right formarm port sliding open to reveal the emitter of his beam saber, though he kept the weapon unlit for the time being. He tried to think of a logical reason why the Wendigo would want to pretend to be his friend Eric, and couldn't come up with anything. How did the creature even know that name? Unless it had previously encountered and mindraped Eric, or ate him and absorbed his memories, or something, right?

OPEN MIND, YOU BASTARD, OPEN MIND! The Chimera snorted in agitation, interrupting Lain's thoughts. I KNOW IT'S FUCKING STRANGE, ALRIGHT? IF I WAS IN YOUR SHOES, I'D BE SKEPTICAL TOO. BUT ITS ME IN HERE. REALLY, IT IS. I GOT, WELL... I GOT ABSORBED INTO THIS GUY A FEW YEARS BACK, AND EVER SINCE THEN I'VE KINDA BEEN STUCK IN THE DRIVER'S SEAT.

"You got "absorbed" into the consciousness of a Chimera, but you ended up in control of the body and mind?" Lain replied, his face slack, his weirdness quota rapidly reaching overflow status. "You, a regular guy, ended up..."

I WAS AN EDENITE AT THE TIME, LAIN. YOU DON'T HONESTLY THINK I SURVIVED TWO YEARS OUT IN THIS WILDERNESS AS A NATURAL, DO YOU? AND EVEN SO, I GOT LUCKY. I THINK THIS GUY WAS SOMETHING OF A HALF-WIT BEFORE WE MET. LOTS OF IDIOT STRENGTH, LIKE A CERTAIN SHORT ORBITE I KNOW, BUT NOT MUCH COMMON SENSE OR INTELLECTUAL PROCESSING POWER, ALSO LIKE A CERTAIN SHORT ORBITE I KNOW. I'M JUST RIDING HERD, YOU COULD SAY. I POINT OUT THE DOORS, HE DOES THE BASHING.

"Okay, that DOES sound like an Eric insult, I gotta give you that much." Lain admitted. Stella started, that being the first time she had heard the name spoken out loud, and she turned to look at him questioningly. "Okay Stella, bear with me here. From what I understand... and this is a tenuous understanding mind... the big super-gorilla in front of us has Eric living inside his skull. Or Eric's personality anyway. I don't know how or why, but I'm starting to think that really is him in there."

"You just accept that he is Eric because he said so?" Stella challenged, her tone indicating that she was impressed with his gullibility.

TELL HER ABOUT THAT FRENCH KISS SHE GAVE US AFTER GALILEO. I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU ACTUALLY HOOKED UP WITH HER, YOU LUCKY BASTARD!

"Not nearly as lucky as it seems." Lain muttered in frustration, before relaying the message to Stella, who was not impressed.

"Its a PSYCHIC, Lain, an Active. As a Chimera it can read your mind and your memories like they're written on the wall behind you. That's not proof." Stella told him, pointing her blade at Eric the Wendigo threateningly. "Its probably just trying to lull you into complacancy so that it can..."

"Can kick our butts even worse than he was already doing while we were ready for him?" Lain retorted wryly. "And unless you have some memories involving just you and Eric that I'm not aware of, and probably wouldn't want to be aware of, then I don't see how he can prove himself to you."

"I have no intimate memories of Eric, if that is what you mean." Stella replied, that frosty edge back in her voice. "I would not be unfaithful to you like that. I would not..." Stella trailed off, her eyes filling with tears.

YOU MADE HER CRY, DUDE. I SHOULD PUNT YOU OVER THE BUNKER FOR THAT. Eric commented dryly, folding his lengthy arms across his huge barrel chest. AND TELL THE METAL ONE, MECHAEL, I THINK YOU CALLED HIM, THAT I KNOW PRETTY DAMN WELL WHAT THAT THING IN HIS ARM DOES, AND THAT HE'D BETTER PUT IT AWAY BEFORE I DECIDE TO TAKE IT AWAY FROM HIM.

"That might be hard, since its part of his arm." Lain replied, as he cautiously stepped forward, laying his Cutlass aside so he could enfold the sobbing Stella in his arms, not sure why she was so distressed by her assumption that he thought she had cheated on him, but wanting to comfort her all the same. He hated it when she cried, it made him feel so weak and stupid and helpless.

THAT IS HIS PROBLEM, NOT MINE. I WILL DISARM HIM IN THE STRICTEST SENSE UNLESS HE PUTS IT AWAY.

Lain paled as he took Eric's meaning, helped along by a vivid mental picture of the act provided by Eric. "Hey Mecha, if you value your arms, and I mean literally, your entire arms, put the saber away. This guy's a... old friend of mine, you might say."

"You're old friends with a ape-Chimera?" Mechael raised an eyebrow in condescending amazement, though his arm port did seal closed, the saber retracted once more. "I think Roanoke might want to know about that, eh? Though maybe we'd better keep it on the downlow... you humans don't do so well with all your limbs removed, unlike me."

WENDIGO, NOT APE. YOU'RE MORE LIKE APES THAN I AM. Eric corrected Mechael, though of course only Lain could hear him. APE IS A RACIAL SLUR AMONG MY PEOPLE, YOU DROP THAT WORD AMONGST THE TRIBE AND YOU'D BETTER BE READY TO GET YOUR HEAD RIPPED OFF AND USED AS A BUTT PLUG.

"It's complicated, okay? Just trust me on this. And lay off the ape comments, its like him calling you "Big Blue", 'kay? Its a definite fightin' word, if you get what I'm saying." Lain turned back to Eric. "Did I hear you right? There's MORE of the Wendigos? A whole goddamn tribe? I thought Chimera's were, like, unique aberrations or whatever?"

ABBERATION IS A SAFE ENOUGH WORD TO USE IN THE TRIBE, THEY DON'T HAVE THAT CONCEPT YET, BUT I'D WATCH YOUR TONE WHEN YOU SAY IT. MOST CHIMERA ARE UNIQUE MUTATIONS, THAT IS TRUE. BUT SOME OF US ARE TRUE BREEDING. WENDIGO'S ARE, AS FAR AS I CAN DETERMINE, DESCENDED FROM AFRICAN MOUNTAIN GORILLAS, AND THEY ARE A STABLE, TRUE BREEDING RACE. YOU'LL UNDERSTAND THAT I CAN'T TALK ABOUT EXACT NUMBERS AND SUCH WITH OUTSIDERS, EVEN FRIENDS. YOU'RE STILL HUMAN AFTER ALL, AND STUMPS AT THAT. BUT OUR NUMBERS ARE GROWING STEADILY, OUR YOUNG MATURE QUICKLY, AND OUR LIVES OUR LONG. WE HAVE NO NATURAL PREDATORS WITHIN OUR RANGE, AND WE HAVE NO DESIRE TO CONTEST WITH THE USN OVER ANYTHING. SADLY, I DON'T BELIEVE THEY WILL GIVE US A CHOICE.

"Yeah, I kinda doubt that myself." Lain agreed, slowly disengaging himself from Stella. "The mere idea that there is a true breeding race of Chimera would send a few people I know into either fits of homicidal rage, or unbridled avarice. You'd either be hunted down and exterminated, or hauled up to space for experimentations." Lain paused and narrowed his eyes. "You keep saying "us" and "our" and "we", you know that?"

SHOULDN'T I? LIKE IT OR NOT, I AM A WENDIGO NOW. UNLESS YOU WANNA GIVE ME YOUR BODY, AND EVEN THEN, I'M NOT SURE I COULD TRANSFER WITHOUT FRYING BOTH OUR BRAINS. I'D PREFER NOT TO RISK IT. I ADMIT, I WAS PRETTY DESPONDENT AT FIRST, BUT IT GROWS ON YOU AFTER A WHILE. I'M IN A UNIQUE POSITION TO DO A LOT OF GOOD FOR MY PEOPLE. THEY ARE SMART, BUT UNLEARNED. OUR CULTURE IS NEWBORN, STILL IN THE STONE AGES, BUT I CAN FIX THAT EASILY ENOUGH. WE COULD BE IN THE BRONZE AGE, EVEN THE IRON AGE, IN A MATTER OF A CENTURY OR TWO, WITH MY GUIDANCE! I AM LITERALLY THE FOUNDER OF A NEW RACE OF INTELLIGENT, PEACEFUL LIFE LAIN. ITS A HUGE RESPONSIBILITY, BUT I AM GLAD TO HAVE IT.

