Chapter Two - So Lonely
Alouette squeezed the little white doll in her arms closer to her chest. 'I promise, Alouette, I'll be back.' She touched gently the top of her blonde head as she remembered Zero patting her head before he left. 'I'll go and beat the monster who is trying to hurt you all, and I'll be back.'
Her soft blue eyes sparkled with worry. It had already been a day since Zero had left, with the cold, somberly glowing moon having replaced the sun and he still hadn't come back. She wanted to see his smile again, his warm and soothing, yet strong and powerful smile. The little reploid girl turned, still clutching her doll, and started walking to the elevator.
"Oh, Alouette!" Alouette jumped, a little frightened by whoever had called her.
Alouette quickly snapped her head around and saw Colbor approaching, his green beret tilted a little too far to the left and his nappy brown hair fell a few inches short of his goggles. Alouette smiled at the much taller reploid as he ran, his machine-buster slung over his shoulder as he grinned at her. Zero had saved him too.
"Hi, Colbor!" She warmly beamed up at him as he stopped and stood about twice her size, maybe more. "Have you found Zero, yet?"
Colbor sucked in a weary breath, pursed his lips thoughtfully and shook his head. "Not yet, every time we get his signal, we check, and we find used maintenance kits and..."
Alouette's frightened eyes ballooned to almost comical proportions. "He's hurt? Zero's hurt! Did that meanie copy X do that? Or was it one of those other meanies that hurt Faucon and even tried to hurt Ciel and Cerveau?"
"Ah," Colbor didn't even know how to try to stop her.
Alouette squeezed her doll even more tightly as her worried eyes darted about. "But Zero promised! He promised that he'd be back! He promised!"
A single tear trailed down her soft cheek, a single tear filled with pain and anguish and anxiety, Zero was just as close to her as Ciel. Colbor softly gripped Alouette's tiny shoulders, the little reploid girl looked up to find the now kneeling Colbor smiling at her. It wasn't as soft as Zero's, nor was it anywhere near as strong, but it was an honest and sincere smile.
"Hey! It's the legendary Zero we're talking about here!" Colbor grinned at her. "Do you think he'd let any of those meanies retire him? Of course he'll be back! He's just..."
Alouette blinked, another tear trickling down her cheek as Colbor snapped his fingers. 'You're not making up some cheesy lie, are you?' She wanted to ask.
"Yeah!" Colbor declared with a celebratory snap of his fingers. "Zero's just buying us time!"
Alouette blinked. "Huh?"
"Think about it! He beat their leader, and now they're all angry and want revenge, if he came back right away, they'd attack us again! But, he's fighting them off so that they won't be as strong if they do attack us!"
Alouette blinked again. She squeezed the doll once more. Zero had done something like that before, he singlehandedly took on and defeated about three hundred or so Neo Arcadians that were attacking from the desert, and then defeated that fire guy with the really big gun, Faffir was his name, or something like that. And right before he assaulted Neo Arcadia on his own, Zero fought off the Neo Arcadians who had assaulted and infiltrated the Resistance Base. Alouette smiled, still not sure if she was to worry about Zero, or be confident that he'd return.
"So we'll see him again? When he's done fighting?" Her eyes glinted with soft blue sparkles of hope.
Colbor nodded. "Yeah, but let's go visit Cerveau for a bit, I need to get my buster checked."
"Okay!" Alouette somewhat hopefully agreed.
The two of them walked the rest of the way to the elevator, fondly speaking of the legendary warrior who'd risked it all to defeat the Neo Arcadian tyrant copy X. The elevator was, contrary to its appearance, breathtakingly quick, and carried them to the engineering level - which had been reserved for weapons and equipment storage, and of course, as Cerveau's lab - in a just a few seconds.
The two passed a few reploids, nodding and waving to the hard-working reploids who were maintaining and repairing weapons and equipment, such as a particular stylish looking buster that had been based on Zero's buster, and a rather useful looking pair of sleek, visor-like binoculars. Alouette eyed the buster, and filed it away in her long-term memory as she entered Cerveau's lab with Colbor.
Cerveau's long green cloak had a brown-trim, and was darkened with soot and dirt in lots of different places as the engineer worked away at a really big buster. Alouette blinked at it, wondering if Zero ever would've used a buster that big. Alouette wondered if he was using one right now against the Neo Arcadians. She blinked and rolled her eyes up to the ceiling by way of flashback to the time when Cerveau was trying to make a really big buster that was as big as Zero's hair was long.
