"Agito, shouldn't we be going now?" Fukamachi asked.
"Of course," he said calmly, even as he berated himself for being distracted. "Crouger," he said, switching back to English. "Recall your Guyver and come with me."
"Sure."
Once they were all clad in the Bio-Booster armor, he noticed that Crouger was staring at his hands.
"Is there something on your mind?" he asked.
"I just haven't had so much time to get used to this – certainly not after just doing it twice."
"What about the battle you participated in against Murakami?" he asked. If Crouger was still uneasy about his abilities, he wouldn't be of much use at all.
"Who?" Crouger's tone was one of confusion. "Oh, you mean that psycho guy who claims he was Sho's friend?"
"Yes."
"He said his name was Imakarum. He seemed pretty pissed when I called him Murakami."
"Indeed?" he asked, interested in any psychological advantage that he could have against the Zoalord who had once been one of their allies.
"Yeah. He really didn't like being called by that name." Crouger paused a moment. "I'd say he was in denial, but I don't really know him well enough to make any of those kinds of judgments."
"If you want to know more about him, Crouger, I'd suggest you ask Fukamachi."
"Seems kind of insensitive," Crouger said, turning to look back over his shoulder at Fukamachi. "You didn't see how he reacted."
"I suppose," he allowed. "We're straying from our original intent, though." +Fukamachi, we're going to leave now.+
+All right, Agito,+ the younger boy said, walking up to stand beside Crouger.
"We moving out now?" Crouger asked, cocking his head slightly to the left.
"Yes." +I trust you already know how to use your Gravity Controller, Crouger. We will be conducting an aerial assault on this facility; they have very few Arial-type Zoanoids to oppose us, so things will be simpler this way.+
+So I guess you're the leader of this little resistance?+ Crouger's mental tone sounded rather wry.
+Were you expecting Fukamachi to have that responsibility?+
+Honestly? No – the guy's not really cut out for something like that. He's not really that good in a fight, even. I mean, he's clearly got some experience with it all, but he's just not all that aware of what you have to do in situations like these. He gets distracted way too easily.+
+You've been thinking about this,+ he said, pleased to note that Crouger was not as oblivious as Fukamachi.
While the younger Guyver did have his uses, his naiveté and stupidity in combat were aggravating in the extreme to deal with on a regular basis. Crouger seemed enough like himself in temperament that he would not mind working with the boy outside of a combat situation. Still, it remained to be seen if the youngest of their group could be pragmatic enough to fully accept what was to come – what they were going to have to do to defeat Chronos entirely.
Perhaps the gray Guyver could even be useful to the long-term plans that he was slowly putting into place, but all of that remained to be seen. For now, he had to focus on the destruction of the Chronos base in this city. It was fairly minor: no direct oversight from the Zoalord commander of this Section, and likely very few combat capable Zoanoids. The base would be easy pickings for the three of them.
+Fukamachi, you enter through the right side of the building; the schematics I had access to indicate that the staff quarters and scientific divisions are in that area of the building. Crouger and I will deal with the Zoanoids.+
+All right, Agito.+
As Fukamachi subtly reoriented his flightpath, he turned his attention to Crouger. +Stay close to me; we're going to be encountering a fair amount of resistance on our way in.+
+I'll keep that in mind.+
+Good.+
Now it was time to see just how useful Crouger was going to be to his future plans.
XxXxXxX
Agito seemed like a fairly decent guy from what he had seen so far – a bit more… well, not really macho, but tough. He seemed like he'd been around the block at least once; of course, he also seemed like there was a lot he didn't want people to know about him, but that was true about a lot of tough guys. Maybe he had a tragic past or something.
Once they'd reached the roof of the Brant building – or Chronos; whichever it was called – he turned back to Agito. Before he could make even the lamest attempt at conversation, though, they were crashing in through the ceiling. It was a suitably dramatic entrance, but if the Zoanoids here were as tough as the ones he'd faced out in the street, there were going to be some seriously unpleasant consequences for using it.
Especially if Johnny the Homicidal Maniac – a.k.a. Imakarum – was around to see them do it.