"So you're like the chief of the entire tribe or something?" Lain asked, his head pounding with the reverberations of Eric's "whispers". He didn't know how much longer he could keep this up before collapsing, but all the same he didn't want to ever stop either!

MORE LIKE A SHAMAN. WENDIGO'S ARE UNIVERSALLY LATENT, THE ACTIVE WAS A FREAK CHANCE, AND BORN HALF WITTED AS I SAID. WHEN I CAME BACK "FIXED" IT WAS TAKEN AS A SIGN OF THE FAVOR OF THE TREE GOD, AND FROM THERE, WELL, I COULD EITHER ROLL WITH IT OR BE EATEN ALIVE AS A SACRIFICE, AND I MADE THE OBVIOUS CHOICE THERE. LIFE IS GOOD. I HAVE SEVERAL BEAUTIFUL MATES AND MANY OFFSPRING. YOU SHOULD SEE THE TRIBE DURING THE RUT SEASON... MAN, WHO NEEDS INTERNET PORN WHEN YOU CAN LIVE IN A THREE MONTH LONG NEAR ORGY?

"I really don't wanna think about that, Eric. You're not exactly fitting my current standards of beauty, and while I'm sure the female Wendigo's are really hot to you, I think I might vomit if I were to see you and your girlfriends getting it on." Lain replied with a halfhearted smirk. Goddamn it, but Eric really sounded happy, content even, and Lain actually found himself envying him. Yeah, being turned into a monster was the suck, but coming into a sweet deal as a religious messiah, with lots of hot chicks digging you and the respect of the great and powerful, plus immense psychic power... well, it wasn't so bad a thing. Lots of freedom, lots of sex, lots of fun. Lain was still thinking about that when Eric stiffened, a low growl vibrating through the room as he cocked his head to the side and looked over his shoulder, upslope.

DAMN IT. SORRY GUYS, BUT I'M ON CALL, AND SOMETHING IMPORTANT LOOKS TO HAVE JUST COME UP. THE ALPHA NEEDS MY PRESENCE. THE TRIBE IS AGITATED. Eric growled again, obviously picking up on that agitation, hackles rising on his back as his silvery-green hair started to bristle up. SORRY THAT WE DIDN'T HAVE MORE TIME TO CATCH UP, I HAD A LOAD OF QUESTIONS I WANTED TO ASK YOU. BUT THIS CAN'T WAIT. IT WOULD BE BEST IF YOU LEFT AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. MANY OF THE YOUNGER MALES LIKE TO FORAGE AND ROUGHHOUSE IN THIS AREA. IF THEY CATCH YOUR SCENT, THEY WILL SWARM YOU IN A HEARTBEAT, AND POUND YOU INTO THE GROUND FOR DARING TO TRESPASS.

"Hey, wait..." Lain protested, as Eric turned away and began heading towards the hole in the roof of the bunker, in the quarantine room. "What about your sister? What do you want me to tell her?"

DON'T TELL JEAN ANYTHING. IT WOULD JUST BE A WASTE OF TIME. SHE SUFFERED INTENSIVE BRAIN DAMAGE DURING A SECRET USN ASSASSINATION MISSION DIRECTED AGAINST HER BOYFRIEND AND MY FRIEND, MARKOV ASHINO. SHE DOESN'T REMEMBER ME. AND EVEN IF SHE DID, ITS BETTER FOR HER TO REMEMBER ME AS I WAS. TELL HER I'M NOT COMING BACK, EVER. SHE'LL TAKE THE EUPHANISM, AND YOU WON'T HAVE TO LIE. Eric turned and reached out his long arms, gently dropping a couple of fingers from each hand onto Lain and Stella's shoulders. TAKE CARE OF STELLA, LAIN. I'M GLAD YOU GOT TOGETHER, SHE DESERVES SOMEONE GOOD LIKE YOU. AND DON'T COME BACK, I CAN'T PROTECT YOU FROM THE TRIBE. And with those words he loped off, hopping through the hole Mechael had created in the glass, ripping out yet more of the plexiglass in the process, before swarming up the vines and through the hole in the roof, and was gone.

After a long minute, Mechael spoke up. "I guess this is one of those things we never talk about again, right? I mean, if word of this got out, we'd ALL be scrap in a heartbeat. And they'd come for your friend and his folks with nets and tranqs and guns and tanks and they wouldn't stop until they were all dead or captured. Kinda sucks when you feel more for the nine foot dragon-apes than you do for the guys who are ostensibly on your own side, huh?"

"It's a fucked up world." Lain agreed, wholeheartedly.

xxxx

Earlier, further up the mountainside

For one of the first times in her life, Lilia was begining to seriously question Kunai's judgement. Yeah, she had posed a question or two when he brought Kira in as Executor, but that was just a flutter of doubt. This was full fledged wondering if she should come back with a team of specialists and a straight jacket, not that such a crude restrainment device would contain a man with Kunai's talents, but it was the principle of the thing. On the surface of things, assigning her to be the bearer of the ambassadorial message to the Wendigo tribe was fitting, since she did have the most peaceful experience dealing with various Chimera of all the Praetorians, perhaps of anyone on all of New Eden. However, saddling her with her companion was an act of raving lunacy as far as she was concerned, because he was, as far as she could tell, the exact polar opposite of diplomatic in any way, shape or form! Of course, it wasn't like Kunai had ordered the guy along, that wasn't possible, but he'd mentioned how this alliance could help speed up the end of the war, and from that point on she hadn't been able to step out of his sight for a moment. Not a SINGLE moment, which made her very glad for the waste disposal systems of her armor. Those of Garden City were open about many intimate things, but using the restroom wasn't one of them.

Though she never would have admitted it to anyone, Lilia had done her level best to leave her unwanted assistant behind in her dust on the flight over here, utilizing every maneuver and speed boosting trick she knew to outdistance him, and none of them had worked in the slightest. Of course she could have just turned on her photo-refractor and veered off course for a bit, but that would have been a bit too overt for her sense of propriety. Though now, walking through the jungle for the last leg of the trip, she was really starting to wish she'd cast her sense of propriety to the winds for once. He was walking behind her again, since he knew it bothered her greatly to not be able to see exactly where he was. It was like having a loaded gun pointed at the back of her head at all times. He would constantly vary the distance between them, sometimes dropping back so far he was almost out of sight, other times he practically was breathing down the back of her armor, and the damnable thing was that she could never tell how far away he was unless she turned to look, which she refused to do after the first few times, once she realized that making her paranoid was exactly WHY he was doing it.

On one level, far removed from the part of her that was pissed off and irritable, she was actually kind of thrilled. After all, he was basically playing with her, more or less, even though it was a very creepy game, it was still a game. One more tick mark in the "childlike personality" column. Of course she was compiling data on several different personalities, which he seemed able to swap between on the fly with absolutely no warning. She'd read up on schizophrenia and other mental diseases in the past, as they could be the result of improper usage of Active powers, both by others on you, and you upon yourself, and she'd never seen any mention of such flawless personality transitions. Were it not for her empathic talents, she'd probably never have even discerned that there WERE multiple personalities in that distractingly handsome head of his. It was as Kira said, this man, this Zacharis Frost, really did redefine the term "insane".

The funny thing... though it wasn't actually funny at all... was that one of the few mental disorders that Zacharis did not possess was the one most commonly associated with mass murderers and the criminally insane. He wasn't sociopathic, as in, he DID know the difference between right and wrong, he merely CHOSE to do wrong because he enjoyed it. Whether that made him better or worse than the average sociopath homicidal madman was something she hadn't yet made up her mind on. Worse because he was doing evil things by choice, but better in the sense that it WAS a choice, and choices COULD be changed. It was merely a matter of providing the proper incentive for that change. And that was where she was kind of stuck, because, also much like Kira had told her, Zacharis had no interest in changing his ways. He LIKED being evil and reprehensible. But she had faith that she would find a crack in his facade sooner or later. She just needed time. Time spent alone with him. And she needed to survive that time too, of course.