Zero had held it over his shoulder, carefully aimed it at the remains of the Mechaniloid that he'd destroyed when the Neo Arcadians sent it to attack the base and destroy the shield generator, and pulled the trigger.
"Ngah!" Zero probably grunted as the huuuuge laser pushed him a good ten feet across the ground.
Zero's analog sensors - ears - stopped working for a good seven minutes, and no matter how much Alouette yelled at Zero if he wanted to join her and Ciel and the little plush doll Ciel gave her for a tea-party, Zero could only blink and shout "I need to get Rocinolle to repair my analogs!". Alouette quickly deduced that Zero wouldn't use a buster that big unless it was to take down a ship, a really big, really strong airship. But then he'd probably steal a jet pantheon's wings and board it something rather than use one of those super-huge mega busters!
"Oh, Alouette?" Ciel's soft voice brought Alouette back to reality.
Alouette spun around to see Ciel also entering Cerveau's lab with a soft, radiant smile. Alouette's eyes beamed joyously as she gave a radiant smile back to Ciel.
"Sis!" Alouette threw her arms around the taller human girl.
Ciel giggled and lovingly embraced the little reploid girl as Alouette burrowed her face into her soft chest. "What are you doing here?"
"I came with Colbor because he was getting his buster checked!" Alouette let go of Ciel and turned to Cerveau and Colbor, who were both smiling at the two of them. "Colbor was just saying that Zero was buying time for us!"
Cerveau's eyes narrowed solemnly underneath his near opaque visor as he ran a dirtied hand through his shiny dark hair. "Well, I'd imagine that he's gonna buy a lot of time for us."
"Miss Ciel?" Colbor slung his now-repaired buster over his shoulder. "Has Zero tried to contact you? Or have you found him yet?"
Ciel wearily sighed, and to Alouette's nearly hope-shattering disappointment shook her head. Her shiny blonde ponytail flowing so beautifully out of the back of her bright pink helmet as tired blue eyes avoided the gazes of the others.
"None of the reconnaissance teams are finding Zero, they keep finding the remains of Neo Arcadian reploids, but other than that, no sign that Zero was there." Ciel sighed and placed a hand over her forehead, pushing her blonde bangs upward a little. "He isn't responding to our transmissions either."
"Hmm," Cerveau hummed.
Colbor scratched his chin. "What are we gonna do?"
"I don't know."
Alouette looked back and forth between them, hoping that one of them would break the silence with a hope bringing plan to bring back Zero and have him live with them all once again in peace. They were going to say that, right? Right?
"Zero will be back, right? I mean, he's too strong to ever be beaten by those meanies, right?" Alouette begged an answer, her smile too heavily laced with worry. "Right, Ciel?"
Ciel blinked, taken aback with what Alouette hoped wasn't fear. Alouette continued. "Right? I mean, he saved you, and Colbor, and all those reploids who'd been taken prisoner, right? And he captured and protected that factory, right? All for us, right?"
Ciel blinked, now taken aback by Alouette's remarkable insight. "He, did do all of that, didn't he?"
"Yeah! And what about you, Cerveau?" Alouette turned to the dark-haired engineer, her eyes becoming more solid with hope and faith. "Didn't you spend hours with Zero teaching him how to repair the weapons that you spent days making? And didn't you spend days and days setting up training courses for him to practice his skills in so that he could be a top-notch fighter? No," Alouette corrected herself. "A supreme legendary fighter?"
Cerveau rubbed his hair, his face flushed with embarrassment. "I did, didn't I? And there's no way he'd let all of that go to waste!"
"Oh, yeah! You're right on that one!" Colbor chimed with a gladdened shake of the head. "It's no joke when you say that he's the strongest guy around. Zero's strength is just way beyond belief."
Colbor looked to the corner, as if he could see the mighty red warrior's powerful image in the wall. Alouette kinda understood why he was looking off into the distance.
"I miss Zero," Alouette finally, timidly revealed, tightly squeezing the plush that Ciel had given her. "And I know he's gonna come back, because he promised. And Zero's never gonna let those weak bullies force him to break that promise, right Ciel?"
Ciel lovingly wrapped her arms around Alouette's little body from behind. "Of course he will, Alouette. Prince Zero-us of the Kingdom Resistance would never leave the beautiful princesses heartbroken."
"Ahaha!" Alouette slapped a hand over her mouth as she tried to muffle her giggling laughter.
Cerveau and Colbor raised confused eyebrows questioningly. Ciel and Alouette simply giggled, being the only ones to understand the joke.
