Fan Fiction / Zoids Fan Fiction ❯ a tale of (now) three warriors ❯ decimus redux ( Chapter 6 )

Disclaimer: I own none of the Zoids in this fanfic, but most of the characters are mine. I'll be broke from when the people behind Metroid come after me, so there's no point trying to sue me. That's all.

Thick sheets of rain dropped from the black sky, slapping loudly against the window of the Blade Team base. Occasional forks of lightning speared through the gloom, throwing the landscape into harsh white light for a moment at a time. Following closely behind was the low rolling of thunder.

"One heck of a storm," commented Trey from the window.

"It'll be one heck of a flood if this keeps going," replied Ruby, lying on her stomach on a couch, bare legs bent at the knees and waving in the air, reading a thick novel. It had been two weeks since she had become a member of the team.

"Tell me about it," Robert said from where he lounged, not even trying to avert his gaze form Ruby's legs.

The lights flickered, and after a second of darkness light returned. Trey looked sidelong at the overhead lights, shaking his head. Then there was a particularly large bolt of lightning, and with an audible fizz, the base was dropped into darkness.

"Shit," Trey grumbled, taking the cigarette lighter from his pocket and igniting it.

"That was rather anticlimactic," muttered Ruby, referring to her place in her book, "Robert, be a dear and reset the power board, will you?" she called to her team mate, looking at him through the dim and flickering light of Trey's lighter.

"Well, since you're not wearing pants, I'll do it. Wouldn't want you catching anything." Robert got up from his chair, stumbling around and finding a torch and raincoat.

Getting outside was easier with the torch beam lighting the way, but reaching the power board without getting totally and utterly soaked through was a different matter. Lifting up the metal cover, Robert reached in quickly and went to flip back the main switch when he realised that his hands were wet. Too late he pulled back, and there was a painful jolt as the power returned and travelled up his arm. Cursing loudly, Robert let the cover drop with a clang, turning to return to the base when his eyes happened upon something in the distance.

Like twinkling lights in a night sky, Robert could make out a series of rapid weapon discharges, with the occasional explosion indicating what his instincts told him was a zoid being hit. Robert took one look at the hangar before making his decision and running towards it.

"What's taking Robert so long?" Ruby asked inside the base.

Her answer came as the Blade Liger rumbled past, gaining speed and sprinting towards the source of the fighting.

Trey ran over to the short-wave radio and snatched up the handset, flicking the channel to Robert's frequency.

"Where the hell are you going?" Trey asked. Ruby joined him soon, her pants having magically appeared.

"I can see fighting in the distance. Something tells me it's not a sanctioned battle," replied the Liger pilot over the combined cacophony of static, rain, and his zoid, "Join me if you will."

With that, Robert cut communication, and Trey replaced the handset in its cradle, turning to leave the room and grabbing his coat.

"Wait a sec." Ruby fiddled with the last buckle on her other boot, grabbed her own coat and hurried to join Trey, who hadn't waited.

Soon enough, the Zaber Fang and Gunsniper were making their way towards the source of fighting. In the gloom, they could just make out the shape of the Blade Liger.

"So nice of you to join me," Robert's voice crackled over the radio.

"I had to make sure you didn't get your self into any crap. You have a bad tendency to do that when you run off after a fight," Trey replied.

"Can you make out anything else yet?" Ruby asked, zooming in her own reticule.

"Not much, but I can definitely see zoids," came Robert's reply.

"I see them," said Trey calmly, his enhanced targeting equipment cutting through the curtain of rain, "I see three zoids all up, Iron Kongs all of them. One of them's down; I can see a gatling cannon on it. The two still standing are still going…one's got a pulse rifle on its shoulder, the other has…Robert, you won't believe this. The other Iron Kong left standing has a gatling cannon on one shoulder, and a pulse rifle on the other. All three are PK types."

"The Decimus Kong team?" Robert asked incredulously.

"That's what I've been thinking," Trey replied.

"I've heard that team broke up after their leader got diagnosed with serious epilepsy. It would explain why they're fighting each other," Ruby said as her zoomed in reticule finally got visual contact with the fighting zoids, "Whoa!"

Ruby stamped her zoid to a hard stop as the former leader of the Decimus Kong team raised its wrist mounted beam gun and fired at her. He began firing on the other two members of the Blade Team as well, forcing them back.

"No interruptions!!! This is between him and me!" he screamed.

"Why are you fighting your own team mates, Conan?" Robert yelled, his hand hovering near the controls for his gatling cannon.

"You have to help me stop him! He's totally out of control…AH!!" The other pilot cried out desperately to the Blade Team, before Conan turned his pulse rifle on what was left of the pilot's Iron Kong.

"Shut up! You're all against me! I'll…I'll fight you all!"

With a bestial roar, Conan rushed at Robert - who was the closest target - blazing both of his shoulder mounted guns at once. Ruby engaged her blades and surged forward to help Robert, while Trey's zoid turned to aim its rifle. Robert returned fire, pounding the rampaging Iron Kong with gatling cannon shells, leaping aside when the big zoid got within swiping reach.

Ruby cried out in shock as her leap was cut short, and her Zaber Fang fell from the air, shot down by a hail of bolts from the pulse rifle. There was a boom, and the Iron Kong rocked backwards, a smoking hole blasted into its torso. Trey lined up another shot, taking a better aim at the zoid's core, but he was too slow. With an anguished scream, Conan rained his remaining gatling cannon and pulse rifle ammo on the sniping zoid. Trey gritted his teeth and growled as the inside of the cockpit shook like it was stuck inside a tornado. Suddenly the firing stopped, and Trey quickly switched back from his sniping cockpit, breaking the Gunsniper into a circling run to get a better angle for the blades. From this better vantage point, he could see the reason for the cease fire. Ruby's Zaber Fang had begun to assault the hulking zoid with shots from her two back mounted guns, while Robert had added the additional firepower of his Liger. Deciding to join in the fun, Trey manoeuvred his zoid into a good position, before unloading with his machine guns. He opened to missile pods, and released a missile every so often to compliment the already heavy firepower.

Conan laughed manically from within his cockpit. "That's the way! Be amazed the your pitiful firepower is insufficient to penetrate my armour!"

He is out of control! Robert thought as he continued to fire. Even through the deluge of small detonations and ammunition impacts, Robert could clearly see the thick armour of the formidable zoid being nothing short of disintegrated from the damage it was taking. Then the stream of tracer shots from Robert's gatling cannon came to an end, and the multi barrelled weapon whined to a stop. The stomach mounted shock cannon then registered a dull clunk. Robert watched as at almost the exact same time Ruby and Trey ran dry of ammunition for their guns. Now was the moment of truth.

"You can't be serious!" Ruby gasped.

From the clearing cloud of smoke, a hulking form stepped, slowly but certainly. Even with one arm missing, Conan's Iron Kong still found a way to knuckle walk. The zoid's armour was a mangled mess of shredded armour, and blackened stumps replaced the shoulder hard points. The entire construct crackled with leaking power.

"I…am…invvv…I am…invincible…" Conan whispered with what little energy he could muster, and with one final groan the pilot slumped forward. The Iron Kong finally stopped walking, and the five pilots watched as the once majestic zoid fell for the last time.