And the best hope for surviving was not to draw his attention in the wrong way. Lilia was very confident in her ability to defend herself, especially in full armor, but Zach had quite literally mopped the floor with SEVEN Praetorians at the same time, including Alexander, who was easily the strongest Praetorian in terms of pure brawn and brute force and physical toughness. And Zach hadn't even broken a sweat, he'd made it look easy! So that took fighting against him totally off the books. If he came after her, she'd put up the best fight she could, but unless she got really lucky, he was going to destroy her. So that made avoiding a fight with him imperative, but that was much easier said than done. She was slowly feeling out her ability to talk with him in a harmless enough manner, but it really depended a lot on which facet of his personality was in control at any given time. A comment that would have drawn a glare from Zach the Whetstone, the meglomaniacal, cerebral side of him, would get her head ripped off her shoulders by Zach the End of All, the bloodthirsty berserker side of him. Zach the Eyes of the Abyss was the creepy, broody one that was currently playing paranoia with her; and Zach the Dark Soul was the whimsical, chatty, philosophic type that seemed almost normal, except for his morbid and obscene obsessions.

She wasn't sure which splinter Zach was the original version, or if any of them were. For all she knew, there were a lot more personalities in there than she'd yet seen, ones that were only dominate in very specific circumstances, rather than the fluidly changing ballet of the prime four. She was hoping there was at least one more, what she wanted/hoped was the seed personality, the root of all the others, the "normal" person that he had once been, back before he suffered whatever horrors that had caused his mental state to fracture so completely, because that was the personality she wanted to find and bring to the fore, to teach to control the current prime four so that Zach could return to leading a normal, happy, productive life. Or at least stop going around bragging about how he was going to create an endless conflict through which to winnow out the weakness from the human race. Lilia was actually rather fond of the so called "weaknesses" of humanity, flaws were what gave people character, and she found it very hypocritical for a person who was basically made up entirely of such flaws declaring a crusade to forge the "flaws" out of humanity. She forebore pointing that out though, Zach the Whetstone was very sensitive about his pet project.

On top of everything else that made him difficult, including his freakish personal power, his skills as a pilot, his rampant ego and his insanity was the fact that he was an identical twin of Kira! No, actually even better than that, he was an image of Kira in his absolute prime, full of life and vigor, his skin completely flawless, his body slighly more muscular and toned, his teeth so brilliantly white they made the clouds look dull, his eyes so bright and intent that his gaze felt like laser beams whenever he looked at her, his spiky brown hair worn longer and more unkempt than Kira's. That and the golden eyes were the only way to tell them apart during the day, barring psychic senses, assuming no actual interaction took place. At night, the glowing red tinge his eyes took on, which allowed him perfect night vision even in pitch darkness such as inside caves, was a pretty big distinction itself. Privately, almost ashamed nonetheless, Lilia had to admit that Zach was hotter than Kira, in a physical sense. He did more with what he had than Kira ever did, put himself on display, exuded raw animal magnetism that drew the eye, moved like the predator he was, all slow, fluid movement that emphasised his speed and power, etc. All things an eligible single woman was more or less on the lookout for in an exciting, stimulating partner; whether she was intentionally thinking about it or not.

She'd always had a thing for self confident, physically powerful, intellectually capable and good looking men. Well, that was kinda the ideal man no matter what sort of woman you were, but she'd always fallen harder for the "jock" type, even or perhaps especially the ones that were assholes. Not that she sought them out for permanent or even long term temporary relationships, it was just that sort of aggressive, combatative, even egotistical personality that she was drawn to for short periods of time, before it grew to be too much. It was like a campfire, when you were cold it felt good to get right up close to it, but before long, you got too toasty, and you needed to back off and cool down some. Usually it was Alex or one of the other Praetorians that she felt drawn to during those moments when she craved fire, and usually she would have that nice toasty feeling after a few hours or a night, and then she'd be off on her own again, preferring the more quiet, compassionate, "touchy-feely" type of people for constant companionship.

But right now Zach was doing very funny things to her mental state even beyond his paranoia games, and Lilia did not appreciate the hormonal urges. Sadly there wasn't much she could do besides grit her teeth and soldier on, the human body didn't have an off switch for this particular dilemma. If only Kira had been willing... but no, that was over and done with, and while Kira was off having fun moving on or whatever the hell he was doing, here she was, still hot for him, but having to deal with his better looking, morally loose evil twin instead. Great. Just great. And she wasn't about to proposition Zach the way she'd done for Kira, she was fairly sure that no matter which Zach was in control, if she told him that she wanted to have sex with him in order to banish her Kira fantasies, he'd kill her in a moment. Or probably a large handful of moments, since he'd probably torture her, rape her and then slowly kill her. Zach's animosity for Kira was a terrible thing to behold, though it was curiously tempered with a sort of respect unlike anything Zach showed to anyone else. Though that respect had largely become disgust ever since Zach had heard that Kira had become an Executor, which Zach seemed to feel made Kira less than he should have been.

Lilia wondered what Zach would say if he knew that she agreed with him on that particular point. Kira had fallen, and fallen far, and he was only a shade of the man she knew he could be, and had been. She just hoped he realized that descending into the bloodshed was not the way to uphold the ideals his beloved Lacus had cherished during her life, and that he was all too likely making her cry as she looked down upon him from the afterlife. And she hoped he realized it soon, before he slid too far down the slope to ever regain his former pinnacle. Though on the other hand, the moment Kira stopped being "Yamato" and became "Boytoy" again, Zach would try to kill him, and that was a fight she didn't want to see for a LONG time. It was one of Zach's funnier, though oftentimes creepy, habits to assign people derogatory nicknames. Kira had been Boytoy, Alex was Turkey, Lilia herself Mouse, etc. Oddly enough, as derogatory as the nicknames were, Lilia had come to realize that they were in fact terms of endearment, in a way. Not precisely respect, but a sign that Zach valued the person all the same, for the challenge provided in killing them if nothing else. For Zach to call you by your given name was a sign he was either incredibly angry or being dismissive and insulting.

And so, though she still felt that she had absolutely nothing in common with a Mouse, in looks, personality or habits, she'd stopped protesting his usage of the term, was even starting to grow kind of comfortable with it. It helped her gauge his mood. Which, right now, was still playful, his spirits obviously buoyed up by being away from Yggdrasil's presence and the "buzzing" that he'd felt in his mind during his time in Garden City. Lilia wasn't sure exactly what he was talking about, but if she had to guess, she'd have said it was the same sort of influence Yggdrasil used to keep the predators in line in the "human" sections of Garden City, repressing their natural urges and instincts. She'd never heard of it affecting a human before, but then again, Zach wasn't strictly human in a lot of ways. It was, as most things with Zach, a double edged sword. It put him in a much better mood yes, but it also removed the limitation on his bloodthirst that had been the only thing preventing him from killing people instead of merely beating them senseless. And since they were on an official diplomatic mission of high importance as well, Lilia had decided to tone back her efforts at prying into Zach, because if she touched him off now, there would be no one around to save her, or even ever find out what happened to her.

Unfortunately, Zach wasn't going to make things easy for her. Apparently tiring of his paranoia games, he loudly stomped through the underbrush to walk beside her, ignoring the whippy branches and vines he walked through, the welts disappearing from his skin almost as soon as they were inflicted. Lilia recognized a personality switch by now, and from his demeanor, she was guessing Zach the Dark Soul had come to the fore. Glancing aside at him, she tried not to shudder as she saw his smirk, her reaction a mixture of revulsion and desire. He was sinfully pretty, but that smile was a grotesque mockery of anything even slightly pleasant, it was a death's head grin that belonged on the grim reaper himself and no where else! Where Lilia was clad in her full Praetorian armor, including helm and carrying her standard roving arsenal of swords, daggers, throwing weapons and 17mm linear assault rifle, Zach just wore a foreshortened version of the Praetorian garrison uniform someone had provided for him, black trousers and short sleeved undershirt, both garments ragged after walking through the jungle for a half hour.

