Turning over slightly, Aptom propped his head on his right hand and looked over the sleeping forms of the two Lost Units sharing what he had originally claimed as his bed. Bio Freezer and Felinos; they might have gone by different names when they were talking to their little friends, but that still didn't change what they were. They were his fellow Lost Units now.

'Freezer had asked him just why he insisted on calling himself a Lost Unit instead of a Lost Number; he'd blown the guy off with a sarcastic remark, and when the cat had decided that he just had to know, too, he'd told them both to get bent. If they didn't understand without him having to explain it to them, then they weren't likely to understand even with his help.

But Lost Units were different than any other kind of Zoanoid. It wasn't that there was something wrong with them like Chronos said; they were a unit – brethren, even if they had never met before. It was the only thing that any of them had, the only thing that Chronos couldn't take away from them or make them give up. But 'Freezer and Felinos hadn't become Lost Units under Chronos. They'd done it to themselves to save their own lives, and that was what made it so difficult to explain to them just what kind of difference a single word could make.

He wasn't all that good with words, either. At least, not those of the explaining type. Somlum had always been the one to comfort and reassure the others when they had needed it. He himself had always been the one to threaten the people that had been giving his brethren a hard time, even when that had ended up earning him a stay in the clutches of those bastard lab rats.

But then, 'Freezer and the cat had once been Chronos' lab rats themselves. From what he'd heard, though, they hadn't worked with Lost Units. That also fit with the way they spoke to and about him. Neither of them had called him a 'worthless Lost Number' or any of the other shit he'd heard from the other lab rats. Felinos' insults tended more towards the 'insane pervert' side of the spectrum. 'Freezer had never insulted him, but he had told him once that his little feud with Feline Face was incredibly juvenile.

He'd told the guy to go jump, of course.

It was kind of fun to rile ol' Feline Face up, and he had to admit that his fellow Lost Unit could give just as good as he got – at least once he had time to realize that Aptom was well and truly determined to screw with him. He had to admit, Feline Face's whole jump-out-of-the-closet-and-try-to-forcibly-dress-h im idea had been a stroke of demented genius, even if it had ended up with both of them tangled in the shredded remains of someone else's shirt and pants.

It'd been fun, and he'd had precious little of that since resigning himself to being stuck here babysitting Guyver I's moronic friends. They were just lucky that Chronos hadn't managed to take over the world, since they'd really be fucked if that happened. Especially given that Little Miss Shizu was teetering on the edge of insanity without her precious boy-toy Agito to keep her company. She was without question one of the most truly pathetic people that it had ever been his displeasure to meet, and he'd met a lot of truly pathetic people during the time he'd worked for Chronos.

But now wasn't the time to think about Little Miss Shizu and whatever her many and varied psychoses were. Now it was time for him to think of a way to get back at Feline Face for the tomato incident. Looking back over his shoulder at the window, covered though it was, he noticed that it was just a bit lighter than it had been. That meant that morning was coming, and that meant that he was going to have to think of something quickly.

After all, there were few better times to play a prank than at breakfast.

XxXxX

When he had gotten word that Fukamachi had survived the debacle at Relics Point, he had not been surprised – the younger boy was a Guyver, after all. They weren't easy to kill, but the fact that the other had met up with yet another Guyver was a surprise indeed. He'd been fairly certain that there were only three Guyver units in existence. Of course, the fact that he'd been able to deceive them for so long proved that Chronos was not omniscient the way some people liked to believe.

There was always the chance that Chronos had been unaware of the existence of this Guyver, but however this new Guyver had come into being, it was unquestionably a boon to his own plans. Even one more Guyver would be useful to him, and his agents at Chronos had been reporting that there were sightings of yet another Guyver. This one had been allegedly sighted working with the Anti Chronos Task Force.

The Anti Chronos Task Force seemed to be a counterpart to his own Thunderbolts, another para-military group that was working to wipe Chronos from the face of the Earth. They might prove troublesome to his plans later on, but for now the two groups had the same goal. Now he was biding his time, waiting for his moles in Chronos to pass him the information he would need to determine if they would be worth forming a working relationship with.

But for now there was the matter of Ryan Crouger, the newly discovered Guyver from Colorado. The Fifth Guyver, if the reports of a Guyver cooperating with the Anti Chronos Task Force were indeed accurate.

While he knew that he could trust his soldiers to bring this new Guyver to meet with him, he still preferred to handle these kinds of things personally. Besides, Chronos had a large processing facility operating in that area. Destroying the facility would be a way of striking a powerful blow against them while seeing just what this Ryan Crouger boy was truly capable of.

He truly hoped that this newcomer would not be like Fukamachi in so many ways – while the younger Guyver was easy to manipulate because of his various weaknesses, his other weaknesses made him easy prey for Chronos' manipulations. The debacle with Murakami had proved that beyond any doubt.

