Fried'rich van Purg'stall, pacing inside his stronghold at Chronos Japan Section's Cloud Tower, wondered about the decision he had made. While he had often supported Lord Hamilcal in his scientific endeavors, the fact remained that the Second Zoalord had made his desire to dissect the Fifth Guyver quite clear. He did not seem to be at all concerned whether the boy was alive during the process or not.
While it was a fact that Guyvers were dangerous by their very nature, there was a chance that if this boy was treated fairly he could perhaps be persuaded to aid rather than oppose Chronos' ideals. This endeavor certainly would not make the boy any more inclined to think kindly of the organization in general or the Zoalords in particular. Still, if the boy were killed, any negative feelings he harbored against Chronos and the Zoalords would be of no consequence.
Fried'rich was not certain whether or not he preferred the boy dead or a loyal servant of the Chronos syndicate. Ryan Crouger, was unorthodox and almost impossible to predict. It made him a very formidable opponent, true, however the discipline required by the members of Chronos was lost on him. The boy actively rejected that kind of discipline. He would not have been ideally suited for any kind of high position in Chronos with his present attitude, but there were ways of educating him so he would at least show the proper respect to his superiors. At times, Fried'rich thought that that was what Lord Hamilcal had been intending to do with the Fifth Guyver before the boy had escaped and joined the other two Guyvers in their battle.
He still wondered if there was some way the Fifth Guyver could be persuaded to support Chronos' glorious cause. There was one clear way, but that would require Fried'rich to betray the very organization he supported wholeheartedly. The Fifth Zoalord was not going to take such drastic measures merely for the sake of a Guyver, so he would simply have to accept the fact that the boy was not going to be alive for much longer.
XxXxX
As he started making a primary incision, ignoring the inane banter and the boy's frequent and mildly annoying insults, Dr. Balkus scanned the minds of the Zoanoids around him. He had thought for a moment that he had detected another mental presence aside from those in the room with him. However, nothing presented itself to his finely developed mental senses, so he dismissed the feeling.
There was a Zoanoid within this boy, hidden as the mind of that particular Elegen-type was, so that had probably been what he had briefly sensed. Dr. Balkus did not know why this Hyper Zoanoid chose to aid the Fifth Guyver, but that was not what he was particularly interested in at the moment. All he wanted to know during this examination was just how the boy managed to channel that power.
Human bodies were not made to be able to handle the amount of electricity that Elegen-type Hyper Zoanoids could generate, so he was looking for the secret to Ryan Crouger's new power in the most direct way possible. That the boy would most likely die during the dissection was not something that Dr. Balkus could find it in himself to care about. He was the Fifth Guyver, allied to those annoying Guyvers I and III.
There might have been a time when Crouger could have been an asset to Chronos' cause, but now all that the boy would be useful for was to satisfy his own curiosity about how a mere unprocessed human could have come to possess the power of an Elegen-type Hyper Zoanoid.
Continuing with the procedure, even as the Fifth Guyver made his pitiful attempts to hinder the progress of that operation, Dr. Balkus peeled back the layers of skin covering the boy's ribcage and pinned them back. He was mildly impressed by the long and elaborate hypothetical deathtrap that the boy had devised utilizing a construction crane, a wrecking ball, two sewing needles, and Dr. Balkus' own left shoe. The boy could be rather creative at times, he had to admit.
The sense of another Zoanoid entering the room did not concern him, nor did the fact that the Fifth Guyver was currently threatening to beat him to death with a pair of slippers. Such things were not even remotely possible, so there was no need to pay such close attention to the boy. The Fifth Guyver, as resourceful as he could be at times, was completely helpless. There was not a chance that he would be able to escape this facility a second time.
The boy himself most likely knew this, which made his decision to start singing all the more surprising. Dr. Balkus had never heard the song that the boy was singing before—it seemed to be merely about an ever-decreasing number of beer bottles. Not only was the song itself almost painfully repetitive, but the way the boy chose to sing it was annoying as well.