He was also almost unthinkably lightly armed. Even the most confident Praetorian tended to carry at least some form of firearm when they were out on patrol, much less knowingly headed into a potentially volatile situation, since the plain facts were that compared to most of the animals, a human's strength and endurance was nothing, you needed a gun to make things even slightly fair! Zach had a pair of long combat knives, one slung from either hip, but those were his only concession to personal safety. And Lilia wasn't even sure if that was the reason, he seemed to have just grabbed them as an afterthought. Though she had noted his sneer of disdain as he carefully picked through the selection of spare blades the Praetorians had on hand, testing each and every one for heft, balance and who knew what other criteria. Zach seemed to have a very discerning eye for the qualities of bladed weapons, and most he contemptuously discarded before settling on these two with a sigh that bespoke more tolerance than satisfaction to her ears.

More vines whipped past her head as she shoved her way through thicker sections of undergrowth, and she tried not to wince as she heard the distinct whipcrack slaps of vine meeting flesh beside her, where Zach was getting mercilessly lashed by the vegetation. She glanced aside at him once more, relieved to find that smirk gone, thick lines of red welt appearing on his cheeks and brow, like some sort of tribal tattoo, before fading away to be replaced with creamy perfection once more in a matter of seconds. She still didn't know how he did that, how he healed so incredibly quickly, but she doubted that he would explain if she asked. It had to be intensely uncomfortable though, constantly getting smacked with branches and vines, and it looked like it hurt for that matter! "You should have borrowed a helmet, ya know?" Lilia blurted, before realizing that he didn't like being talked down to.

"Why?" Zach asked, his cheek turning dark red for a moment as a particularly thick branch stub grazed it and almost cut the skin. "I'm enjoying myself here."

"You enjoy getting smacked in the face with vines and whippy branches?" Lilia asked, nonplussed. "Doesn't it hurt?"

"That's a very relative question, Mouse." Zach shrugged and kept easy pace with her, even though it would have been just as easy to fall back a step and walk behind her. Just as easy and far less painful for him. She tried to speed up so she could cut in front of him, to take some of the blows for him, but he lengthened his stride to compensate, and he was definitely the faster walker of the two of them, so she slowed back down to her normal pace. "You could say that yes, it does hurt. But compared to what I consider actual "hurt", no, these don't hurt at all. And even if it were truly agonizing, I wouldn't wear a helmet for even a second."

"Why not?" Lilia asked, trying not to sound too interested. She'd made that mistake before with him, and he'd closed up almost instantly. Fortunately he didn't seem to hold her inquisitiveness against her for long, a few minutes later he was always offering some new tidbit of information. She might almost suspect he was doing it intentionally, though for what reason was incomphrensible to her. But then again, was that so strange since he was insane?

"Why not?" Zach repeated, shaking his head as if in despair. "And I had such high hopes for you too, Mouse. How can it be that it is not obvious to you? I could have sworn I tasted it upon you during our first meeting, regrettably shortened as it was."

"You were about to rape me, physically and psychically, before Kira stopped you." Lilia replied, not bothering to hide her disgust.

"As I said, regrettably shortened as it was." Zach continued on as if she'd just agreed with him, which, in a way, she had. "What does pain mean to you, Mouse?"

"Pain? Its an unpleasant sensation, to be avoided where possible." Lilia responded after a few moments thought. She turned her head and tried not to freeze with panic when she saw the look on his face, something caught between interest and frustration. She wasn't sure what that was all about, but her empathy was telling her that she was walking a very thin line right at the moment, and the worst thing was, she couldn't even tell why! She had no idea what sort of answer Zach was looking for, but it was obvious that she wasn't providing it, and he was starting to get frustrated with her. Too much more and Zach the End of All might come out to play, and after that things would get very interesting. And painful. And short.

"You don't truly believe that, Mouse. Which is why I allow you to continue breathing, despite my disappointment." Zach let the threat roll off his tongue as casually as if he were discussing the current weather. "No, you may THINK you believe that, but I know different. It was only a glimpse that I saw, but it was enough to know how you truly feel about pain. Should I enlighten you, my nervous blue haired Mouse?"

"Knock yourself out." Lilia answered, feeling oddly defensive, though perhaps it was just because he kept bringing up his violation of her memories, which she REALLY hated. "Yggdrasil knows, I've been trying to psychoanalyze you for the past half hour, I'd love to see what you can do in turn."

"Its simple. You feel the same way about it that I do." Zach shrugged as if he were about to reveal the most obvious thing in the world. "You seek it out. You enjoy it. You enjoy suffering. You embrace pain wherever and whenever you can, because it makes you feel alive. When you are in pain you become excited, exultant even. It makes you feel happy, pure, even valued. Pain is the greatest reward you could have. It is the same with me."

"I'm NOT a Masochist!" Lilia said in angry revulsion. "I do NOT get turned on by pain in any way, shape or form!" Certainly she didn't after being kept in a rape dungeon and tortured on a daily basis by those sadistic freaks for more than two years during her most impressionable years of teenagerhood!

"Of course you aren't, perish the thought!" Zach, to her surprise, looked equally revolted at the idea. "In that we are also similar, the idea of being in pain as a sexual pleasure is simply disgusting! To equate pain and orgasm is to soil the perfection that is pain! Pain is purer than that. Pain is life in its most basic element. No, Mouse, you are NOT a Masochist, but you ARE a Sufferer. You seek out situations that cause you pain, because it is while IN pain that you feel truly alive, truly awake and fully in command of your destiny. I don't speak of pain in the physical sense here, pain is far more than just physical hurt, it is that sublime emotion we feel when we are in conflict with that which is reality! To live is to experience pain, to experience pain is to be truly alive. Pain is what seperates my nightmares from my life, it is the holy sacrament by which reality unveils itself to me, and to you, in all its hideous, beautific glory. Hide from pain? You can try, but you are doomed to a miserable, nothing existence in that case Mouse, and you'd be better off put out of your misery right here and now!"

"I still don't think that..."

"Mouse, look at where you are, at what you are DOING right this very instant. You have taken a huge responsibility upon your shoulders, knowing the fate of your world, your friends and allies, could depend in some way upon your success or failure. You venture off into the unknown with a single glance behind you, eager for whatever may lie before you next. You freely consort with a man whom all others fear, whom you fear, whom you constantly wonder if he will decided to snuff out your life in the most deliciously prolonged manner in the next instant. You dance with death himself, and even that isn't enough for you, you strive to UNDERSTAND death in order to create something from which there is only nothing, a process that will almost certainly end up with you dying a horrible demise after a lot of torment. Every moment of your life is filled with the pain that you seek out. The pain of responsibility. The pain of uncertainty. The pain of ambition regardless of the odds." Zach's smirk grew wider. "The pain of controlling your inner urges. The pain of maintaining that which you regard as purity, of striving towards the impossible in the pursuit of your own soul's desires! You exalt in these pains every moment of every day, where others seek to hide from them whenever they can, because it is easier to turn ones face away than look directly into the sun. But you, Mouse, you would stare into the very fires of hell itself, and swim through the Abyss if need be to accomplish what you wish. And thus I name you Sufferer, and happily look upon you."

"Well... thanks... I guess..." Lilia stuttered. "I hadn't really thought about it that way before, but..."

"Don't go thinking this makes us friends though, Mouse." Zach withdrew into himself once more. "Yamato was once a Sufferer too, but he's since fallen from that graceful state, and you yourself balance precariously on the edge of the same precipice. And the moment you do fall... and you will, Mouse, you will... is the moment I wring your slender little neck and tear out your oviaries to wear as earrings. Don't you forget that. Its only a matter of time, time and the right pressures. There is only one way to truly stand securely in the grace of suffering, and that way is closed to you. Because you are sane."

"You're just screwing with me, aren't you?" Lilia asked after a few moments of thought.

"Not in the slightest, Mouse. And if you keep up that blithering attitude, I can assure you, screwing will be the most of your worries, because I WILL fuck you, in every sense of the term, and leave your remains for the animals." Zach paused and flashed his sickly death's head grin once more. "After I gnaw off the choice bits for myself of course."

