Vega was hungry.
He was often hungry. He was a growing young boy and liked to eat. For most of his life, he'd had an absolute glut of whatever he wanted available.
For the past few months that had changed, with Backdraft's broken and pressured supply lines culminating in utterly awful food at the Mackaray Base. Yet for the past few weeks, he'd been dealing with much more hunger than he'd ever wanted to. An abnormal highlight of an irritating reality that'd cropped up between him and that other guy.
For all he cared, Backdraft could've let Brad starve. Vega knew that they hadn't been squandering food on anyone brought in for the Fury, because it was seen as a waste. Vega had only begrudgingly brought something to Brad to see if he could make his own hunger pangs stop. The problem had been: it worked.
Vega grumbled to himself. He still felt jealous of and viscerally angry with Brad for drawing One's attention for even a second. He really hoped that was all over with.
The child rolled over and tried to get comfortable in his sleeping bag. Like some kind of polite blonde packrat, Bit had been dragging an increasing number of small comforts into the hangar for the two of them. Vega didn't think the sleeping bag was nearly soft enough, but it was much better than the floor.
The profound gnaw of hunger wouldn't permit comfort.
Vega sat up and glanced at One, who was awake and seemed similarly uncomfortable. He quickly realized the Organoid was the source of these feelings.
"Hey. You okay?"
One's voice was subdued. ~I am very hungry.~
The child blinked. It occurred to him in that moment that he had no idea what - or how - an Organoid even ate.
He received the deep impression that Organoids were so used to being sustained - by their Zoids? - that they really didn't think much about their next meal, nevermind ever worry about becoming hungry.
Vega yet again glanced in the direction he knew the stone Berserk Fury lay.
Oh.
"Just… go into one of the Zoids in here, then."
Vega noticed with equal parts curiosity and confusion that One was drooling, a viscous substance starting to bead from between its teeth.
~I do not think I can. I am too hungry. I do not think I can symbiose. I want to eat.~
"Symbiose?" Vega carefully sounded the new word out, then stared, puzzled. He peered around the hangar. "How do you eat a Zoid?"
One looked at the child and relayed joyously brutal mental imagery, its tongue reflexively flashing out to lick its chops.
The child's brows rose. "Oh. Oh."
Vega realized that wouldn't quite fly, and more importantly - there wouldn't be any easy way to get away with it. He studied each Zoid in the hangar in turn, gauging their worth. Given the situation, the mental math didn't come out in his or One's favor.
He lowered his voice. "Can't you eat something else?"
~I... do not know.~
Vega stood and walked to One, beckoning the Organoid down to his level. The creature obliged, and Vega opened his mouth, an unspoken request that One do the same.
In the handful of days since Vega had found he had an Organoid, he'd not really had a chance or reason to closely inspect the creature. It was simple known fact that Zoids couldn't ingest anything with their mouths, but the fleeting imagery One had just shared suggested otherwise for Organoids.
Every part of One's mouth was as pitch black as any other part of the beast. It had sharp, perfectly-spaced upper and lower rows of slick onyx teeth. Its dark tongue was segmented and distinctly metallic-looking; the back of its mouth seemed closed off by several layers of a mechanism.
In a move that no other living creature would dare consider, Vega casually reached into One's mouth and pressed the back of it. Though the mechanism looked solid while still, at the child's touch it twitched and parted slightly, allowing a glimpse of what was best described as a serrated throat.
Vega observed this with another raise of both brows. He fearlessly patted the beast's tongue and nodded. Difference from Zoids noted.
"Well let's go see what you can have, huh?"
"It's good. Just try a bite." Vega's voice.
Leon slowed in the corridor as he drew closer to the main kitchen. It was strange to hear someone so young in the base again. But this early? His hope for a silent, meditative cup of early-morning coffee was quick to evaporate.
