DISCLAIMER: I don't own ZOIDS!

Chapter 4: You're not authorised to do that

It was with an immense amount of mystification that Van wondered how exactly he went from cleaning Raven's grave to traveling with the maverick on a crazy mission to retrieve the latter's prized Genobreaker, in the space of less than one week. If he'd ever been impulsive before (or at least more so than usual), it was nothing compared to this. Besides, he hadn't been so rash for quite a while. To return to that thoughtless way of life he used to lead was... exhilarating.

'Or at least educational,' he mused. After several encounters with various groups of bandits in trying situations, he would have been forced to admit (had he any previous doubt on the matter) that his former nemesis was truly the more advanced pilot. He could have managed on his own, even without an organoid, but Raven's ideas and skills were always better. Slightly more precise, slightly more cruel. Despite accepting that he was generally not the inexperienced rookie surviving via several successive miracles in battles anymore, Van was still not used to the idea of destroying an enemy with a single attack by destroying the Zoid core directly; he practised the technique extensively over several days, until he had more or less grasped the principle. Aim, wait, shoot. Ignore the death throes, then repeat as needed.

He never received an opinion from his companion unless it was to inform him of when a particular strike was not perfect. What Raven really thought of his successes beyond a judgmental level, he could not tell. Did his improving skills hint of a challenge to the maverick's crown as the greatest Zoid pilot alive, or did he never care about such a title? Was his aptitude for learning, fast, something that irritated the other pilot, or did it give him pride as a teacher? He could not tell from that cold, apathetic voice, always delivering instructions in a calm, though abusively arrogant tone that commanded attention.

The exception would be those few cryptic words at the end of that first battle in the canyon. At first, Van thought that he had received training for fighting without sight. He would have continued that assumption, had he not instinctively realised that battles of that type held a particular significance to Raven. It was another item to add to his list of "what I want to know about Raven but will probably never get to ask without being painfully killed". The list seemed to inexplicably expand everyday.

Currently though, he could feel those violet eyes watching him with a subtle curiousity. By now, Van had seen that look enough times to recognise it: Raven wanted to know what he was thinking, but did not want to ask. An interesting development on both fronts; he was learning to read the previously unfathomable psychopath, who actually showing something beyond boredom. In fact, it looked more like interest than disregard. He grinned, watching the slight reaction as one eyebrow quirked, then turned back to the road.

"Where did you say that warehouse was?"

Double blink, and a glance at the map. "Two kilometres south-west of here," was the cool reply. How did he make even a simple observation sound scathing? "If we continue at this pace, we'll be there in an hour."

"Should I go faster then?"

A shrug, before the grey-haired pilot turned to look out the cockpit, resuming his 'don't give a damn' demeanour. "Do what you like." He glanced back once.

Van smirked after catching the probing look, though he was careful to keep it hidden. "Sure."

After all, he wasn't quite that certain about his companions pre-set reactions. Yet.

"Ojisan?" yelled Raven as he jumped out of the cockpit, instinctively sensing disaster. Seven steps and a sharp kick broke down the metal-and-wood door, and he rushed in, Van several steps behind. The latter blinked in the dark that seemed to have no effect on the other pilot, who was softly cursing somewhere in that impenetrable lack of illumination.

"Raven...?"

"Get the first aid kit from the cupboard, and bring water from the tank." Hesitation. "For god's sake, turn on the light if you have to, but hurry!"

Behind him the light flicked on with a growl, and he turned to see Shadow with his tail raised. The black organoid ignored him and stomped over to the closet, wrenching the lock off with his teeth and breaking Van's reverie. Not to be outdone, he raced to the stove, grabbed the nearest clean pot and filled it from the watertank stationed next to the sink. He carefully brought it over to Raven, who was busy tearing his uniform sleeves completely off from shoulder to wrist. The pallor of skin that had not seen sunlight for a decade shocked him, though it had no effect on the owner; he was occupied with ripping off the armour plates and fashioning the cloths into suitable pads to stem a profusely bleeding head wound.