It was odd to think that Murakami had become one of Chronos' loyal Zoalords, especially given how much the man had hated Chronos and how obvious his hatred of the organization had been. Then again, Murakami had been a prototype Zoalord, so it wasn't out of the realm of possibility for him to be reprocessed, and those Zoalords had been given complete, uncontested access to Murakami's body…

It was a generally troublesome situation, but there wasn't really anything that any of them could do about it now. Best to focus on those things that could be dealt with.

The transport that he had arranged for himself, a reasonably small and nondescript helicopter, made its way across the Pacific Ocean on its way to the appointed landing site. It wouldn't be possible for him to go from Japan to Colorado in one stop – the limits of his transport's fuel tanks notwithstanding, doing so would invite too much notice from Chronos. The large processing facility in the area, and all of the Zoanoids that would inevitably be staffing it, made it more urgent than usual that he remain undetected by them.

His landing point in Maine, aside from being a refueling stop for his helicopter, was also necessary for him to maintain his all-important cover. Fukamachi and this Ryan Crouger would simply have to deal with any Zoanoids that they happened to encounter while he was in transit. He was at least reasonably certain that Fukamachi would be able to handle any of the lesser Zoanoid models that were sent against him.

It was the matter of Murakami's subversion that gave him more cause for concern, as anyone who had known Fukamachi for as long as he had would know how weak he was, how sentimental. With Murakami fighting on the side of their enemies, it was almost a certainty that Fukamachi would falter whenever he was faced with the Zoalord who had been one of his closest companions. Still, Ryan Crouger had never known Murakami as anything but an enemy, and if he was still alive after having faced the Zoalord – a fact that Fukamachi's report gave him no reason to question – then having him to deal with Murakami could prove advantageous.

Still, time would tell what kind of person this Ryan Crouger was, what kind of use he would have to his own plans in the long run.

Stepping out of his helicopter under the cover of his aides and soldiers of the Thunderbolts he was gathering to himself – the few of them that he had managed to recruit at this early stage anyway – Agito kept his eyes and other senses trained for a glimpse of any of Chronos' various agents. The fact that they believed him to be dead gave him at least some latitude, but it would be remiss to rely too much on such a perception.

Perceptions could easily be changed.

XxXxX

Those new Zoanoids – the Guyver-killer Enzyme II, a name that always made Sean wonder what had happened to the original Enzyme – were starting to show up more often. They were now the main type of model that Chronos seemed to be producing. The newly formed Armored Hunter Division was the one more equipped to deal with those kinds of Zoanoids: their armor had been modified with a special kind of resin that helped to defuse the effects of the acid that was that Zoanoid type's most potent weapon.

That was a good thing as far as Sean was concerned, though he was still a little surprised that Chronos had managed to make even a single Zoanoid that was too powerful for him to beat, much less make the kind of thing that was probably fully capable of killing him. And then to mass-produce those creatures… Cori and her fellow researchers were trying to find a way to kill those things more quickly, maybe even make Chronos give up on using them at all.

That would be the best outcome, though what he really hoped for was another Guyver. But that was a stupid kind of thing to hope for, since there had only been two Guyvers on Earth: he and Crane had been the only Guyvers that there were or ever could be.

Leaning back in his bed, he tried to make himself relax. There would probably be another combat drill to break in the newly shipped Beta units. It was important that he be at full strength for that. The Guyver seemed to react to both his state of body and his state of mind; he'd found that it was more responsive if he was rested and thinking clearly when he used it. The weapons were all controlled by his mind, after all, and the Guyver was pretty much an extension of his body.

Closing his eyes and lying back on his pillow, Sean tried to clear his mind again. Jazmine, one of the ACTF's weapons experts and a formidable sharpshooter, had been trying to teach him some meditation techniques, but none of them had quite seemed to take yet. The fact was that he couldn't stop thinking about those Enzyme IIs; they'd already earned the nickname Type Two among the Hunter Division.

He hadn't given much thought to that; it was just something the others – people who actually stood some sort of chance against the things that were made to kill him – called those Zoanoids. Atkins had said that it was a mark of the progress they were making against Chronos, that they would go to all the trouble of creating massive numbers of Zoanoids that were engineered for the sole purpose of killing him.

That thought wasn't as flattering as Atkins probably thought it would be.

After fifteen minutes of not being able to rest no matter how much he wanted to, Sean rolled over on his side and faced the wall – maybe just staring at it until he fell asleep would work. It took ten minutes of doing nothing and still not falling asleep, before Sean finally gave that up for a bad job. There was a tape of relaxing music that Cori had made for him to use in just these kinds of situations, since she knew how important it was for him to get a good, restful sleep.

Putting the tape into the stereo she'd bought for him, Sean closed his eyes and rolled over on his back to sleep. Finally, the music started to lull him the way nothing else had been able to no matter what he had done before. Settling down for what was either going to be a short or a long nap, Sean closed his eyes and drifted off, the music still providing a soothing aural background for him to sleep to.