Leon peeked around the corner to see Vega and his Organoid standing at the open double-door of the large pantry. The man fought a full-body shudder upon seeing the gloss-black beast, but there was something disarming - something strangely vulnerable - in watching the child gently try to feed the Organoid what looked to be a peanut-butter sandwich.
Try being the key word. One kept arching its neck back and making guttural sounds, clearly uninterested. It instead turned to nose through the shelves, upsetting boxes and tins with messy clatters. Leon could hear the creature's snuffling, and it started to bite and scrape on something further back on the shelf.
Vega sighed and started eating the sandwich himself, watching his partner. Only a few moments passed before he realized Leon was there. He cut his eyes warily at the man.
One tugged an industrial-sized roll of kitchen foil out of its box with interest. The Organoid mouthed it briefly, lining the roll up with its snout - before effortlessly crunching it flatter and swallowing it whole.
Given the density, weight, and size of the roll, it was a somewhat alarming feat.
Leon blinked, but had finally worked up the nerve to forge into the room. It was then he noticed the full extent of the mess the two had made. Countless packages - some neatly opened, some crudely bitten. The majority of the pantry's contents, open and on the floor.
"This is months worth of food." Leon said through his teeth, forcing calm.
Vega shrugged, and said through a mouthful, "You can get more."
Leon's nostrils flared, but his voice stayed level. "Do you know how much months worth of food costs?"
Vega paused to consider. Then shrugged again, twitching a smirk at Leon's thinly-veiled agitation. "You guys have money."
"That's not the point." Leon pointed sternly towards the hangar. "Get that thing out of the kitchen."
One was nosing through the mess on the ground, but paused to fix its gaze on the man. It growled, the deep sound prompting Leon a step backward.
"Make him," Vega sneered, grabbing an armful of packaged cookies. He ripped a box open and offered one to the Organoid, who rejected it after a sniff. Vega started eating the cookies instead.
Leon scowled and raised his voice. "Both of you. Out of the kitchen."
"Or what?"
One picked up a tin of coffee. And ate said tin, its spilling grounds and all.
"Or everyone in this base is going to have your head."
He wanted to look at the clouds without worry.
He couldn't.
The soft morning breeze tousled the blonde's hair. In the distance - and just beginning to shimmer with the distortions of desert heat - the stone Berserk Fury lay. The Zoid's final throes had twisted it towards the base, every angle of its desperation preserved.
Bit had been in many battles since joining the Blitz Team, but never in one where lives were on the line. It was easy to forget that war and blind destruction had once been a common part of Zoids' repertoires. There just weren't massive conflicts anymore.
~It is a blessing to be free of war.~
"Not doubting that, bud." Bit picked up a chunk of debris from the ruined floor, and threw it hard into the distance. "I just… never really thought about it before."
~Also a privilege.~
Bit looked skyward again. He considered the Mega-Satellite he knew now orbited the planet, supposedly taking over the roles of the many smaller Judge Satellites that Backdraft had destroyed. He only knew this because the ZBC had debriefed him and the rest of the Blitz Team after the Royal Cup. Given their inadvertent role in the mess and its subsequent cleanup, they'd been given an overview of what went on.
It didn't add to or take away from the Royal Cup victory, and everyone had been so excited… the other stuff didn't matter.
Did it?
Bit blinked, realizing Vega had appeared next to him. The boy was also looking skyward, and glanced at Bit curiously.
"Oh." Bit said. "Heya."
"Kinda sucks, huh." Vega clambered atop a pile of broken wall chunks, where he folded into a thoughtful crouch. "About the Satellites."
Bit questioned both his sanity and whether he'd been thinking out loud or not. He just nodded.
"Pretty weird they think one Satellite can cover all those different orbits, you know? Even we didn't try that. It's dumb."
'We.' Backdraft. "You're not with the Backdraft anymore, Vega."
"I am Backdraft," Vega declared. He picked up a piece of rebar and pointed it like a wand, descending quickly into a messy swordfight with nothing. "I'm the King."