Zero sat, leaning against the massive Neo Arcadian golem's remains. He'd constructed a make-shift tent out of multiple capes he'd found on pantheons, and using the golem's insides he'd started a fire. It was unnecessary, even at minus fifteen degrees Zero never had need for a fire, but something about this fire was just comforting. As if this was the kind of fire he'd once built with X and other comrades whose names had long escaped him.
Zero popped another E-Crystal into his mouth and chewed on it as he removed his buster's battery's drained E-Crystal and put in a large, fresh, faintly glowing weapons-grade E-Crystal. He reinserted the rather heavy battery into the weapon's chamber and reassembled the frame.
'Zero-us! Zero-us! Save me Zero-us!' Alouette's adorable little voice serenaded Zero's memory as he warmly remembered seeing her in her frilly little white dress, a beautiful and sparkling tiara atop her golden locks. 'It is I, Princess Alouetta! Save me from the evil Arcadian empire!'
Zero fondly smiled. Although he never took off his usual combat gear, he had agreed to take off his helmet long enough to wear his crown on top of his shining golden mane of frizzy hair, frizzy because of his electrifying clash with Harpuia. 'Fear not, Princess Alouetta! Just as I saved Princess Cielis, so too shall you be saved! Hah!' And that was when he'd run through X knows what with his fake saber, because using his real saber for a child's game was just asking for trouble.
'Oh, our hero!' Ciel had swooned, also attired in a similarly frilly dress and sparkly tiara. 'The mighty Zero-us has saved the Kingdom Resistance by striking the fearsome Gigantus Mechaniloidus Dragon! Hooray!' Zero's fond smile grew into a nostalgic grin at the reference to his decimating the mechaniloid that had been sent to destroy the resistance base's shield generators. He tucked his buster away, now removing the exhausted battery from his saber. 'Now sweep me off of my feet, Zero-us! Sweep me off of my feet!' Zero had lowered his plastic saber and faced the young princess Alouetta as she giggled at him.
'You mean, like this!' Zero-us had swiped at her legs and cradled her in his arm, Princess Alouetta's eyes ballooned as she was literally swept off of her feet. But, frightened as she was, she burst into a fit of radiant laughter and Zero too laughed, along with Ciel as well.
Zero found himself chuckling in fond memory of the girls. But sadly, that was all the time he could afford to dabble in fond memories. Zero reluctantly sombered himself as he continued to maintain his weapons. He'd have to keep fighting, long and hard before he could enjoy such amazing times with the girls, such peace.
"I can see why you're so fond of peace, X." Zero muttered, somehow knowing the now resting cyber-elf would hear him. "But do you think I really deserve such an amazing thing? Peace?"
Zero silently began working at his shield boomerang, adjusting its gyroscopic systems to be a bit more precise. He felt it in his core that X truly believed that Zero more than deserved peace.
"Think so, huh?" Zero removed the almost-empty battery from the shield boomerang. "But I'm just some weapon, a tool of war, it's all I've ever done, fight, and kill. Do I really deserve peace?"
Just then Zero saw Ciel, Alouette, and himself having a tea-party. Then it was him learning from Cerveau the basics of engineering and equipment maintenance. Right after that, Zero saw himself hard at work at Rocinolle's side tending to the wounded reploids, even though he himself was wounded. He felt as though X was saying something. As if, X was telling him, that Zero has always fought and killed, so that others would never have to.
A single, lonely tear trickled down Zero's cheek. "So that's your dream, huh? To fight and to kill, so that no one else ever has to."
Zero wiped his eyes with the back of a hand, and finished maintaining his shield boomerang. With that, he could rest for a few hours at least. That is, if the fire wasn't already betraying his position.
Zero tucked his weapons away and pulled the cape over his torso, careful not to dirty it with the oil from his wound, and shut his eyes. He wanted to go back to Ciel and the others, Alouette especially since he'd made a promise to her, but his job was to fight so they wouldn't have to. X had always been a hero for that reason, he never fought because he wanted to, he always fought, so that others wouldn't have to. It was for that reason, that X was a true warrior.
A/N: I've always adored Alouette, so I really gave her a spotlight in this chapter as a source of hope. The promise is canon, she actually asks Zero to promise to return ASAP before he attacks copy X, and at the start of Z2 she chews him off for not coming back fast enough so I just HAD to include it. She kinda overshadows Ciel and the others, but, in the end I enjoyed writing Alouette's point of view (ALL HAIL ZERO-US!) Jokes aside, I seriously hope you guys enjoy seeing Alouette crank up the moe in this bloody - well, oily really - tale of war. :D