"You wouldn't really eat human flesh, would you? I mean, unless you had no choice, right?" Lilia answered, seeking to deflect the conversation away from whatever faults Zach perceived her has having.

"Wouldn't I?" Zach fished around in his pocket for a moment, before withdrawing a well preserved little hunk of flesh. It was a bit dried out, but it was still easily recognizable as a human ear, still with small orange topaz earring stud in the lobe. "I took this little memento off of Fiery Zala-Attha... you'd know her as Yamato's sister... with my teeth, and it was a real struggle not swallowing it then and there. This was after I'd broken damn near every bone in her body, fucked her raw in her own bloodstained bed and eaten several of her toes. All with her husband helplessly in my mental grip all of three feet away. Ahh, but that was a glorious experience. I was SOOOO close to converting Fiery Zala-Attha to the ranks of the Sufferers that night. Alas, even when you share enlightenment with people in the most intimate of fashions, they close their minds to your lessons. It's quite frustrating, I'm sure you'll agree."

For her part, Lilia had to avoid vomiting into her helmet as she realized that Zach was being perfectly serious and honest about where he'd gotten that ear, and what he'd been doing at the time. She made a mental note not to try and call him on any further bluffs, he didn't seem to know the meaning of the term. That poor woman, Lilia knew exactly how it felt to be pinned down and ravaged by a man, though she'd never been lucky enough to have it happen in a bed. And from Zach's tone and words, Lilia had no doubt that he'd been far from gentle with her, the exact opposite if anything. And even if he'd been gentle, rape was still rape, and it left scars that often never fully healed. Lilia's sure hadn't. Though maybe that was what Zach was going on about, her painful memories were always driving her onwards to be a better person, she wouldn't be half the woman she was today if it weren't for those years in the dungeon! Strange, she'd always thought she was doing it to run away from or erase those memories, but now she realized she'd in fact been keeping them close, a fire beneath her heels to constantly push her forward. Huh... he's WAY more perceptive than I thought. That's kinda scary...

Lilia was about to try for another topic change when her own perceptions began jangling in warning, and she barely even had time to unsling her 17mm rifle before the two of them were surrounded, huge, vastly muscled forms appearing seemingly from nowhere, their fur smeared with mud and twigs for near perfect camouflage, or else leaping down from the lower boughs of the trees above them. There were at least a dozen of the creatures, none less than eight feet tall and about six feet across the shoulders, probably weighing close to a thousand pounds of thick hide, solid bone and tremendous muscle. The Wendigo's... that was what they had to be... stared at them challengingly through slitted silver eyes, jutting tusks gnashing as they lifted their arms in what was unmistakably a threat posture, rotating their forearms so the chisel edged ridges of bone that ran down their forearms were aligned downward like axe blades. One hit from one of those arms would crush a human chest to gory jelly, maybe even through armor! The bone ridges were evolved to puncture Yggdrasilwood after all, for climbing and foraging purposes!

"Mongo wanna bananna?" Zach joked, after the Wendigo's had all assumed their threat postures. It was unlikely the Chimera's understood his words, but the dismissive, challenging tone was impossible to miss. And just as obvious was the fact that the Wendigo's didn't take well to being challenged on their own territory, judging by their snapping jaws and thundering howls as they pounded their arms on the ground and against their chest in a cacophony of belligerence! Lilia blinked in stunned dismay as Zach sauntered forward, until he was practically chest to belly with one of the Wendigo's directly to their front. Zach was not small for a man, but he looked like a twig next to the huge Wendigo, and the Chimera could probably break him like one with just a twist of its wrists! Lilia could not fathom whether it was courage or insanity that propelled Zach onwards, but he wasn't satisfied with just bumping chests with the Chimera.

Quick as lightning, Zach reached up with one hand and seized hold of one of the Wendigo's prominent lower jaw tusks. The Wendigo obviously saw the action coming slightly before it happened, but didn't move his head fast enough to avoid the grab, either just too slow or else not understanding what Zach was doing and so not seeing it as a threat. That estimation changed drastically a moment later, when Frost applied his strength to a twisting torque, and ripped the tusk, root and all, entirely out of the Wendigo's jaws! Dark red blood gouted thickly from the ragged edged wound, the Wendigo clapping belated hands to his brutalized face with a howl of agony. Off balance and stunned by the pain, it was a relatively simple matter for Zach to kick the Wendigo's knee joint, buckling the leg and spilling the Chimera over onto its back with a loud thud. The Wendigo started to flail his way back to his feet, only to freeze when he felt the tip of his own tusk poke him in the soft part of his throat, Zach kneeling by the side of the Wendigo's head with a jagged edged smile on his face and dead eyes.

"Anyone else got a problem with me and the Mouse?" Zach asked quietly, the words themselves unintelligble as ever, but the tone coming through loud and clear. The other Wendigo's shuffled their feet and glanced aside at each other, making gruffling snorts and snuffling grunts back and forth, and Lilia was awestruck to realize that were actually speaking a language, not just making noises. She couldn't understand it of course, but she could recognize the flow of sentences and thought concepts, heard identical words pronounced the same way by all speakers. She'd heard that some Chimera could speak, but she'd never imagined creating their own language! The consensus among the young males seemed to be that nobody else was feeling like getting a tusk ripped out and possibly used to slay them too, several of them clapping their hands to their faces in pantomimes of agony, and shuddering their whole bodies at the thought. The tusks were every male's pride and joy, the bigger and shinier they were, the more status a male would have. To lose one was like losing a testicle, you might still be a male, but you were lessened all the same.

"ARE YOU INSANE?" Lilia all but screamed at Zach, as he got up from where he was kneeling, and walked back over to her with a cocky grin on his face. She saw him about to open his mouth and cut him off. "Yes, you are, I know. BUT REALLY... ARE YOU INSANE? WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? THIS IS A DIPLOMATIC MISSION AND YOU ATTACKED AND INJURED ONE OF THE VERY BEINGS WE ARE TRYING TO ALLY WITH!"

"Oh ye of little faith, Mouse." Zach chided her with a shake of his head, his confiscated tusk still held like a dagger in his hand. "You may be the messenger, but I am the message. That little crystal doohicky is just the preamble. That tells them why we're here, what we want. These are not human beings we are dealing with here, Mouse, nor are they cuddly animals descended from herbivorous meat racks like your pal the Forest Prince. These are apex predators, just like me, and we speak a universal language called violence. These kids came charging out of the bushes and made a big scene, expecting us to either run away or drop down into submission. Either one of those things would have destroyed any respect they might have had for us, they would have killed you out of hand and beaten me into unconsciousness trying to kill me. These kids are the bully boys of this block, they didn't come here for a fight, which is why they all backed down when I took down the ringleader. Making a good showing in front of intruders is one thing, loosing your manhood equivalent is quite another."

"But how did you know that the tusks were so important to them? Have you encountered Wendigo's before? How did you know that one was the leader?" Lilia demanded hotly, still sure that they had just trashed any possibility of alliance forever. Zach looked at her speculatively for a moment or two, before shaking his head.

"I forget that you're a girl sometimes, Mouse. Bigger is always better when it comes to men, even if that is just a fale preception. The tusks are polished, even on the ones that are covered in mud, they are obviously well cared for and thus valuable. The ringleader had bigger tusks than any of the others, and he took the center position, the one closest to us and directly barring our path. He was the most visible, the biggest threat, had the place of honor, call it what you will, he was the badass of this group, and I just made him my bitch in front of all his buddies. And I did it easily, quickly, and in a way that was innately horrifying to them. I am now the baddest thing on this block, and now they respect me. Or they'd better, or else I'm gonna expand my tusk collection! Isn't that right, boys?" Zach snarled, casting that last sentence over his shoulder, towards where the young Wendigo's were huddled a few dozen meters away, conversing quietly but urgently, and damn her if Lilia didn't see them shudder and flinch slightly, despite each one of them being two or three times Zach's size.