Bit rolled his eyes. "Hey, King. Get down from there. None of this is stable."
As if to prove Bit's point, the concrete Vega stood on trembled and slid. Vega managed an effortless escape from the tumbling chunk, skipping lithely between small ledges to the ground beside Bit again. He poked the blonde with the rebar.
"We should fight. Do you know how to fence?"
"Do YOU know how to fence?"
"Of course. Don't they teach it in school?"
Bit squinted severely. Vega was either serious, or an amazing bluffer. "Uh. I didn't-" The blonde quickly reconsidered kneecapping himself in front of a child. "-no."
Vega squinted back, dark eyes flicking in study. "You didn't go to school?"
"I went!"
"Where'd you train to battle?"
Bit's lower eyelid twitched.
Later in the afternoon.
Leon had been standing near the hangar's slightly-open door for several minutes, watching.
Brad was eating a sandwich and doing idle maintenance on the Shadow Fox, seemingly lost in busywork. He mumbled to the Zoid at random, and it chittered soft responses. Leon was certain the Fox had noticed him - it'd glanced - but it clearly hadn't alerted its pilot.
Leon didn't know why he hesitated.
Brad had refused to talk on the videphone or phone. Brad hadn't called, come to the base, anything. Naomi had strongly suggested that Leon come over to talk, trying to bridge the obvious and painful-seeming gap. She'd finally convinced him to come to the city.
But the remaining ten feet between Leon and the other man seemed strangely insurmountable. He wasn't sure what he was afraid of.
...who was he kidding.
He looked down at his hands and forearms. Bandaged, more neatly now. The wraps really didn't look that out of place. If you didn't know Leon and how well he could hide a problem or pain, you'd be none the wiser.
He looked up again.
Berserk Fury or no, Brad had almost killed him twice and not a single thing had been said about it. Leon wasn't sure if he was supposed to feel angry, hurt, or both by that. Perhaps he was just supposed to acknowledge the more-likely reality that Brad was unable to deal with that fact and was indeed avoiding him.
But they'd been friends - good friends - for ages. He expected something.
His brow knit. "Brad."
Brad startled - odd enough in itself - and looked at Leon. A split-second of recognition; the man's blue eyes dropped to the ground, his throat working anxiously.
Leon's heart sank. Avoidance. Brad spent most of his time avoiding people like a harried animal anyways - duress made him vanish.
Brad took a long moment to compose himself, then hesitantly approached.
Leon just stared back, somber.
"Hey." Brad said.
Leon gave him a nod. "How's things."
"Oh... you know."
"Not sure I do."
Silence.
Brad set a hand on Leon's shoulder, and Leon carefully reciprocated.
The long-haired man was far bonier than Leon had ever remembered him, prompting the unpleasant realization that Leon had no actual idea what Brad had been through while missing.
The keen edge of Leon's self-centered indignation dulled. It found itself replaced with a mild embarrassment. He'd been wanting some kind of reassurance or acknowledgment from Brad, but had completely ignored that Brad very likely wanted the same - and didn't feel like he had a right to ask for it.
The two men stayed silent, though Brad was clearly working up to speaking.
"...I'm so sorry, man." He said at length, then pushed back enough to look at Leon's bandaged arms. "It's not too bad, is it?"
A mild shrug. "Probably scar a little bit. I'll be fine."
"Fuck." Brad said, with both relief and upset. "I'm sorry."
Leon didn't doubt that. It'd been fairly clear even during the battle that Brad wasn't acting right - nor, as was later discerned, of his own free will.
Which honestly made things worse, because it introduced Leon to the possibility that a Zoid could simply decide to do whatever it wanted and force its pilot into compliance. Not only did that not fit into Leon's worldview, he wasn't quite ready to accommodate it either. The ramifications were intensely uncomfortable to contemplate.
Almost as uncomfortable as each unbidden recollection of the Berserk Fury's fangs grating across his Blade Liger's shrieking cockpit glass. Leon could not think of a single time that he'd been more terrified in his life.
