Chapter 3

It was a veteran lizard, a little creature used to attacks by air, land, and even sea. It had survived the years, reaching the ripe age of three. These days, the old hero had taken to roaming the empty desert plains and sunning itself on red sandstones or hanging under the mottled shade of sagebrush. Today, though, it was lazily foraging for a meal in the hot desert. Claws dancing over the sands, it pranced towards a particularly good looking cricket, only to be ripped from the soil and into the air by the bigger talons of a dragon. Stunned, the reptile didn't have time to react before it met its end under the great paw of a zoid.

The loss of the lizard went unnoticed as the Command Wolf continued on its merry way, following one of the many ravines to their hiding place on the edge of Elmina Desert. The faded blue paint, momentarily tarnished by lizard guts, stood out like a sore thumb, another one of Reese's additions to make Raven's life hell. At the moment, Reese didn't even have to try. Moonbay was doing an excellent job on her own.

"Geez Raven, you suck at piloting this thing."

Raven had long ago assumed a stoic, 'Drop dead' outlook on life. It was his last defense against this horror of horrors. He'd run out of witty remarks the night before, and now that dawn's rays were giving way to the afternoon sun, he wasn't faring any better. Moonbay had driven him to the edge, and his hand was on the proverbial trigger. Or perhaps literally if the vile thing wouldn't shut up.

It had been late that night that he had first made the unnerving discovery of his mistake. After the orange coated Queen of Bad Punk Rock had succeeded in a sucker-punch straight to the formerly undisputed lord of the fighting rink's gut, he had managed to get a good grip around the bare midriff and drag her out kicking and screaming to the Command Wolf.

His hands were in worse condition then before. Already scarred beyond recognition, they were now recovering from what he firmly believed to be a rabies infected bite mark. Moonbay had managed to get away with a good chunk of skin and glove in the wild fight to the zoid. Shadow had finally managed to 'subdue' her with a tail-smack to the head.

At about the same time Dragon's Head realized that their favorite transporter of the wasteland had vanished, Raven began to notice some obvious differences between who he knew to be Fiona and the monster that had been tied to the second chair of Reese's hand-me down zoid.

First, Fiona was most definitely blond, second, Fiona was quiet, and third, Fiona, despite the fact that she was from another race, was remarkably more human than Moonbay.

After getting about an hour into the desert, Moonbay had decided to recount her entire life story to Raven, not sparing any detail. Four hours later, she had launched into her favorite song, and from then out Raven's screwy mind had decided to pack up and head out to that happy special space somewhere in the land of imagination.

In Raven's case, that meant absolutely nowhere.

Shadow had been going cross country, trekking along next to the obnoxious blue paint job. Every now and then, he'd raise his scaly head to the cockpit, wondering silently about the ear-splitting noise that seemed to seep out of the orange tinted glass like sewage from a broken pipe.

"TRANSPORTER! OF THE WASTELAND!"

"MOONBAY!"

"Heeey, you used my first name!"

Raven's eye twitched, "Listen, two things: Shut. Up. Can you understand that?"

Moonbay pretended to think about it, "Nope."

Raven raised his eyes skyward, but the heavens offered few answers on this blazing afternoon, "Hey, Moonbay."

"Wow, he speaks."

Raven ignored the comment, "I need you alive, right?"

She looked intrigued, "Mm-hmm. What about it?"

"But do I need you in one piece?"

She froze. The possibility hadn't even crossed her mind, and for the first time in the last four hours, she was silent. Raven could do anything he wanted, as long as it didn't kill her. The first tendrils of fear began to seep into her innards, and the squishy feeling was rapidly gaining ground. The panic button had been pressed.

"Now that I've got your attention, let me elaborate."

It gets worse, she wondered, still horrified.

"I don't need you, per say. I need your buddy's little girl-friend."

"Fiona," she breathed. Of course, Fiona! What had she been thinking? Like Raven and his band of buddies really needed little ol' her for anything. Though her outward ego was something to be feared, inside she had a pretty good grasp of where she stood on the Ladder of Importance, and it was somewhere between the bottom rung and the floor.

So all along it had been Van's 'little girl-friend,' and now Moonbay only had one thing to say, "Oh. I'm screwed, aren't I?"