"You figured that all out in the three or four seconds between when they appeared and when you attacked?" Lilia was aghast, though she couldn't tell whether to be horrified, frightened, or amazed. She was a Praetorian, sure, but to so completely figure out how to manipulate, no, dominate an entirely unknown species of intelligent life so quickly... maybe Zach the Whetstone wasn't quite as meglomaniacal as she'd thought. This guy was a cut above just about everyone. Her included, in many ways.

"Like I said, Mouse, we are of a kind, them and I, mentally if not phsyically. We speak the same language, our syntax being brute force and animal charisma. I just speak louder than they do." Frost shrugged modestly.

"But why didn't you kill him? You had him cold?" Lilia asked, puzzled by that.

"Did you WISH me to kill him, Mouse?" Zach eyed her speculatively. "I can go rectify that mistake if you want. Of course it will provoke a blood feud, which will throw out all fear they might have of me and require them to brutally massacre us to avenge their kin, but I figured you might see that as a suboptimal result. I may be crazy, Mouse, but I'm not suicidal. There's twelve of them, eleven after I take down the boss, and each is big enough to annally rape an armored car, and make it like it too. Give me a proper scythe and I'll murder the lot of them. Lacking that, diplomacy is required. The floor is now yours, Mouse. Do your... whatever it is that you do."

Lilia was still standing there, a bit gape jawed, when the rest of the Wendigo reception committe arrived. These ones were not juveniles, they were full grown bull males in their primes, and each was easily a good foot bigger than the juveniles, all around. Many of them had whirling patterns of yellowish dye painted across their upper chests and shoulders, obviously some form of rank or religious markings, and the one leading them, ten feet tall if an inch, and massing pretty darned close to two tons, had additional marks of red and blue dye on his face. He also had significantly larger tusks than any of the others, so Lilia took that to be sure sign that he was the alpha male of the group, maybe even of the entire tribe. The new arrivals seemed to take in the scene at a glance, Zach impetuously saluting the chief with his trophy tusk, but contrary to her fears, the adult males did not fly into sudden murderous rages, if anything, they felt sort of embarassed to her. Then again, they didn't know how special Zach was, they just saw one of their chief's favored sons in the "post getting ass kicked" stage and Zach, a quarter his size, waving around the tusk to show who did it. She'd be kinda embarassed if she was in their spot too.

Recognizing an opportunity to make a stronger diplomatic impression what she was in the midst of one, Lilia laid aside her rifle and unhelmed herself, marching up to the Chieftan without showing fear. Or showing little enough of it that it would be seen as due respect, rather than weakness. She produced and held forth the EICKO that Kunai had given her for this express purpose, and the Chieftan gently plucked the tiny, to him anyway, crystal wafer from her hand and held it in his palm for several long moments, his eyes closed as he listened to the message contained within. She met his gaze firmly when he once again opened her eyes, and though she kept her mind open, she did not feel any attempts to communicate from him. She tried not to worry about what that meant, before he barked orders at his subordinate males, and held out his arm to her. Lilia realized that he was inviting her to come with him, and she carefully stepped forward and allowed herself to be picked up, looking over her shoulder to make sure Zach was taken care of as well. None of the Wendigos seemed inclined to go near him, much less touch him, but as they started off at a lope, she saw he had absolutely no trouble keeping up, a satisfied look stamped onto his face. She wished she could be so confident about the future...

xxxx

New Eden, Eastern-Central African, Slopes of Mt. Kilamanjaro, Wendigo Village

Eric was waiting when the Alpha returned with the Outsiders, humans blessed by the touch of the Tree God. The Wendigo did not like associating with the Outsiders, they were small and puny and far too numerous, but Eric had counseled the Alpha that sooner rather than later they would have no choice, as the Far Outsiders, the USN, were much more numerous and far less friendly. Better to talk and listen now, and decide to combine kin groups while they were still whole and strong, than have to later appeal for food and shelter when they were exhausted from fighting the Far Outsiders, who were too numerous for even the mighty Wendigo to overcome alone, like a tribe's worth of blight swarm hives kicked open all at once. Yes, there would be great feasting for a while, but eventually the poison stings would overwhelm even a Wendigo, and their people would be no more.

The village was all astir with the news of Outsiders, which many of the people had never had cause to see before, and those young and females who were not otherwise occupied with schooling, grooming or the mixing of vegetable dye's and the construction of vine nets for use in gathering fish and trapping dangerous animals, were gathered around the central clearing, where the vegetation had been cleared away to provide a level dirt surface for sunbathing and mating purposes. Eric stood slightly apart from the rest of the tribal group, his golden eyes and the dark purple dye swirls that colored his pectorals and shoulders making him a figure of wonder, reverence and not a little superstition to the rest of his people. His mates were clustered nearby, but gender equality was still a far away concept to the Wendigo's, and he would be a long time in introducing the concept fully to them, and so they kept their distance from him, despite being his private council of advisors, he having selected more for intelligence than pure physical beauty. Anything of import would have to be decided by the males and the Alpha, the females would only be able to weigh in after the fact, with Eric acting as their more or less unofficial voice, a fact which was of no small use during the rutting season.

Which, alas, was still several months away, and probably would have to be delayed this year anyway, fighting for survival of the current generations taking precedence over the production of new generations. Latecoming males who had been off foraging alone pushed through the crowd in the gathering place, the rough shoving a sign of agitation and uncertainty as they shouldered past the equally large but tuskless females, and any male with smaller tusks than themselves. Those with larger, or special status like Eric, they either gently squeezed by, or else took up position behind, having moved as far towards the front of the crowd as they could manage. And then there they were, the Alpha resplendent in his primary colored rank marking, followed up by his honored kin grouping, who wore the yellow marks to show their status, and a few other males that were personal friends of the Alpha, but not part of his kin group and thus lacking the yellow marks.

The Alpha was carrying a human in the crook of his arms, a female with flowing blue hair that was actually quite striking, if Eric could recall his human standards of beauty correctly. It was getting harder and harder to do with each passing season, as he grew more and more adapated to his life and role as a Wendigo, Eric Kellson the man was fading away. More than enough remained though for Eric to provide the best possible service for the tribe at the moment, which would be allying with the emissaries from Garden City, the holy glen of the Tree God itself! But the trick would be in preserving the pride of his people at the same time, since many, the Alpha included, still regarded the Outsiders with disdain and distrust. The easiest way to do it would be to set up a ritualized combat, like the males did during the rut to determine precedence with a coveted female, but no human could stand against a Wendigo in single combat, not without heavy firearms that would render the point moot. Eric was still puzzling over the problem, since diplomatic concepts more involved than "you submit to me, I am stronger" were not well known or recieved amongst his people, when the second Outsider arrived, having run along behind the Alpha's kin group!

Eric's jaw fell open as he found himself looking upon no lesser personage than Kira Yamato himself! The Greatest Mobile Suit Ace of all time! The idol of every Mobile Suit pilot to ever graduate an academy in the last decade or so! Eric had to catch himself from dropping to his knees in front of Kira, an act of submission that, unexplained, would have emasculated him in the eyes of the tribe for the rest of his life. All the same, he could not help but step forward, a breach of protocol, to reach a hand out towards Kira, reaching out with his mind at the same time, composing himself to speak quietly and with utmost respect. And then his mind came into contact with Kira's, and Eric recoiled as if struck an admonishment blow across his face, only his Chimera granted mental strength keeping his mind from shutting down under the press of vile memories and chaotic thoughts that poured forth from Kira when he made psychic contact. No... not Kira at all... and the identify of the man who looked like Kira was something Eric could not accept! IT COULD NOT BE HIM! HE WAS DEAD!

The Alpha let down the blue haired girl, and then stomped over to stand by his advisor, and power behind the throne, Eric, profferring the tiny crystal sliver that was the EICKO. Still reeling and stunned by the identity of the Kira Imposter, Eric almost made the mistake of publicly ignoring the Alpha, which could only have ended with a ritualized combat that Eric might not have survived, but at the last moment, Eric shook himself awake and took the token, closing his eyes as he absorbed the message, listening to both the words and the tone, something the Outsiders could not have counted on. Fortunately for them, or perhaps it was from the influence of the Tree God, the Outsider's message was the same in both tone and words. Eric could work with this message, it was just about perfect. And with the diplomatic niceties taken care of, he could take care of another matter, and satisfy the tribe at the same time!

