Chapter Seven - Counter-Offensive part 2
Zero launched himself forward, saber violently humming as it devastated the hopeless core of a rocket-wielding pantheon with an atrociously swift pierce. Zero's left hand swiped at the back of its neck as his sturdy fingers clamped down on it, swirling it through the air as he violently ripped it off of its feet and spun, swinging its lifeless body and releasing it with a just as violent hurling motion, boosting past the two pantheons as their comrade's corpse slammed them to the ground.
Zero's left hand smoothly whipped down to his thigh, drew his buster and unloaded a small barrage of shots at a squad of startled pantheons, lethal green bursts of plasma violently smashing into and ripping apart their metallic bodies.
A frightened pantheon dove for cover as his comrades took the fire that he should've taken along with them. It was in his programming to stand and fight, but it was also in his programming to survive! He touched his free hand to his comms system as he sprinted up from off of the dirt and ran for dear life further east, towards the central compound.
"The God of Destruction is here! He's here!" The terrified pantheon screamed into his comms over the maddening roars of buster fire and explosions. "Get Captain Theseus here ASAP! Please!"
He briefly stopped, spun on one foot, took aim and fired a short burst despite all common programming before turning to continue his retreat. A higher-ranked pantheon responded.
"Hold your ground and defend the convoy! Everything is riding on this offensive, you hear me?"
Hold m-my ground?" The poor pantheon skidded to a hopeless halt.
Turning around, he witnessed the emotionless, terrifying expression of the God of Destruction in his element. War. The God of Destruction moved as deftly as the scorching desert wind, outmaneuvering the impossibly heavy strikes of Golem fists and the deadly swift bursts of laser fire from the Golems' massive eyes, leading them to cut down and destroy all of the vehicles and pantheons in the vicinity as he countered with saber slashes and thrusts, shield boomerang hurls and buster fire.
"A-Against that?" He didn't even want an answer!
"Precisely! Defend the convoy with your life! Over and out!" The senior pantheon cut the comms between them.
But that didn't mean the other comms were offline.
"Golems Alpha One Six and Four watch your fire! You're hitting friendlieeeeggh!..." Cut down by the Golems.
"The light of X! He's too fast!" The pantheon fired hopelessly at where Zero no longer was. "I need assistance! He's destroying the agh!" More Golem fire, only this one was alive and writhing in agony as he reached for his knees. "M-my legs! My legs! Aaaaagh! Nyaaaargh!"
"Wait! Where is he? Where is Zero? Whe...?" Static.
Chaos and confusion ensued as Zero wreaked his maddening havoc. Come to think of it, the battle was still near him, but the pantheon had completely lost track of Zero's position! Completely!
"Huh? Wait! Where is Zero?" He almost screamed in fear as he gripped at his integrated buster and anxiously looked about.
An unbearable, processor-crippling pain shot out through the pantheon's left leg as he heard the violent humming of an oil-thirsty saber.
"Ngah!" It only barely registered that he was falling backwards. "Wha?... No!"
He only barely saw the violent green flash of saber plasma, and then a world-ending pain brought his terrified core to a hopeless halt as Zero plunged his battle-hungry blade into the poor pantheon's chest. It was there in his eyes, a look of meaninglessness, a look of tired uselessness that just seemed to ooze indifference from the God of Destruction's sharp, evil green eyes as he slammed the pantheon's body into the ground with that ferocious stab.
'No! Why did it have to be this way? I, I wanted to be a hero! I wanted to contribute to X's cause!' The pantheon's terrified processor thought as he lay there, oil gushing from his wounds where his core no longer was and his leg no longer existed. 'All my life, humans looked down on me!' The image of humans spitting at the hard-working red-haired reploid as he carried large steel beams on either shoulder flashed into mind, a critical systems failure flashing somewhere in his eye. 'Then there was that program, 'Earn your right to be a Neo Arcadian! Fight for the peace that X has dreamed of for so long! Destroy the Resistance!' The poster of a determined X pointing across the horizon, buster raised and charging as he led a platoon of fighting pantheons into battle.
'Systems failure at absolute critical failure! Emergency shutdown inaccessible! Permanent consciousness loss in thirty, seconds!' He was warned as he listened to the battle raging on around him. As he listened to the sound of Zero slaughtering dozens of others just like him. His eye gave out completely, no longer able to function.
'If, if only I'd known,' he thought to himself as his body twitched uncontrollably. 'That I'd have to witness this horror, this madness, for the sake of that madman X! If only I'd known!' An explosion sent another pantheon flying, the legless and coreless body tumbling to a stop right on top of the still-dying pantheon. 'I don't have a name,' he realized as his circuitry began to disable. 'I'm just, Pantheon Alpha Tango, Five-Two, Oh, Niner-Seven.'