Everyone in the building had to know they were coming in, especially with the alarms that he could hear blaring over the sounds of falling plaster, wood, and assorted building materials. Even the sounds of running feet didn't manage to cover the wailing noise, but it did let him know that they were going to be dealing with some serious opposition soon. Sho'd already headed off to do whatever Agito had told him to, so that just left him and the man himself.
"It's Guyver Three!" one of the lizard-looking Zoanoids shouted. "And there's another one with him!"
+Are they always this dramatic?+
+I don't know what you mean, Crouger.+
+They're practically screaming in our faces, and you're telling me you don't know what I'm talking about?+ he asked, only slightly more weirded-out by the calm attitude of the guy he was fighting beside than the screaming Zoanoids.
He'd seen them before, after all.
+All Zoanoids fear the Guyvers,+ he said, sounding like he thought anyone should know that.
+I guess that makes sense,+ he said, more to himself. Considering what we can do to the things, I don't really blame 'em.
The sudden feeling of big, heavy things coming towards them – he could feel their footfalls through the floor, but the weirdest part was that he could see them even though he knew his head was pointed in the wrong direction – made him turn around, just as a large group of really buff-looking Zoanoids stomped into the room.
+Heads up; we're about to have some more company.+
+Hyper Zoanoids,+ Agito said, sounding only mildly annoyed, and this in spite of the fact that these new bad guys were huge; one of them looked like a humanoid porcupine on some seriously badass steroids. +Damn.+
+You mind explaining what those are?+
+There's no time to go into detail now, Crouger,+ he said, and Ryan only just managed to stop himself from telling the guy just how obvious that little piece of information was. +Suffice it to say that these are more powerful than any Standard Zoanoid.+
+You know, that was all you really had to say,+ he said.
Agito didn't say anything in return, but Ryan figured he'd gotten his point across. The porcupine-from-hell-on-steroids looked from him to Agito and back again, then evidently decided he wanted to pick on the new guy. The next thing Ryan knew, he'd been slammed through what felt like at least a couple walls and bashed right through one of the floors.
+Crouger! Are you well?+
+Me? Hell, I'm just fine,+ he shot back, rolling out of the way as the steroidal porcupine tried to stomp and impale him. +I'm having the time of my fucking life here. There's this giant hell-beast that wants to use me as his own personal punching bag, I pretty much gave up my entire life to fight in some crazy-ass war, and now I'm lost in the Brant building with things that look like they eat steel plating for breakfast. Things just couldn't be better!+
There was no answer from his taciturn counterpart, but then he'd really just been venting. It wasn't like he could expect one for something like that, especially from this guy, since he seemed pretty close-mouthed.
About then, he noticed the fact that he was surrounded by more of those scientist-types. Most of them were staring at him, looking like they weren't quite sure whether they wanted to start screaming, or if they were going to try and beg for their lives, though if these guys were anything like the jerks he'd run into before, he'd take serious pleasure in scaring them out of their tiny little minds. Whether he'd kill them or not was still up in the air. He didn't have so many problems with killing Zoanoids – even if they had been human at one point, they weren't now, and they were the ones trying to kill him – but these guys weren't trying to do anything to him. Even if some of them were jerks, there were rules that had to be followed even in combat.
But there would be time for second-guessing and things like that later. Right now he had a Hyper Zoanoid in front of him that needed beating down, if only to keep the thing from beating down on him.
That battle was mercifully short – the guy seemed to be all about brute power, so it was pretty simple to get out of his range and get behind him. Cracking his head open with the Pressure Cannon was easy enough after that.
"Wh-what are you doing here, Guyver? Why have you come?" asked one of the scientists, a guy with brown eyes and slightly graying hair, obviously trying to sound brave.
"Me?" he asked, pointing a thumb at himself, all the while laughing mentally – ever since he'd heard a line a few years back on Movie Night, he'd been looking for a good chance to use it. He'd had a few, but there were few better places to use it than here. "I'm here to kick ass and chew bubblegum. And I didn't bring any bubblegum."
Okay, so he'd paraphrased a bit, but he could see from the looks on their faces that he'd gotten his point across.