But he wasn't the only one with undesirable recollections of events.
Brad spoke tensely as he glared at the floor. "I really- if any of you had been killed. I don't know what I'd do. Probably put a bullet in my head. I don't - I can't deal with this right now, Leon."
The man turned and promptly walked back into the hangar, shaking his head and pulling out a pack of cigarettes.
There wasn't any easy way to express it: the clear memory of trying to - of wanting to - destroy his closest friends hurt him deeply. So intense had been the bond between him and the Fury, the distinctions between them were vague and hard to recall. He'd always believed he wasn't capable of such awful things, but now he wasn't sure.
His continued cravings for the Fury didn't help matters.
Leon watched him, unaware of his turmoil.
"Well. Everyone's okay."
Brad stayed quiet, fumbling with a cigarette for far too long. He finally lit it, shaking his head and half-coughing a laugh. "Man. Don't lie to me."
Leon's lips thinned. Brad always was the realist. This often made him right. "Mostly okay."
"Maybe 'okay' like your dad. At best."
Leon tried to smile, tried to lighten his voice, but failed on both counts. Steve was even less okay than usual, not that Brad knew. "Well… I am upset that you've been avoiding me."
"Just didn't know what to say. Still don't." The older man gave a weak shrug. "Sorry doesn't cut it."
It didn't. It really didn't. But Leon knew it wasn't fair to expect something else when not even he knew what that 'something else' was. It wasn't as if Brad had asked to be put in that position either.
"Were you scared?" Leon asked simply.
"No."
Not really the answer Leon expected. Silence fell and anxiety rose.
When Brad glanced up and continued talking, his voice became grim.
"I'm scared now. Because I want it all back."
"I'm sorry." Sara said, quietly. Out of nowhere.
The media room's dull afternoon drone induced a comforting stupor. Steve drowsily glanced from the TV, not really expecting anyone to speak. He also wasn't sure he'd heard her correctly.
"Hmm?"
Sara was silent for a moment, staring into her glass. Alcohol loosened her tongue, lowered her guard, and brought on a lot of dark thoughts that she'd been trying to keep at bay. It also emboldened her into proceeding.
"We could've completely destroyed your family. But you didn't even hesitate to help mine." She looked at him, squarely. "So. I'm sorry."
Steve's throat worked a bit.
Admittedly, those kinds of thoughts had been keeping him up at night. A lot of thoughts had been, actually. But no, he wasn't one to sit idly by with anyone in actual distress. Even someone who may well have been an enemy.
He sipped from his glass. "I didn't want you to lose your boy."
Steve didn't know how she'd made the damnable set of decisions that led to the terrifying rise of the Berserk Fury. Steve didn't know what'd actually happened during the Royal Cup. Steve didn't know how Backdraft operated, what her plans had been, how long and hard she'd worked to claw her way into authority... only to end up almost inadvertently sacrificing her only son on the altar of ambition.
Steve didn't know anything. Nor did he know how much it paradoxically hurt her to have someone actually give a damn.
Sara looked away, silent.
Steve watched her for a few moments.
"But, I mean. Everything turned out okay. It's okay."
It wasn't okay. Sara wanted to just return to Backdraft and pretend everything would go back to what order she'd managed to establish. But with Alteil gone and the Organization presumably in even deeper chaos, there was a void of command - one that not even she was sure she could fill.
She'd sunk so much sweat and blood into the Organization, believed in it... she wanted the future she'd both pictured for Vega and built for herself. She needed it.
Yet here she was… near-powerless, trapped by necessity, and left painfully wary of the very Organization she'd done so much for.
There weren't yet any clear paths forward, all either blocked by happenstance or simply too dangerous. A pack animal alone could do little. A pack animal and her offspring - fearless and fierce as that offspring may be - were more, not less vulnerable.
She needed allies.