Raven smirked at the pale pallor of Moonbay's face. Oh how he loved scaring the life out of people! The terrifying look of realization on their faces, the feeling of fear radiating off them, and above all, the defeated and forlorn way they would sigh and tremble in the face of power. Yes...how he loved (and hated) it.

"Yup."

Moonbay looked around, desperate for some way of escape from the evil that was charging her Fed-ex Express to an even worse fate, when she saw her opportunity. Long ago, when they were both very young, Irvine had taught her one of the many tricks of escape.

When tied behind a zoid pilot, there's always a sort of kamikaze trick to pull, provided you could kick higher than your opponents shoulders. It was a feat Irvine wouldn't be pulling off in his lifetime. Drawing her knees back, she pretended to be curling up into a blubbering ball of female in the back. Raven seemed contented, and turned back to the controls.

"Perfect," whispered Moonbay, and before Raven even saw what was coming, the amber-eyed beauty unleashed a kick that would have sent Jackie Chan into an early grave. Unfortunately for her, she hadn't exactly been stretching out lately, and the hit fell short of her target-Raven's neck. Instead, it smacked straight into the thick, metal shoulder plating.

A sickening crack echoed in the small cockpit, Moonbay wouldn't be walking on her right foot for awhile. Raven jerked sharply to the right, dragging the console, the Command Wolf, and poor, unprepared Shadow with him. A less experienced pilot would have crashed into a blackened smear at the bottom of the canyon, but his training became painfully evident to the incapacitated transporter when he managed to bring the ancient, abused Command Wolf back on the cliff without skipping a beat.

She nearly passed out when she felt the zoid make the sharpest u-turn she would ever experience, and come to a rubber-burning, claw trimming stop.

"What're you doing, ya psycho!"

Raven didn't answer, but when she saw his profile for a split second, there was something clearly emanating from the gray eyes that she had never seen, and would never see again. Sorrow, grief, worry, anger, and hopelessness all mixed together in an emotional torrent that seemed entirely out of place with the stoic pilot.

Confused and lost beyond reason, Moonbay watched Raven all but rip through the hood, vault over the side and disappear in a self-made sandstorm after smacking the ground. She saw his silhouette coming from the dust, but the ropes tying her prevented the freaked-out girl from following her captor's path any farther. There were sounds of scraping gravel, and a low growl, but the heavy roar of the over-heating zoid drowned out everything else.

So Moonbay just sat there for a moment, silently baking in the oven of the cockpit, eventually uttering one phrase that would sum up her entire mental monologue.

"What the heck?"

It was after few minutes of staring at the panoramic view of the cliff side next to the Command Wolf that she realized something. Hadn't Shadow been following along to their right?



Van made a last minute run over his Blade Liger, tightening the eternally loose bolt on the infamous machine's left leg. He was beginning to think about getting the piece of machinery replaced, but his salary of GF leader and hero didn't pay the best. Pretty sad once you thought about it.

Irvine was still itching to go, and the Lightning Saix would have a hard time slowing its pace to make room for the slower D-Bison and Iron Kong. Van looked up where Irvine was pacing, muttering various plans of decapitation for Raven. Make that a very, very, hard time.

It was about time to go, with Thomas firing up the D-Bison, and Irvine already out on the track. Karl was running over the final checklist when a helmeted pilot half-ran, half-sprinted into the room, skidding to a halt in front of the colonel. Van squinted his eyes. He didn't recognize the short boy, or the strange flight suit. He was obviously an air squadron kid, but Van didn't remember seeing him with the others. And he had met almost the entire air staff in the storm sworder incident.

Aside from that, all the republican fighters had been wearing standard uniform, nothing like the jumpsuit that completely covered this one, and the helmet masking half the boy's face was unusual. Curious, he watched the small fighter say a few words to the colonel, nod his head and take off down the hall as fast as he had come.

"Well that explains it," he muttered, beginning his own initiation sequence. The kid must be an imperial. Van shook off the feeling that something didn't add up. He didn't have time to be worrying about the age requirements of the empire's air force.

"Alright Zeke," he grinned, enjoying the familiar phrase, "Let's mobilize!"

And so Van joined his waiting team members, organoid not far behind and Raven not far ahead…

Fiona wandered the halls quietly. The trip to the air-hanger was a long one (it was on the far side of the base) which left plenty of time for plotting. She needed to think her plan through carefully, manipulating imperial pilots wasn't exactly something she did on a regular basis. In fact, she didn't do much manipulating at all, despite Moonbay's claims about her 'working the Zoidian magic' on Van.