Though not particularly deep, the injury had been inflicted many hours ago, and the old man was completely unconscious as Raven professionally sponged away clotted blood and treated the cut with antiseptic and medicine from the kit before bandaging it properly. He checked the casualty's pulse and breathing, frowning at the high fever, then stood and hefted the bulky body easily over his shoulder, heading for a different room. Van followed, astonished at the display before him; never had he expected his former nemesis to act so... human, for lack of a better term.

Suddenly, he reproached himself severely for treating the guy as merely a difficult obstacle and 'probable cause of death' for the majority of their acquaintance. And he was supposed to be the hero... what a joke. If Raven hadn't been the one to help -albeit unwillingly- in the final battle, he would not have considered a friendship. He would have continued to see him as a rival to defeat in his bid for being the ultimate pilot, a stepping stone. No wonder he cut his foot.

"I think we can safely assume that the Genobreaker's gone."

"Huh... what?"

Raven raised an eyebrow. "Genobreaker. Taken."

"Who by?"

Shrug. "I'll ask once he's up." A thumb indicated the old man. "We need more medicine than we've got. Stay here. There're painkillers in my bags; if he wakes up before I return, get them and give him some. Boil some water too, and find a towel or something to sponge his head. Try to avoid the bandage."

"Where are you getting the medicine from?" he asked, slightly unnerved at the amount of trust placed on him to care for the casualty.

"There's a town three miles from here. I'll be back in an hour. Shadow, stay."

"Won't it be faster if you take your organoid with you?"

Huff of annoyance. "That bandaging doesn't have to be changed for two hours at least. I don't need to go any faster."

He walked off before Van could ask anymore incessant questions, which was just as well; the other pilot had run out of any to ask. He glanced at the black organoid and asked, "Is he always like that?" The glowing blue eyes looked at him without expression, though he seemed to be considering the question. Or at least considering how to answer. Unlike with Zeke, Van couldn't hear Shadow's mental voice clearly, only a faint static that hid parts of thoughts. Still, this communication cleared a little everyday, appeasing any nostalgia he might have felt and allowing him to hope that soon they would be able to communicate fluently.

Until then, he had to be content with what looked like a Zoid's version of shaking his head, before the organoid stalked to the bed with the old man, standing vigil. Van was left with his own guilty musings once again, and he contemplated the horrible alternate universe where there had been no partnership between them, no escape from the destroyed Genosaurer for Raven, yet no conscience to plague him, the victor. A time and place where he would always be Van Flyheight: destroyer of the Deathsaurer, bringer of 'peace' through war, Raven's murderer, and the greatest hero of all time.

Despite once again sensing the aftermath of conflict, the maverick did not run back into the warehouse, choosing to balance the newly acquired supplies with care. After all, if he was correct -and in these matters he was rarely, if ever, wrong- they would be needed more than a display of unwarranted concern on his part. Instead, he walked in calmly and placed the medicine and food on a table, before wiping his forehead and peering around. He noted the holes in the wall, large enough to allow winds to pass through but not enough to threaten the building's stability (he'd fix them tomorrow); pots, dented but still usable (in a few minutes if he wanted to cook); shattered plates and mugs (...crap); Shadow's tail half off (I'll kill them!); a bleeding and bruised Van knotting rope around several k.o.ed captives while loudly whetting a few particularly nasty kitchen knives a yard away from their broken noses (...?!).

The last observation left him quite speechless, watching the supposedly 'nice' pilot who still possessed some of his fourteen year old looks tie up his prisoners and prepare interrogation instruments like a pro. Though Raven would have liked to have claimed this vicious, sadistic streak as his doing, he knew it was not. Shaking his head, he walked over to eye his shorter companion critically. Van noticed his presence and almost shrank away, then meekly let him examine the cuts and bruising without a word.