The Fifth Guyver's voice was annoyingly loud, and he constantly switched tone and pitch. He also sang off-key on a near-constant basis. Dr. Balkus knew that this could not have been his true singing voice, this irritating nasal whine. It sounded much too calculated, too forced to be anything more than another attempt by the boy to distract Dr. Balkus by getting under his skin. He was not going to give the annoying Guyver the satisfaction of that.
As he continued to work, the Fifth Guyver continued to work his way down from one thousand, and Dr. Balkus found himself gritting his teeth even in spite of his oath to himself not to be affected by what the boy was doing. The fact that he had started to sing even louder, combined with the fact that the boy was counting down from such a large starting number, was aggravating in the extreme.
Trying to take his mind off of the Fifth Guyver's efforts to irritate him, Dr. Balkus focused on his work to the exclusion of all else.
He could therefore, perhaps, be forgiven for not noticing the way the boy's hands were starting to crackle with electricity. Or for failing to detect the mind of the Hyper Zoanoid that was starting to make itself more conspicuous by lending the Fifth Guyver the power to actually discharge those bolts of energy from his fingertips no matter what form he was in.
XxXxX
As he continued to sing, Ryan noticed that Dr. Asshole wasn't really paying attention to him at all, just to the fact that he was currently carving on Ryan like he was some kind of Thanksgiving turkey. Ryan hated him; he was a bastard.
)Hey, Snake-head, how are you making out with those restraints?(
)I should have them off before Dr. Psycho knows what's going on, provided you keep him from actually noticing what the hell is going on with us.(
)That shouldn't be to hard—at least not for a while yet,( Ryan sent. )Still, try to make it fairly quick, I'm starting to get a little hoarse here.(
)I'll try to wrap it up as quickly as I can, kid.(
Ryan, feeling his fingertips starting to char, focused on keeping Dr. Asshole from finding out that he was in the process of being had. The entire ruse would be worth less than nothing if that old bastard found out what he and Elegen were planning.
)That's it, kid. The shackles are open; do your thing!(
)Not a problem!(
Yanking his wrists out of the now-open restraints, Ryan jammed his fingers into Dr. Bastard's eyes.
)Bug-zap him!(
)Gladly!(
Ryan grinned almost ferally as he felt the crackle of electricity passing through his fingers on the way to Dr. Shithead's eyes. When the old bastard stumbled back, blinded and hopefully in a fair amount of pain, Ryan took a deep breath and called his Guyver before Dr. Butt-kiss or the startled Zoanoids could do a damn thing about it. Landing on the floor, on a space clear of the shattered fragments of the table he'd just been strapped to, Ryan grinned.
"Well, since your hospitality leaves a lot to be desired, and you personally are a sadistic, sociopathic asshole, I think I'm going to take my leave now."
Blasting the nearest Zoanoid into paste with his Pressure Cannon, Ryan ran for the now-unblocked door. As the other Zoanoids started to close in around him, Ryan extended his Vibration Blades and cut them down like ripe corn. With almost nothing in his way now that he wanted to make his escape, Ryan jammed his hands in between the threshold and the door and forced them apart.
Ducking out of the room, under a hail of fire from the Vamores that had come there with Dr. Asshole, Ryan laughed.
)So, now that we've managed to piss off Lord I'm-a-huge-fucking-sadist and get past his small army of Zoanoids, what're you going to have us do next, kid?(
)I'm going to have us fight our way through the large army of Zoanoids that Lord Psycho is probably calling down on us even as we speak, Snake-head.(
)Oh. That's a good idea, then.(
Chuckling, Ryan kept running.
Even as fast as he was moving, Ryan could still see the ranks of Zoanoids gathering around the edges of the hallway where he was running: Zoanoids that were being called by Lord Nutjob for the express purpose of beating him into the ground—not that he was going to go along with them on that. He was going to bust just as many Zoanoid skulls as it took him to get the hell out of Dodge, and then he was going to go back "home" and eat.