His circuitry stopped completely.
Zero's buster roared with maddening ferocity as he shot out a Golem's eye, leaving the hulking behemoth to blindly thrash about and tear into important-looking vehicles and pantheons and mechaniloids with frightening fervor and agonized, grating wails. Zero thrusted his saber forward as he boosted himself forward, bypassing yet another fallen pantheon before putting a couple rounds in the heads of the squad before him.
"Z-Zero sir!" Annabeth squealed over the comms.
"Go!" He swiftly ordered her to speak as he leaned back, limbo-dodging a fist pantheon and slicing through its chest cavity.
"I've finished the map! Would you like me to send it to you now?"
"Immediately!" Zero grunted as he spotted a missle-loid.
Zero's movements were frantic but controlled, with the chaotic order of a tornado tearing through crops, only the tornado happened to be throwing missiles in just every footprint it left behind.
"Okay! Uploadinnnng, now!" Annabeth updated Zero as he limbo-dodged a missile, leaned back and tapped a hand to the ground and back-flipped away from yet another one. "The map data should be in your auxiliary memories, guys!"
"Solid copy," Faucon squawked in. "Zero, do we move in now?"
"Affirmative!" Zero sliced a missile in half and began charging his buster as he kicked off of a fist pantheon, leaving it to get hit by another missile. "Rivaille where's that sniper-support?"
"Setting up shop now!" Rivaille answered. "Light of X, that's a huuuge fire you've started! Thermal's gonna be useless!"
Zero snapped his buster up in time to release a violent cannon ball of jade plasma at the missile-loid. It beeped and flashed a bright red as it locked onto Zero once again, but mid-way in its firing sequence it fell over uselessly as its two right legs and lower right half were blown right off. Rivaille whistled from a top a tower as he watched Zero scramble up the side of a Golem, stabbing the circuitry out of it as he used his saber like an ice-pick. One of the other Golems was tracking Zero, charging its eye laser to blast him once he reached the top of its now dying comrade's head. Or at least it was until Rivaille picked a gargantuan hole in its eye.
The resulting overload of energy that couldn't be released exploded its head like a grape between a man's thumb and forefinger. A flaming, shrapnel-riddled grape.
"Zero!" Rivaille screamed. "Chopper above you!"
Theseus didn't even wait for the pilot to confirm that he and his squad of Zero-Hunter Commando pantheons were clear for a jump, he jumped right out from one hundred and twenty feet above the ground. Left foot down, arms extended above him as he clutched the unactivated dagger hilts, plummeting like an eagle diving to snatch up its prey. He narrowed his eyes at the scorching updrafts generated by the flames of Zero's slaughtering of pantheons and mechaniloids, itching to plunge his blades into the core of the monster who'd brutally murdered and desecrated the body of his close friend Terran Gaia. As he fell, left foot down, arms up, body quivering as it maintained its upright position despite the relentless updrafts, he remembered his mother figure's graceful smile and charming elegance.
He activated the thrusters in his boots, blindingly powerful plasma bursting from them as they sharply yanked his body upward, but he remained strong and maintained his upright position as he glided downward, angling his feet to more or less thrust himself toward Zero. The energized and ionized booming of Commando Pantheon thrusters activating in a similar manner accompanied him, as well as one more sound. The sound of buster fire ripping through reploid metal. Theseus watched horrified and enraged as Commando Pantheon T-098, or Atom, as he had nicknamed him, plummeted lifelessly and tumbled through the air. Atom's lifeless, dying corpse was joined by Serpent, who was quickly followed Nile and Break. Less than thirty feet off the ground and a third of his team had already been picked off.
Theseus' eyes exploded open as his chest spontaneously flew backward, followed by a lethally sharp sensation of pain only a fraction of a second later as he began to tumble through the air. "Argh! Spilled oil!"
Theseus immediately began the struggle to right himself as he tumbled through the air, but gravity was too quick. He thud-slid into and through the sand, half-buried as he slid further and deeper into the sand. Theseus ran a diagnostics on his body, emerging from the bone-chillingly cold sand like a mummy with a gaping, oil-oozing wound in its left chest. The upper portion of his left respirator had been damaged, and his skeletal structure had fractured very lightly at the collar bone, his upper left ribs were completely gone.
"Sigma-hearted savage!" He snarled as he engaged his blades, the two dagger hilts producing six inches of blade-shaped plasma each.
Faucon and the others gathered at their rendezvous point, the inner perimeter of the compound. A glance for all before the Captain asked, "Charges set?"
He really meant "You blew everything up right?"
The squad nodded. Under the cover of Zero's mega battle-royale they'd managed to sabotage twenty or so medical supply trucks, blow up about six hybernating Golems, and completely destroyed thirteen anti-fortress mechaniloids, and were now proceeding to blow up whatever Zero didn't get to in his last attack. Each of them glanced back at the orange-red night sky as the flames of war raged on around Zero, far enough back that they could only barely hear the sounds of buster-fire and explosions.