This should have raised some suspicions, but Raven failed to acknowledge them. Whatever Van felt guilty about didn't matter as long as it wasn't life-threatening. He felt almost relieved that his hunch had been proven right, and that leaving both Shadow and Van to guard the place and its currently fragile owner hadn't been a mistake. Shadow was loyal, vicious, skilled; the other at least matched these qualities in his own, recklessly impulsive and illogical way. But the organoid was still a machine, and had trouble understanding anything human beyond his master's own thoughts and actions. Which was enough for him.

Absently he let a faint smile appear on his lips as he cleaned the injuries, not knowing that his actions were sending mixed (and well distorted) signals to the pilot he was treating. Normally so exacting on every tiny detail, he was letting his senses and instincts malfunction. Instincts were often just barriers, and he didn't need such complex defense systems now, did he? New bandages were wound tightly, and he tied them almost automatically, having done this for himself so often. From Van's subconscious reactions, he guessed that he had not been taken care of by someone else for a long time either. He half-nodded, slightly dazed, then retreated.

He looked at his own hands now, slightly stained but otherwise fine. Splashing off the crimson with water, he resolved to begin fixing the pots. But first, he would check on the warehouse owner. Opening the door just a little, he saw the man resting peacefully, and nodded in satisfaction. The events of the day had not disturbed him much, if he was able to sleep now. About to turn away, he stopped when he spotted the small glass bottle sitting on the bedside table. Opened, labelled and filled with a total of twenty-three tablets, exactly as he'd left it.

Guilty minds generally shied away from contact with the one they felt they had wronged; this was the case tonight. He had been too curious, looking through Raven's bag when the old man had indeed woken in agony . It was too personal, and his obsession (which he had grudgingly named as such after this incident) did not justify such actions in his code. If anything, it worked against him; someone as obsessed as he was should be locked away in a well padded cell, at least a few galaxies away from the object of such a... tainted, if anything emotion. Even Liger disapproved, and the Zoid was hardly likely to understand the concept of privacy after displaying his insides so often to the pilot and whatever company he had.

What he had found was no less cryptic than the person himself. The bag was split into two compartments; the first was neat and contained clothes, toiletries and money. The pills were not there. In the other half however, was a second bag. Everything, literally everything in that bag (including the leather of the bag itself) was in pieces. The photos, the map, the jewellery, the letters... the only thing that was somewhat whole was ironically a glass bottle filled of little white pastilles. He could have just gone then, but noooo... he'd been indiscreet enough to look through the shreds of everything else. Indiscreet, stupid, dishonest, low... completely and utterly intrigued.

There was no real map of Zi drawn by a professional cartographer who'd travelled the world; this was a child's map, marked out with crayon, a kid's skewed sense of distance and shape, and an ignorant's imagination of what the world looked like. Torn to confetti, then taped with painstaking care back together. The jewellery, bearing shiny red and purple stones, had once belonged to a woman. It was old now, the silver chain broken cruelly by something sharper and harder than it, and coated wholly by a dry, crimson substance he was only too familiar with. A watch, protective glass shattered and severed leather bearing claw and teeth marks, the hands perpetually set at 11:49 around the golden word Rolex. And the photos, all ripped neatly in sixteen parts. Ripped with the precision of an adult who knew what he wanted to do; the filthy fingerprints left on the corners were too big even for Raven's current hands...

He touched the bandages on his arms uncertainly, as he viewed the taller pilot pacing around the room; cleaning away the plates and mugs he and Shadow had failed to save; fixing the metal pots that had proved so valuable as ammunition; chopping then throwing various edible substances into the undamaged pots to cook soup; multi-tasking by pasting layers of newspapers over the holes in the walls while ignoring the WANTED posters and checking his food; glancing over at him oddly. Van had seen him look into the old man's room, then stop there for quite a few minutes. Was that about...?

