Disclaimer: I don¡¯t own Zoids. For detailed explanation see my bio.
Rating: PG-13 for offensive language and violence.
Pairing: None. As I said, this will NOT be a slash/shounen-ai/yaoi.
A/N: This chappie is still flashback!...well, of a kind. *sweatdrops* And --- will be used as different POVs inside the flash back.
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Salva Beatos
By. Firemoon
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Chapter 2: The Second Nightmare
Raven sat on the little cot that was his so called ¡®bed¡¯, silently thinking through what had happened yesterday... or was it two days ago? He wasn¡¯t very sure. He lost the sense of time in this underground cell where only the darkness reigned. Raven shook his head, trying to gather the scattered thoughts together.
Yes, he was drugged. Yes, he was beaten up pretty heavily. No, medical attention wasn¡¯t given.
And yes, he was just given his death sentence.
He closed his eyes, but that didn¡¯t really matter. It was all the same to him, whether he closed his eyes or not. Around him there was only pitch black darkness. As he lay back onto the bed, his mind dimly registered the sound of door far down the corridor closing. As some footsteps approached, he thought about his death sentence.
Maybe he was to be shot. Or poisoned. Just stabbed with a knife. Hanged. Or get his head cut off.
He chuckled silently to himself at the last idea. It was absurd. No one was executed like that for.. more than a century, maybe more. So it ends like this. He thought. All I wanted was to...
His thoughts were abruptly cut off by the sound of a door opening. His door. He sat up, his old instincts returning, urging him frantically to run for it. But the wounds and various maltreatments he had received slowed down his body. The ones who came in – three, Raven registered as their white clothes flashed in the light of the lantern one of them held – quickly grabbed for his limbs. One of them said roughly to the struggling Raven, his voice harsh and grating like that of rusty metal.
¡°Don¡¯t move, prisoner. If you keep on moving like that, you¡¯ll die very painfully.¡±
¡°I fucking don¡¯t care. Just f—¡±
Raven¡¯s blue-violet eyes, their colour partly hidden in the darkness, lost focus and slowly closed shut as the needle pierced the vein in his neck and the gray drug invaded him once more. After checking if the gray haired youth was conscious or not, the white clad men began to drag Raven away, ignoring how they were hitting the unconscious youth¡¯s body against the walls on their way, or how the other people kicked and spat at the youth once they were outside the jail area.
---
The main contributors of the Second Defeat of the Death Saurer stood uneasily on the doorway of the observatory, unnerved by the faint sense of foreboding and also by the rather menacingly silent Commander Strachan, who was not facing them and instead looking out the wide window down towards the hanger below. Finally, Thomas opened his mouth with a smart salute.
¡°Commander sir, may we enquire as to why we were summoned to the observatory?¡±
The dark-haired commander did not answer, but the sudden, creaking voice among statics from the intercom startled everyone except the commander.
¡°Commander sir, we are complete and ready. The prisoner will be conscious soon.¡±
¡°The prisoner? You mean Raven?¡±
Van darted up to stand in front of the window, eyes widening in disbelief as he finally saw what lay below them. His face crumpled, and a hoarse denial escaped his lips.
¡°Oh no...¡±
---
Raven shook the chains that held his wrists firmly bound to the wall behind him a few times to test them, but the thick chains held fast. The jangling sound that each rings made as they clinked against each other rang out harshly and hollowly like cracked bells.
He turned his vivid violet eyes, now narrowed to mere slits, to the soldiers in white suit, and snarled primitively, baring his teeth. One or two of them backed away from him much to the gray haired mercenary¡¯s pleasure, but the others came on insistently forward, ready to restrain him given half the chance. One came in his range; too close. Raven kicked him brutally in the stomach, and the soldier reeled back, retching dryly and gasping for air. Another jumped. HE too, staggered back, clutching his now bloody nose. His clothes stained red, violently bright against the starched white.
That was when the cold voice was heard from above.
¡°Leave him be. There is nothing he can do with those chains binding him.¡±
Raven tugged at the pair of chains with little hope; no such luck. The chains were stout, and of good and strong metal. He shouted up to the observatory, his voice echoing the rage and hate he felt right now.
¡°Why are you doing this? Can¡¯t you wait until my execution date to kill me?¡±
But there was no answer. His voice only echoed back to him, seemingly feeble and weak. He whipping his head to the side as something huge – a zoid – approached with loud creaks and thumps. That alone was answer enough.