Eric gruffly explained the concept of the alliance to the Alpha, who was far from stupid himself, and with a little creative word manipulation, Eric soon had his tribal leader wholly behind the idea, eyes shining with thoughts of food tributes and a vastly increased roaming range. He would hammer down the real terms later, upon meeting with this Kunai person, but the basic idea had been accepted. Turning to tower over the blue haired girl, who was obviously the head diplomat of the two emissaries, Eric extended his hand, palm down, in a gesture that was universally understood among the intelligent and pyschic to be an overture for communication. Obligingly, she opened her mind to him, though at this range he could have kicked his way into her thoughts with barely a grunt of effort, such was the disparity between human and Chimera abilities. GREETINGS. I AM ERK, SHAMAN OF THE WENDIGO TRIBE. Eric told her, giving her the closest Wendigo pronunciation of his name, not wanting to waste time explaining his condition to her. Besides, she would probably think him more primitive and less intelligent if she thought his name was just a sort of grunt.

I am Lilia, Emissary and Arboreal Praetorian of Garden City. The girl replied with a nod of her head. She obviously had no idea about the visual cues used among his people, but he wouldn't hold that against her. Normally bowing the head was a sign of submission, not friendly acknowledgement. My companion is Za...

I KNOW WHO YOUR COMPANION IS! Eric did not care to keep his volume down that time, and his psychic roar all but sent Lilia to her knees, head ringing and vision blurring as she gagged and retched. KNOW THIS, LILIA OF GARDEN CITY... Eric returned his psychic voice to the whisper required not to cause physical pain to an Outsider. THAT YOU HAVE BROUGHT TO OUR TRIBE A BEING OF PUREST EVIL, A BLOT UPON THE FABRIC OF THE WORLD! YOU COME SPEAKING WORDS OF PEACE, BUT PEACE IS JUST A CONCEPT, AND THAT MAN WITH YOU STANDS FOR NOTHING LESS THAN THE OPPOSITE OF PEACE! Eric realized he was giving away his true nature with his verbosity, but in truth he was too pissed off to care at the moment.

I know what sort of man he is, Great Erk. Lilia replied firmly. But he is still a man, and he has pledged his strength to our cause. Our situation, between you and me, is not so strong that we can afford to turn help away when it is offered, even from someone like him. Perhaps especially from someone like him. After all, for all our desires of peace, is it not war that we currently find ourselves ebroiled in? He is a great warmonger, I know, but it is that sort of man that we need right now.

HE HAS OFFERED UPON OUR TRIBE A GREAT INSULT WITH HIS ASSAULT OF THE ALPHA'S FAVORED SON. Eric boomed, which was a stretching of the truth. Yes, it was a major loss of status for the Alpha's son, and to a lesser extent the Alpha himself, but the Alpha had many sons, and the favored status would be conferred upon one of the others soon enough. AMONG THE WENDIGO, SUCH INSULTS CAN ONLY BE RESOLVED BY COMBAT. IF YOU WOULD HAVE US TAKE YOUR OFFER OF ALLIANCE SERIOUSLY, WE CANNOT HAVE INSULTS STANDING BETWEEN US. I AM SORRY, BUT THIS IS OUR WAY, THERE IS NO OTHER PATH FORWARD. HE MUST FIGHT OR THERE CAN BE NO ALLIANCE.

I will ask him, Great Erk, and I believe he will gladly accept another chance to prove himself. He enjoys fighting. Lilia shrugged and turned to Zach, who waved her off before she could say a word.

"Big purple and gold there wants my ass six feet under, I don't need you to translate that for me, its obvious in every muscle on his body. I'm ready when he is." Zach told her, a devilish light in his eyes.

Great Erk, Zacharis agrees to purge the insult he has offered to the Wendigo Tribe with ritualized combat. He would know the rules and traditions expected of him before you begin. Lilia told Eric, who did his best to keep his amazement off his face, not that she would be able to read it anyway, most likely. Damn, the girl had some stones, altering what Frost was saying like that! If he found out she was basically making him sound apologetic, he'd rip her in half! Course she couldn't know that he could understand human speech as well as mind-thoughts, so there was that.

IT IS ONE ON ONE COMBAT. NO WEAPONS ARE ALLOWED, THOUGH SINCE HE LACKS NATURAL WEAPONS, I WILL ALLOW THE USE OF ONE METAL FANG. WE WILL FIGHT HERE AND NOW. AS SHAMAN, IT IS MY DUTY TO SELECT A CHAMPION, BUT IN THE CASE OF AN INSULT THIS HEINOUS, ON MATTERS OF THIS IMPORT, THERE IS SIMPLY NO OTHER OPTION. I WILL FACE HIM TO ABSOLVE HIM OF HIS GUILT. THE FIGHT IS DECIDED WHEN ONE COMBATANT SUBMITS TO THE OTHER, OR IS UNABLE TO RISE. Eric did not bother to hide his smirk, since he knew Frost would never voluntarily give up a fight, and "unable to rise" in this case would mean ripped in half, pounded into the ground and shat upon. It was the least he could do to avenge Ella's senseless death at Denver! He would need to make apologies to the Outsiders afterward of course, but they were better off without an abomination like Frost on their team anyway. Eric filled in the rest of the tribe on what was being discussed, altering events slightly to be favorable to the Outsiders, saying that the brown furred Outsider was opting for ritual combat with Eric in order to demonstrate respect and mutual joy, the degree of homage to be determined by the duration of the fight. Pleased by this display of respect, the Wendigo's quickly cleared a space in the middle of the gathering place for the combat to take place.

Frost rolled his shoulders loosely, stepping past Lilia, who had an expression of faint misgiving on her face as she explained the rules of the ritual combat to him. He largely tuned her out, whatever goldeneyes had said, from the look on his face and his posture, this was not going to be any sort of exhibition match. This was a grudge fight, a death fight, and goldeneyes obviously had some ideas about who was gonna be doing the dying. Realizing she'd asked him a question, he stopped matching gazes with goldeneyes to arc an eyebrow at her. "I asked if you're sure about this? This is not going to be like the last one. He could really hurt you by accident." Lilia informed him. It took him a second to identify the tone in her voice, and then he burst out laughing. He couldn't help himself. She was WORRIED about him! How precious was that?

"Dear Mouse, rest assured if he hurts me, it won't be an accident." Frost shook his head and let the chuckles die away. "Diplospeak aside, that Wendigo has my number and he's looking to make a few calls. Too bad he doesn't know he's dialing 1-800-ROYAL-BEATDOWN. You say this isn't like the last one? You're right. I'm going to enjoy this one SOOO much more." Frost unhooked one of his combat knives and tossed it aside, before handling his trophy tusk off to Lilia. "Don't drop that or give it away or I'll have to tear out another one." Frost instructed her. And then, before she could react or stop him, he darted his head forward and kissed her, even forebearing to bite her lips open, he was in such a good mood. "And now I'm not only good, I'm lucky too." Frost informed her jovially, before stepping forward into the ring, one hand reaching towards the hilt of his remaining knife.

Eric didn't give him a moment to draw it though, he rushed forward as soon as Frost entered the ring, and swung a mighty forehand blow with his right arm, leading with the bone ridge along the forearm. Frost ducked under the blow with ease, but ran into the sucker-kick that Eric had mixed in behind it, and though the blow only glancingly connected, Frost was stood up straight and punted several feet backwards, his shirt ripped, the flesh beneath it torn open raggedly along his stomach. There was curiously little bleeding, but the Wendigo's roared in approval all the same, at Eric for drawing first blood, and at Frost for staying upright past the first blow. Eric watched as Frost inspected the damage, and then drew his knife. He flourished it at Eric... and then tossed it away behind him, the obviously insulting gesture silencing the roaring crowd of Chimera's.