"Hey," Zoe whispered to Mike. "You think those choppers were all those specialized Zero-Hunters?"
"Most likely." He answered as the two of them split from the rest so that they could more efficiently scout out the area. "He's Zero, so he'll be fine. And besides, Rivaille is with him!"
"Yeah, you're right! Lets just hope to X that none of them find us!" She cheekily cursed Zero, who on his side of the battle shivered a little.
Zero leaned back, limbo-dodging the plasma daggers of the wounded Zero-hunter before him and backflipped, quickly deactivating and tucking away his saber as he drew, extended, and activated his Triple Rod. Zero stood, surrounded by Commando Pantheons and Zero-Hunters, waiting for his magical opportunity. His magical opportunity came when the massive, Herculean and bare-fisted Zero-Hunter he'd shot in his previous attack lunged at him from behind with terrifying speed. Zero was more terrifying as he glanced back to confirm his target's distance, and then jabbed the back of the Triple Rod under the mega bulky brown-skinned Reploid, pressed down on the end closest to the blade and utilized the Zero-Hunter's momentum to send him flying at the dagger-wielding Hunter.
Theseus had barely seen Hercules leap at Zero when out of nowhere all he could see was Hercules' enormous back flying at his face. Not even having the time to brace himself, Theseus could only absorb the full, ship-crippling momentum of Hercules' rear-end being handed to him on a silver platter. Theseus blinked as he lay back on the sand, with Hercules, his idiot brother, still rolling through the sand.
"Artemis!" He screamed as he ripped both knees up to his chest and planted his hands on either side of his head. "Activate your God-form!" Kicking his legs upward a bit and then straight out, he yanked his feet under his behind as the momentum he generated brought him off the ground and into a squatting position.
If the wound Zero had inflicted on him meant he would die, then Artemis would see to it that Theseus did not die in vain. Her God-form alone would be enough to kill Zero six times over and then some.
"Th-Theseus!" Artemis blinked at her brother, her hazel eyes lined with worry. "Are you insane?"
"We have the God of Destruction right here!" He screamed, oil spattering from his mouth. "Right now! Are you going to let him get away just out of some feeble little sentiment of sisterly love? Will you let our mother's sacrifice be in vain!"
Zero could sense it, not detect it via scanners, but, he could just, sense it. A sinister feeling he hadn't felt in years other than in his clash with that pirate copy of X. He could sense the bloodthirsty madness of a Maverick. A true, destructive force of nature in its beginnings. Zero altered his stance to a more elegant position, holding his Triple Rod at a more downward angle.
"But you will without question be killed!" The light brown-haired reploid girl screamed at her wounded brother as she lowered her bow. "Activating that form will DEFINITELY kill you!"
"I am already dead!" He screamed, eyes locked murderously on the red-armored atrocity before him. "Look! He challenges us! The God of Destruction Himself has taken a noble and proud stance to challenge us to a duel! Do not worry yourself about me! Finish him! Abolish his pride! End his unholy siege! If not for our great master X," he spoke softly before letting his rage taking control of his tone. "Then do it for our fallen mother!"
Zero had only glanced at this 'Artemis' girl, but her eyes were overflowing in tears. The other Zero-Hunters simply stared at Theseus, bewildered by his maddened state. Zero watched patiently eyes and ears on everything and every one around him.
"Fall back!" A Zero-Hunter wielding a jet black kite shield and crackling-with-energy sword yelled at the commando pantheons. "Minimum safe-distance for Assault Protocol Omega!"
"Yessir!" They all yelled, raising their busters above their heads as they trotted backward before breaking off into full retreating sprints.
Zero had his chance. Launching himself to his right, Zero boosted himself forward, deactivating and retracting his Triple Rod as he swiftly drew his Saber. Achilles braced himself behind his jet black shield and prepared to thrust through Zero with his electrically charged sword when Zero disappeared. Hearing the sand grinding beneath him, Achilles instinctively jumped and struck downward, his blade glancing off of Zero's saber with a blinding flash as Zero slid under him. Achilles followed through with a mid-air sommersault and whipped his right heel backward, almost catching the now-squatting Zero off-guard. Having anticipated an attack from the clearly skilled foe, Zero had glanced back in time to see a heel, and dropped to his knees in another slide and limbo-dodged the spinning heel kick. He whipped himself forward into a roll and spun around, saber raised by his right cheek, right hand at the top of the handle and left hand at the bottom.
The blonde-haired sword and shield Achilles snickered at Zero. "Give us a good fight."