---
Van followed everyone¡¯s gaze towards the entrance of the hangar, ad he simply gaped. The notorious and highly destructive Geno Breaker was now battered and dirty from the battle, and it groaned under each step it took under a pilot¡¯s hands. Its massive pincers and swishing tail proved a great difficulty to get it into a confined place. And being rolled in beside the red zoid was...
---
¡°Shadow!¡±
Raven gasped out loud, but the black organoid moved not a scale, but just lay there limply on the metal tray that bore him. Raven tried to go forward, but the chains prevented him from doing so. He snarled.
¡°You bastards! If you fucking laid your filthy hands on Shadow, I swear that I¡¯ll—¡±
One of the white clad soldiers – seemingly this one was a leader of the group – took out a walkie-talkie and spoke in it, apparently to the ones up above in the observatory.
¡°The zoid is ready for the demolition, Commander sir.¡±
Raven¡¯s eyes widened as the previous cold voice spilled out from the speaker, echoing loud enough to be heard by everybody.
¡°Do it.¡±
---
The white-clad men approached the menacing red zoid, each with an instrument with sharp, shiny blue metal shaped like claws.
¡°You¡¯re not—¡±
Raven¡¯s voice died down to a mere whisper as the first shriek of the zoid filled the hangar as it was stripped of its armour, and Raven looked away, eyes clenching shut. The shriek got louder and louder, as the instruments ripped into the thick metal as if they were slicing butter. The piercing keen was trapped inside Raven¡¯s brain; it echoed on and on, never stopping.
It was inevitable; they will either smash it into pieces, or shatter the zoid core and turn it into stone, a useless hunk of gray material that will slowly erode away. The first glimpse of palest blue-white showed among red and black metal, and Raven turned his head away as the soldiers cheered. There was a loud crack as the core shattered, and the red zoid started howling as its body slowly shut off, turning into an immobile hulk of stone. ¡®Gods, if this is what they do to a zoid, then what about Shadow?¡¯ His eyes shot open.
---
Fiona shivered as the Geno Breaker, one of the most powerful zoid known to Zians, gave a last air-rending screech and finally faded away, leaving her no warmth that usually came from the zoid cores. She felt cold, afraid, and unbelievingly...alone. Beside her, Thomas, Van and Irvine shuddered, all at the same time thinking of their own zoids.
---
Raven looked up towards the observatory where he now knew the owner of the cold voice – the Commander, the man called him – was, his face contorted with pure rage. But in one corner of his mind, he was afraid; afraid beyond measure. Afraid of the man, his power, afraid of what he could do to him..
He was afraid for Shadow.
Then the order came, the one Raven had been dreading about, yes, truly dreading to hear, for once in his entire life since his was defeated by Flyheight years ago.
¡°Now, for the organoid..¡±
Then something snapped inside him, and Raven lost his calm and composed appearance.
¡°NO! You fucking son of a bitch! Shadow! SHADOW!¡±
Raven yelled frantically towards the organoid, but there was no sign of the black organoid having heard him. He also shouted through their mind link for Shadow to get up. But there was nothing. An absolute nothing.
Fiona closed her eyes, her eyelashes fluttering tearfully. Commander spoke again, voice more harsh and colder then ever.
¡°Do it.¡±
¡°NO!¡±
As Raven was unsuccessfully trying to reach Shadow by tugging almost hysterically at his bound wrists, the flesh of his wrists finally gave to the scratching of the sharp edge of metal and were bleeding freely, splattering blood on the gray haired mercenary as he tried to rip the chains out of the wall.
¡°SHADOW!!¡±
Raven kicked two more white clad men again as they approached him, and ignoring the pain in his wrists, threw himself once more to tug at the chains again but with no positive result. The chains were strong, and they were driven into the wall tightly.
¡°Stop, STOP you fucking cowards! Just what have you done to him?! Stop it! Shadow! SHADOW!¡±
His voice rose to a scream, a mindless piercing scream full of pain that went on for so long. Van couldn¡¯t ignore the scream. It bore into his skull and lodged itself firmly in his mind.