Van…the thought brought her back full circle to the reason why she had started with this crazy idea. Why did he insist on leaving her behind on every important mission? She was capable of handling everything he could. Underneath all her logical thinking though, the soft squishy part of her heart was crying out like a child lost in the supermarket. It wasn't the fact that Van didn't seem to think she was capable, it wasn't that he left her behind, it was the fact that he left her alone. Pure and simple, she was lonely.

So now she was walking down the hallway (hopefully) leading to the air hanger, on the off-chance that a certain imperial pilot might still be there, and might have enough heart to fly her on a dangerous and definitely unauthorized mission into territory that was owned solely by nature and her more devious misfits.

Taking her pace up a notch, she wandered over to one of the rare maps that lined the walls. Looking over it quickly, she came to a horrifying discovery. She'd been going in circles. Why did these bases have to be so unbelievably complicated? Sighing, she mentally mapped out her course, remembering every turn from here to the hangar. While doing so, though, she didn't notice the fast-moving, 'I'm coming through so you better start running or get out of the way,' ball of normally calm energy barreling through the hall straight for the oblivious Zoidian.

The collision was a magnificent one, a combination of speed, flair, sheer idiocy, pilot, chick, and quite possibly destiny. Fiona went one way, and her assaulting another, both landing in a tangled mess on their respective sides of the hallway. Red eyes seeing spots, she finally was able to see through the blurs enough to figure out what exactly had rammed her. Fiona was pretty sure that it was a semi, but she wasn't ruling out the possibility of train. She was wrong on both counts.

The shortest soldier she had ever seen was across the hall from here, rubbing an obviously hurting and covered head. He wasn't from around the base, his uniform reeking of imperialism. The orange visor completely obscured all his upper facial features, leaving only his mouth and nose visible. He was the first to stand up, and the first to apologize. Muttering an 'I'm sorry', he turned…and froze. The momentary hesitation reminded Fiona of someone...the way he carried himself, the height, the face…But before she could place the familiar figure, he quickly shook his head.

He held out a hand to help Fiona up, "I didn't mean to knock you down…I'm just in a bit of a hurry."

"Oh, that's okay. I'm sure it wasn't on purpose," accepting the gesture, she let him pull her up. It must have made a comical scene. The kid was about five inches shorter than her, and about the same build if not skinnier. Surprisingly, the thin frame had to be packing some muscle under the uniform; he helped the older and heavier person without what looked like too much effort.

"So, uh, where are you going?"

Fiona sighed, "I'm supposed to be at the air hanger, but I got lost. I've been here for almost a year and still don't know where everything is."

"Yeah, that's the old republican style. Make it so confusing that even your own can't find you."

Definitely imperial, she thought, noting the slight accent. There wasn't too much of a difference between the two governments, but the smallest of voice inflictions could tell you what side they were from. It was particularly obvious with this one. Not to mention the comment on 'republican' building.

"You know," he said turning down the hall, "I'm headed to the hanger. Maybe we could help each other find it? I'm probably as lost as you."

Fiona nodded, "Offer accepted."

"Thanks…So is it left or right?"

"Left."

After about five minutes of walking, Fiona noticed something else, other than height, about her strange companion. He walked different. Very different. She'd seen many an imperial in her day, but only a few with a gait like that. Among them were Prozen, a few dignitaries, herself (though she didn't know it) and Prince Rudolph …but Prozen was dead, the dignitaries twice the height of this boy, and Rudolph was no longer a prince and far away in Guylos, probably bored to tears in one meeting or another.

Marianne and Fiona had kept up something of a pen-pal thing. After meeting each other a while back, they'd formed a fast friendship and had been writing ever since. Marianne seemed worried about her future husband.

Rudolph was holding up under the pressure better then expected, but no child should have to deal with an entire country. Besides that, the little empress in training had overheard a few interesting conversations between Rudolph and his advisors. From what she knew, the whole lot were power-hungry untrusting politicians, among a few more colorful words that the emperor had muttered behind closed (and hopefully not bugged) doors.

In short, the situation in the empire could easily boil over if not attended to reaaaaal quick.

