~1~

   As he stepped out of the Genobreaker, he looked around at the Republican base he had been assigned to. Van was walking out of the door, followed by the rest of the Guardian Force. Raven looked at the GF. 'The same bunch of idiots…' he thought, but as he scanned them he saw a new member… a pretty girl with blonde hair. She had black streaks running through her long, dusty-gold colored locks. She looked straight at him with piercing cerulean blue eyes. Raven lingered on her face for a moment, and then he hopped down off the Geno. Shadow un-fused with it and landed next to him with a soft mechanical thud. Raven looked at Van and narrowed his eyes. 'Why'd I have to be assigned to the same battalion as him?' he asked inwardly.

   Van looked at Raven with a bit of… what was it? Loathing? Jealousy? Hatred? Maybe a little of all three. They shook hands, and while doing so, had a competition; who could squeeze hardest?  Raven won. Van sneered; Raven smirked. They went inside, and a Major, Krendowitz, walked into the control room.

" Welcome, Raven. You have been assigned to the Guardian Force because we are…"

"In need of a new Major…" Raven mumbled as he put his boots up on the table.

"… confident your piloting skills will be put to the test." Raven yawned. After a little while of annoying the Major, he took his boots off the table and caught that new girl looking at him… that girl… she was different. He could sense it. He looked away, but he could still feel her blue eyes burning into the back of his head.

   After Major Krendowitz had finished blabbering on about this, that, and Zoids, (which seemed to take forever) Raven took the initiation.

"Fire the anti-Zoid missiles!" he heard someone say in the background of his comlink. He flew up in the Genobreaker and shot his nose gun at the missiles. They blew up 10 yards in front of him, and as he soared through the smoke, fired a Charged Particle Beam at the line of Command Wolves ahead of him. When he finally reached the base, everybody clapped - except Van. Raven had done better than he had… and with more style, too.

   Raven came back to the control room. Van came up to him and said that he had forgotten to introduce the newest member of the Guardian Force. Raven wondered about her; yes, he knew Van would be introducing her to him.

"This is Nightfalcon," Van said, and he almost looked proud to have her on the Guardian Force. The blonde girl with black streaks in her hair stepped forward to shake hands with Raven. "Hello, Raven." She said in a cheerfully dark voice. She sounded mysterious, yet… nice, somehow… She held out her hand, which Raven somehow could not stop himself from shaking, and he replied with an awkward 'hi'. She smiled at him, and he swore his heart jumped into his throat. Who was she? Why was he so… uncomfortable around her? Why was she different from anybody he had ever met? How?

   Nightfalcon was wearing a suit that indicated she was a Private. 'She just started with the GF too,' Raven thought. He wanted to keep his eye on her, just in case…

   A couple weeks later, Raven, Nightfalcon, Thomas, Van and Irvine were assigned to a trial run on Mt. Isolina as the New and Improved Guardian Force. Raven watched as Nightfalcon jumped into a red and black… zoid. He didn't know what it was. When he and Shadow got ready to mobilize, she popped up on a comlink.

"Do you like my Zoid?" she asked, with a very proud smile on her face.

"What is it?" he inquired.

"I call it the Thunderhawk," she stated, "I developed it myself. It's a combination of a Storm Sworder and a new type of zoid called the Berserk Fury." She was confident about her knowledge of Zoids.

"A… Berserk… Fairy?" he asked with an eyebrow raised.

"Fury," she corrected, "it's kind of like your Geno. Only it's a little more… complex." She was smiling very mischievously at him now, almost like she dared him to deny her last statement. He couldn't resist. He smiled back.
"Well, it is a pretty nice zoid. Let's see how well it stacks up to my Genobreaker," He teased.

"You're on." And with that, she smiled, winked, and closed the comlink. 'She is… she… knows something… and she's not afraid of me…' he trailed off in his mind, and mobilized the Geno, eager to see what Nightfalcon and her Thunderhawk could do.