---
For a moment, all he could see was white. He could feel everything they did to Shadow; every stab with tools, every metal scale dislodged slowly, but brutally, every single excruciating pain of the blue instrument as it ripped into Shadow, into his metal body, into his flesh. Raven sank to his knees as the pain took all the strength out of him, but the chains prevented him from doing so. Raven just hung limply on the chains, oblivious to the pain in his wrist, his mind flooded with the pain Shadow was feeling. He was blinded with white. He couldn¡¯t even hear his own scream. Shadow was screaming inside his mind. There was nothing except the pain, the scream, and the white light.
Pain. Pain. Scream. Screaming. Pain. Pain from his own body, from his Soulmate. White. All white. Everything¡¯s white. Scream. It¡¯s pain. Pain. Pain...
And, suddenly, it all ceased.
---
¡°It¡¯s done, Commander.¡±
They called out as they rose up; Shadow was now nothing more than a heap of useless strips of metal and cords. Raven did not scream anymore. Rather, the gray haired mercenary just looked, his eyes still unfocused and hollow. He didn¡¯t even attempt to struggle now. He just hung there limply, like a fish been long dead. Van stared, aghast, at the mess done down below. Fiona¡¯s muffled sobs were all that was heard in the silent observatory. Commander was the first who moved. He pressed the button and spoke into it, his voice echoing around the hangar.
¡°Release the prisoner.¡±
¡°But—¡±
¡°You¡¯ve got weapons, soldier. Release him.¡±
The soldiers approached the youth warily, making faces among themselves as Raven¡¯s savaged wrists were freed from their bond with a sickening squelch and something tearing. Raven fell forward weakly.
¡°Sir, shall we—¡±
¡°You will be called when needed. Meanwhile, clear from the hangar.¡±
¡°Yessir.¡±
---
Raven could do nothing but stare at what was left of the once-magnificent form of Shadow. The organoid was now nothing more than rubble of useless metal junks. He sat kneeling there for how long, his mind numb, heart still throbbing painfully. It didn¡¯t seem do beat, until Raven saw the red crimson blood seeping from the deep wounds around his wrists. He whispered hoarsely.
¡°Shadow..¡±
He tried to walk, but found out that he couldn¡¯t. He collapsed onto the floor once more as soon as his hands left the wall. All this time, the chains were the only things that held him standing upright on his feet.
He crawled, no longer caring who saw or not, and after a short but arduous struggle, Raven reached the remains and collapsed onto the floor. Slowly, fearfully, he raised one bloody hand to softly touch one of the parts that were once part of Shadow. Then his hand closed in around one of the sapphire optic sensors. He gripped it tightly. Then the held-back tears came flooding freely. They trickled down his cheek to spatter themselves on the metal bits.
¡°Shadow...¡±
Raven¡¯s dark form crumpled onto the remnants of his companion.
---
¡¦WHAAAA! *wails* Yes, readers, I killed Shadow. *gets bashed by hoards of angry readers* Now Raven will be angstier and darker than before. *dodges a rotten tomato* Sorry for not updating for so long. Writer¡¯s Block. It¡¯s still there, of course. This is the revised version of chapter 2 written long ago when fishes walked and Dragons existed.. *another tomato thrown her way*
This was originally meant to be the chapter one, but I thought it was going too fast so I added a flashback of what happed after the Second Defeat.
Anyway, here are the thanks:
Thanks to Taltos – Yeah.. sorry for the weird symbols. There¡¯s something wrong with my computer and NOTHING works.
Thanks to Zuzanny – Thanks. Lot more angst in the future chappies! Yay!
Thanks to MoonDragon [or MoonDragon_1001] – Thanks mighty for the 3 reviews urging me to update. *sweatdrops*
Thanks to Hannah – Yay! Thanks for the review! Hope you enjoyed this one too!
Thanks to Luine/Kitten [and Muffin^_^] – Er.. um.. well, that¡¯s.. *mutters something incoherent* well, sorry to disappoint you, but it IS a death fic. *gets bashed by rabid readers* Thanks anyway.
Thanks to All Who Read This Fic But Can Not Be Bothered To Review – PLEASE Review! Flames are all accepted, but only with constructive reasons. All flames without reason will be used to burn the Blade Liger with Fiona inside. MWAHAHAHAHA!! *evil laugh* *cough cough* Review, will you?
READ? THEN REVIEW! CONSTRUCTIVE FLAMES ACCEPTED
Yours Faithfully Fanfictional,
Firemoon