Within minutes of careful guiding and some shaky memory on both parts, the two had made it to the air hanger, near the famous runway that had launched Rosso and Viola's storm sworders so long ago.

"Thanks for the help," he waved as he trotted over to what was easily the largest zoid in the hanger: a huge, silvery, storm sworder. Fiona froze.

Imperial uniform, imperial accent, imperial looks, and imperial zoid. Plus the fact that he had shown up the day that Karl had, and was leaving right when Karl was heading out in his 'borrowed on credit' Iron Kong. For the first time in a long while, Fiona felt that she had experienced a 'major blond moment.' Taking off like a shot, she started shouting frantically at the retreating back of her only ticket out of there.

Slowing, the pilot turned to nearly get about one-hundred pounds of female dropped on him. He swerved just in time, letting Fiona slow to a safer stop.

"Sorry about that, but I need to know. Are you the pilot who flew Karl Shubaltz out here?"

"Um, yes," he looked confused.

Alright Fiona, she mentally cheered, let's get this right, "I was wondering. You see I need to get a ride out of here and…"



All it took was three minutes of 'convincing' to get Fiona from the hangar floor to the second seat in the cockpit of the zoid. He was going to fly Fiona as close to the battle as he could without getting seen. And from what she'd heard from the air crews as they prepped the bird for flight, he was a pretty decent pilot.

"So they left you behind on accident?"

She nodded, "Yeah, and I can't catch up in a ground zoid."

"Hmm…strange that they'd forget a teammate," even though he had agreed to take her along, he still seemed a little skeptical.

The blond felt a little guilty about her little white lie, but ignored it, "Irvine was in a hurry…"

"Yeah, guess so."

Fiona found that there was a lot more preparation involving flying zoids then with ground. There were all the extra worries about oxygen, landing gears, wings, jets, weather, possible flight paths, and navigation. Especially in a large zoid like a storm sworder. The metallic flying machine had been equipped with a co-pilot's seat, which her chauffeur said he usually flew on more dangerous missions. After about twenty minutes of getting ready, the two got the okay from the air control tower, and were taxing onto the runway.

"Um, Miss Fiona, you might want to brace yourself."

"Why?" she looked over his shoulder at the clear afternoon sky.

"The runway is the fastest, but it's kinda rough."

"Kind of?"

He frowned, "You'll see."

And in a few seconds, she did see. She saw with about three G's pressing down on her and the zoid almost perpendicular to the ground in a stomach wrenching climb upward.



Reese was bored. No, wait, she was beyond that. She was in the 'going comatose' section of bored. Her favorite game (Let's see how fast Reese can make Raven go homicidal!) had been stripped away, and Hiltz was remarkably less fun to tease and torment. He either ignored her or said he'd 'take her comments into consideration.' No sarcasm, no exchange of witty remarks, and no glorious bloodbath.

Her days had been reduced to training, waiting for news from Raven, waiting for Raven, and testing Specula's skills on squirrels. All of which being quality entertainment of course. So when Hiltz had started packing up at least three days before Raven was due, she was naturally curious.

"Um, Hiltz, what exactly are you doing?"

"What's it look like?" he replied blandly.

"Leaving?"

"Exactly."

Reese was starting to get annoyed, "Where are you going?"

He looked up, an unnatural smile on his face, "Gigalos."

"What?"

"I have business there," he slung the pack of equipment over his shoulder, motioning for Ambient, "Tell Raven I'm on an errand if he gets back."

"You mean when," she replied automatically.

Hiltz raised an eyebrow, "I mean if. Are you feeling well Reese, or do you actually think that he's going to make it?"

She didn't answer, not directly anyway, "I'll tell him."

"Whatever," Hiltz took one long look around the pitiful camp, "Be back soon, I've got some politicians to bother."

"Politicians?"

He started walking down the mesa top to the trail, hesitating to answer. It was Hiltz's turn to be indiscreet, "See you later, Reese."

With that he was gone. Reese didn't move for a while, staring after him. Finally she shook her head and scratched Specula behind the horns, "What does he have planned?"

But the blue organoid remained silent.



(A/N) Thanks to the reviewers who pointed out the rank problems of 'Lt. Thomas' and 'Colonol Karl,' you know who you are. Sorry to all you confused chillun out there.