YOU ASKED FOR IT... Eric bellowed, as he charged forward, arms spread to prevent Frost from dodging away. Silly him, he'd forgotten what Frost was like. Frost neither retreated nor dodged, instead, he hurled himself headlong back at Eric, drawing one clawed hand back behind him, he swung a roundhouse blow that ended up with his clawed fingers digging into Eric's lower abdomen, spearing through the thick hide and into the thicker muscle beneath, dark rivulets of blood streaming down Eric's belly, drawing gasps and hoots of dismay from his fellow Wendigos. Hoots and gasps that changed to fearsome bellows of pride and joy when Eric ignored the pain and swung his left forearm around, striking Frost in the side just below the armpit, and swatting him off his feet and flying through the air like a ball from a bat. There was a satisfying explosion of dark blood, almost the shade of Eric's own, from Frost's torso as the bone ridges dug in deep, but in truth Eric was stunned by the resilence of Frost, since his ribcage hadn't collapsed, his ribs hadn't even cracked under the blow!

Lilia started to cheer, despite herself, when she saw Zach land his claw-punch against Erk's lower torso, but then she was gasping in horrow when Erk ignored the blow and slammed his forearm into ach's midriff, causing blood to gout for more than a meter and hurling Zach away, his body limp like a noodle as he hit the dirt and rolled bonelessly, his ribcage and spine surely sundered by that blow, which had been far from ritualized or respectful! Lilia realized that Zach had been right, the big Active Wendigo WAS trying to kill him, had set up the fight for that whole purpose! Lilia was just about to step forward, her eyes blazing with anger and worry, when Zach did the impossible, and stood up. No, more than that, he bounced right back to his feet with that cocky, delighted grin on his face, like he was just fine and hadn't been basically crushed a second ago! His side was soaked in blood, but he wasn't having any trouble breathing or standing, somehow!

"I'll take another one of those, please. I almost felt awake there for a moment, goldeneyes." Frost commented nastily. He lifted his other arm mockingly. "I've got an itch on this side too, if you'd be so kind?" Frost basked in the incredulous silence from the Wendigo's, none of whom had expected to see him rise, ever again, after taking that blow. Little did they know of his nearly unbreakable QC infused skeleton, or the blood clotting and flesh knitting nanomachines that suffused his body and made his strength five times what he'd enjoyed in his original body. This wasn't nearly as uneven a fight as it looked, the dark blood staining his fingertips and oozing down across his palm was proof of that. Frost saw the Mouse staring at him, her expression caught between anger, shock and amazement, and he turned his arm lift into a friendly wave, knowing full well what was coming.

When the opportunistic blow landed, it felt like he'd thrown himself off a six storey building, just in rerverse, but Frost sublimated in the pain, flipping in midair to regain his feet and come charging back at goldeneyes, his clawed hands raking bloody runnels in the meat of the Wendigo's side and back, drawing a grunt of discomfort from the bastard, before a thrusting elbow caught the side of Frost's head, splitting his scalp and tearing open his cheek against his teeth, knocking him flat on the ground. His vision covered with quickly drawing blood, Frost raked a hand across his eyes to clear them, but it was too late, the Wendigo was upon him, and all the breath rushed from his body when it double forearm slammed him, indenting his body almost four inches into the hard packed dirt, blood fountaining from his lips, aspirated from his half smushed lungs. Internal nanomachines took over the chore of oxygenating his blood while his lungs healed back to functionality, but that wouldn't be any time in the next few hours. Frost staggered to his feet, half of his ribcage visible to the stunned and even somewhat terrified audience, who saw only the unnatural in this Outsider's stamina against attacks that would have downed any of them for hours!

"'S that all you got, goldeneyes? You're pathetic..." Frost spat, and most of it was spit too. Spit and blood that wasn't drying fast enough inside his mouth and throat. The next blow took him in the head, and Frost found himself down on the ground once more. Truth be told he was starting to get that feeling again, the same one that he'd felt against the former Boytoy when they'd first had their reunion. This Wendigo creature was, much as he HATED to admit it, out of his league in pure hand to hand combat. He shouldn't have tossed away that knife, inferior in quality though it was. But too late now, goldeneyes would never let him get near it, not if he had even an iota of tactical intelligence. Frost felt himself lifted up into the air by the Wendigo's meaty fists, and he did his best to kick and struggle, but so much of his muscles were inert in regeneration mode that he could barely even twitch. This sucked. It was no fun if he couldn't make the other guy cry out in pain too. At this point in time, the worst he could do was hope the Wendigo sprained his wrist or threw out his back beating on him. Strange as that might sound, Frost had seen similar things happen before, a fighter forced to give up because he'd worked so hard at beating up his slower opponent that he'd had a heart attack and was forced to withdraw from the match.

Frost's gaze met the panicked eyes of the Mouse, so like Pink's that he was lost in a momentary fantasy and was actually smiling at her when he was body slammed down over Eric's knee. His spine stubbornly refused to break, but several internal organs ruptured, and the nanomachines were fighting a losing battle to fix him up before he got broken worse. "Wuss..." Frost commented in a gargle, still bent over Eric's knees. "My little brother can hit harder than you, and he's a red headed dwarf!" His taunting seemed to do little to improve goldeneye's mood, and Frost lost track of the number of times he was body slammed, either into knees or the ground, in the next few minutes. He finally knew how it felt to be the ball part of a wrecking ball, one more experience chalked off the list. He was actually disappointed, because his nerves started to shut down and blocked out the blessed pain, pulling him inexorably towards that most unfun of states, sleep! Frost stared blearily upwards and saw the Wendigo's foot eclipse the sky. He grinned. He should still be able to feel this one at least!

THAT'S ENOUGH! Lilia shouted, her eyes ablaze with fury as she stormed into the combat ring, heedless of the fact that she could very easily have been struck by Eric, were he not too surprised by her actions to do more than stand there, balanced on one leg, prepared to curb stomp Frost's face a foot into the dirt. THE INSULT HAS BEEN ABSOLVED, HAS IT NOT? WHAT MAN COULD POSSIBLY SHOW MORE RESPECT THAN HE HAS? IF THIS GOES ON ANY MORE, I WILL TAKE IT AS AN INSULT TO US OF GARDEN CITY AND WE WILL DEMAND SATISFACTION UNDER OUR RITUAL COMBAT RULES, WHICH I CAN PROMISE YOU WILL NOT BE TO YOUR LIKING!

"Damn... it... Mouse..." Frost grumbled at her. "I'm having... a blast... why you... gotta ruin things..."

"Shut UP, Zach! Just shut UP! You're DYING! Literally DYING! I can SEE you dying, so don't try to decieve me! By all laws of human anatomy I know, you should have been dead four minutes ago! You've proved your point and so has he! What kinda whetstone are you if you allow yourself to be broken here and now, huh? So just shut UP and do what I say!" Lilia yelled at him, tears pouring down her cheeks as she saw the ruin that Erk had made of Zach's body. By the Tree, how COULD he be alive, after losing that much blood? For that matter, now that she was closer, Lilia could definitely see that Zach wasn't breathing, his chest still and inert. That fact didn't seem to overly annoy or inconvenience him though, as he struggled up to a sitting position, as Erk stepped backward, radiating shock and even a bit of fright into the psychic plane, at seeing Zach move even after all that he'd done to the man!

"Don't move, Zach! Just stay RIGHT THERE and I'll find some way to bandage you, okay? By the Tree, look at you... there's more of you on the dirt than there is in your body!" Lilia knelt down beside him, still sobbing with mingled disbelief, relief and anger at his obstinancy.

"I'll be fine." Zach replied with a shrug. "The bleeding will stop itself. This time tomorrow, I'll barely even have scars. That's part of the curse of this damned Boytoy body of mine. Mr. Machine really screwed me over with this one. Cursed to look like the Boytoy, and a healthy, fresh faced Boytoy, for the rest of eternity. I swear, when I get my hands on him, he'll beg me to die as clean as his uncle did!" He looked up at her, at her weepy, Pink like eyes, and sighed. Quicker than she could react, even in his current state, he reached up and grabbed her round the neck, making her eyes bulge in panick as her memories slammed to the fore. Frost smiled and pulled her down atop him, pressing his bloody forehead against her scalp and plunging inwards into her memories. "Sweet dreams, Mouse. So very sweet and delectable..." Frost whispered into her ear, as consciousness finally slipped away from him. "... don't call me Zach..."

xxxx