Zero almost didn't see Theseus coming. Theseus almost had Zero. Theseus was now missing a blade as Zero swiped his saber downward, deflecting Theseus' sloppily-executed attack, and countered with an impossibly swift slash at the insane reploid's throat. Theseus was insanely swift in limbo-leaning, getting off with a mere scratch on his chest-plate and lunged at Zero, his brother Achilles seizing the opportunity and leaping forward at Zero.
Zero swiftly leaped out to the side, challenging Achilles and turning his shoulder on the now gravely offended Theseus. Achilles stopped and slid on his heels through the sand as he activated his Renowned Ability. It was haunting for Zero to see the blonde Achilles' eyes transform from silver to blood red, but what was even more haunting, was the ferocity of his attacks. Achilles' Renowned Ability allowed him the ability to read his opponents like a book, but still, Zero was different. He was still difficult to read and at times impossible to keep up with as he countered and evaded and deflected Achilles' sword thrusts and slashes and shield swings. It's like Zero's book was written in an old language that Achilles had only seen in classes when he was a newly-manufactured pet. Zero was a real challenge.
Quite frankly, Achilles didn't care about his brothers or sisters anymore, he kept pushing Zero away from his pesky siblings who kept closing in on the two of them, Zero was the greatest thing he'd ever found! He was just amazing! His speed, his ferocity, his unearthly calmness, it made Achilles desperate to prove himself superior. To find the perfect feint and thrust to conquer Zero with, or maybe a shield-punch feint followed by a low sweeping kick to knock him off of his feet! Achilles racked his mind as he searched for the perfect move with which he could overpower Zero, and the more he tried, the more he failed, the more he smiled. The God of Destruction was a true warrior, a force of nature with which there was no perfect move.
After about fifteen minutes of endless fighting, Zero was just damned exhausted, but his opponent was far too skilled and far too ferocious to simply do in or escape from, no, this was a battle of attrition to see who would wear out first. And Zero wasn't about to...
"LIGHT OF X!" He ironically screamed, as nothing but white took its place in his eyes.
'Now!' Achilles screamed to himself as he lunged at the clearly blind Zero.
Achilles hit his knees, struggling to even straighten his back as he kneeled before Zero. Zero staggered backward, and quite weakly at that, as Achilles snickered to himself.
"Bwahahahaha!" He leaned backward and laughed, eventually falling over as Artemis continued to drain them of their energy. "Haaa, that bitch, stealing my fun. How dare she use her God-Form."
Zero staggered, shaking his head as his vision slowly returned to him. The world was still too white for his tastes when he'd recovered, but he realized that was partly because of the Artemis girl he'd forgotten about in the heat of his struggle. She was literally glowing white and sitting on a gargantuan horse constructed entirely of energy. Her body armor had literally grown about four sizes, and was the source of her god-like glow. Her bow, had also quadrupled in size and she sat proudly atop her horse, although with tears in her eyes.
Artemis had tried her best not to drain Theseus of too much energy. She'd tried her absolute best, even going so far as to focus on draining Zero of his vast ocean of energy, but as Theseus lay there only a few metres from Zero, snarling with a dangerous look of half-dead hatred at Zero, she felt that today, she would lose a brother. Her body felt as light as the grains of sand which occasionally stung her back, but her core was as heavy as the fallen reploids who'd died at Zero's hand.
"Zero! You vile God of Destruction!" She said as she drew back on her bow from atop her horse, a glowing white energy arrow generating on the string and along the bow as she gripped it, and dozens more on either side of her. "Ready yourself to be judged by a god!"
Levi stared, his jaw hitting the floor, as he marvelled at this impossible plot-twist. At least she didn't have wings!
Levi lost all emotion in his face as she generated glowing white wings from seemingly nothing. "Even when I don't say it I end up jinxing him."
Levi shook his head and took a breath. He shook his head before confirming his target.
"This is gonna suck." He whispered to himself as he placed his finger on the trigger.
A/N: Well! That took me long enough! Another chapter after WAY too long! Hope my fanbase still cares about me! Lol, so I'm not being very consistent, but just know that I will keep cranking out chapters, even if it kills me. Hope it doesn't. It's really stressful trying to develop the Zero-Hunters, I mean, I don't really remember half of them, so I kinda have to go with the artistic flow, unless I actually plan for it, like Artemis' God-Form there. And don't worry! You'll meet the Guardians again soon enough! Especially Fefnir, he's the easiest to give screen time without it being out of place.
Next chapter, will Zero survive the wrath of yet another, and quite frankly pissed, god in his dangerously exhausted state? Will Achilles get to have fun? Will Hercules ever be useful in a fight against Zero? Why does Theseus give off such a Maverick-like aura to Zero? And will Levi's poker-face become permanent? Find out next time, on Zero, Wars, Series! *dragon ball z closing theme*