Of course. He'd been delivering the pills to the owner, who had fallen asleep in the long wait, when the bandits had attacked. The bottle had been left on the desk, and he'd forgotten them. Raven would know; he always knew. Standing up stiffly, Van walked over to him to apologise. Perhaps it would be better to wait until he could at least run, but... no. It might be better if he just died now. Better than confessing to the maverick, who was now looking at him with a raised eyebrow. Breathing, too fast. Heartbeat, blur. Other major organs, working. Chances of actually dying now... none to slim. Crap.

"When I went to get the pills... from your bag... I..." A hand motion told him to continue, and he did, though his voice was no steadier or louder than before. "I... went through... everything else in... that bag."

A long silence, too long for comfort. "You went through everything."

He nodded, and it was the most difficult thing he could remember doing. "The... photos, map, jewellery..."

"Everything."

Van recognised the instinctive anger, a preceding formality to a very harsh slap. But the contact never came, and he noticed instead nails digging into palm. The same palm, in fact, that he'd seen Raven staring at before. "Why do you keep doing that?" He clapped both hands to his mouth in horror.

"What?"

"Your..." Words failing, he pointed instead.

"You mean this?" Once again, that awful scar was displayed. A shiver went through him. "This, Van, is simply a little memoir of that battle we had, when you decided to destroy my Genosaurer by ripping it apart slowly from the outside, piece by piece. Is that the same thing you want to do to me, Van? Find out everything about me that you can through these little situations, working your way slowly to the core, where there's nothing left? Well fuck you."

The other hand -his left- was the one that struck, with the less yielding back. Not hard enough to loosen any part of his skeleton, just to sting. Hard. Raven grabbed one of the newly whetted knives and for a terrifying moment, Van thought he would be stabbed, but the edge was blunted instead on a large papaya, chopping the fruit into rough chunks as erratic as the photo shards he'd seen. Tired of this exercise, the furious maverick sank the knife three inches into the chopping board, then grabbed him by the collar. "You want to find out all the gory details of my life? You'll find out more than you want to know, and then some about your life as well. But not tonight. Because if I told you tonight, I would kill you. Good night."

He stormed off, leaving Van shuddering in the kitchen, wondering how he'd managed to reach this point. Wanting to know the other pilot, wanting to know badly enough to snoop. A feeling of desperation seemed to overwhelm him; he'd managed to land himself into a situation where optimism, and believing that he could do something, were of no help. Wasn't that what led him to this mess in the first place? He thought he could understand Raven... funny. It would be so much better though, if he wasn't still just a damned puzzle, and not one that was easy to complete. He was more like several puzzles, where you have to sort them back into their 500 piece piles of 'past' first, then start putting them back together. All he'd managed to accomplish was add another pile to the first three, and mix it up further, to 'past', 'past', 'past', 'present'.

He eventually worked up the nerve to move, turning off the stove and pouring the soup into a bowl. His actions were mechanical; he ate without tasting, and cleaned everything. Only then did he dare pick up a piece of sliced papaya and put the sweet fruit into his mouth. His mind finally moved, as he realised that they didn't have papayas in Liger's supplies; he tasted blood after biting down too hard, but put the second piece in, choking mutely on the food purchased today, especially for him. Raven hated papayas.

AN: That was long, and really confusing. I think it's too soon for them to have a fight this big, but then again... when else? Is it less plausible than if they don't actually fight for ages, then have a really really big one? XX Tasukete?! (Help! --) For now though, I think I'll concentrate on this fic in fanfic world. So I'll hopefully have some sort of plot up and running... um, shortly. Please be patient...

Also, although all reviews are joyfully accepted (hey, even if they're flames, it means your 'writing has reached someone' :P) constructive criticism that I can work with is the best. So please, if you really want me to try and improve this fic, try and give a little more information than "this is bad", or "this is good". Thanks for those reviews anyways. Words simply cannot express how grateful I feel... that was not sarcasm.