Very, very tentatively, Steve reached and placed a hand on her knee. His touch was light, hesitant. Almost afraid.
Sara glanced quietly at his hand, then to his face.
"I'm not going to pretend to know what your life is like." Steve said, voice low. "I don't know if it helps, but you and Vega are safe here. And you can stay as long as you need to."
She could glean a lot from people. She was used to deception, used to polite and empty smiles. Used to disingenuous nodding, used to meaningless handshakes.
She wasn't used to genuine statements and deep, stale sadness. Sara studied Steve for several seconds.
"I don't deserve your kindness, Toros."
"Maybe not. But maybe you do." Steve downed the rest of his drink all at once, and set the glass down hard on the table. "Regardless. I don't leave folks for dead. Even Backdraft."
Sara lightly shook her head. "They wouldn't return the courtesy."
"Oh, I know."
The intense and awkward silence hung for far too long.
He shouldn't have said that.
Brad closed his eyes. Things had changed a lot in the past year or so, and Leon's absence from the team had all-too-quickly made him a stranger again.
"Forget I said anything."
"...want what back?"
"Just forget it."
Brad drifted further into the hangar, disappearing behind one of the Fox's legs. The Zoid softly whined, glancing between the two men.
Leon's shoulders fell, visible defeat. But his eyes flicked with thought.
Oh.
"Brad. Was it like the Liger Zero?"
Silence.
Then: "Yes."
"But it didn't throw you out."
"No."
Leon suddenly understood. Well, he didn't understand. But he remembered Brad's reaction after first trying to pilot the Liger Zero. That wild-eyed mixture of exhilaration and horror, a reckless determination that ultimately culminated in a faceful of sand. While he had no direct insight into Brad's experience, witnessing it firsthand spoke of its intensity.
"I just want to know what happened."
"And I don't know what to tell you." Brad leaned back into view. "It's gotta be the Organoids."
Leon nodded. He didn't know a damn thing about the beasts, but Bit and Vega's recent behavior painted a strange and passionate picture.
"One of them showed up here too." Brad said quietly, and motioned with his cigarette at the nearby elevated walkway. There, in the shadows, crouched a rough-looking red Organoid with emerald-green optics. Without Brad's indication, Leon had somehow completely failed to notice the creature. "But he's different."
Ambient dipped its head to study Leon. The young Toros took a reflexive step back, perceiving the Organoid's deep disgust.
~Y'need better friends. This one stinks.~ The creature growled - to Brad. But Leon took another step back at the unexpected sentence rolling through his head.
"The fuck!?" Leon yelped in surprise, looking at Brad for an explanation.
"Oh. You can hear him? Naomi says she can't."
"It just - talks? In your head?"
"Yeah." Brad was completely unfazed. "I mean. The Liger Zero did too."
"Not to me it didn't. And you didn't - I thought -" He finally registered Ambient's disgust and just stared, at a loss.
"Oh. Yeah. He doesn't like Blade Ligers." Brad said with a shrug.
"Well too bad." Leon's brows furrowed as he shot the Organoid a glare. "My Liger's an amazing Zoid."
~Goes with'oot sayin' that their pilots have bad taste.~ Ambient quipped.
Leon grated a sigh, but found himself more fascinated than anything. These things weren't even supposed to be real, nevermind holding conversations. He did recognize Ambient as the Organoid that'd first shown up at the Blitz Base… but didn't bring it up. Instead he shook his head and gazed at the ground for a few seconds, a soft mental reset before looking back to Brad.
"What are you and Naomi going to tell the ZBC?"
Deep drag. Deep exhale. Blue eyes slid wordlessly to the younger man, and Brad just shook his head.
"Yeah… that's what we decided at base, too."
~Donn'ae speak a word t'the ZBGF either. Ruthless fuckin' lot.~
Leon folded his arms and eyed the Organoid, unamused. "What would you know about the ZBGF?"
Ambient just laughed.