Thokk!

An iron-tipped, armor defeating arrow knocked heavily into the tree behind her. Her breath coming in quick rhythms, Ivy kicked off the ground, making a break for a stone cairn forty meters to the east. She held the shield up, anticipating the volley, and sure enough a pair of medium arrows slammed into the heavy oaken circle, rimmed with a solid iron bracing.

Ivy grinned to herself, picking up the pace. Her feet padded softly across the freshly fallen pine straw, masking the real degree of threat she carried. Her right hand carried a flanged mace, her fingers gripping the reassuring leather of the weapon's g--

A slender dark-skinned individual leaped out from behind a tree, lips curled in a warrior's challenge. He carried a pair of vicious-looking scimitars. Don't have -time- for this, Ivy thought with a grimace. She broke left and her mace flashed out, forcing him back as she raced by like a breeze. A quick dive and a roll brought Ivy behind the cairn and out of the line of fire.

No time to think - a scimitar flashed in and Ivy brought her shield up, catching the other one coming in low, out of the corner of her eye. Her mace met the weapon and its greater momentum blew his hand aside. The first scimitar clanked off the iron him of her shield. No good. She had to wait for an opening in the deadly walls of whirling steel.

She worked the scimitar wielder high then low, her mace taking the occasional swipe to keep him off guard. Then - whack! A scimitar connected dead-on with her shield. The incredibly sharp blade drove deep into the thick oak and Ivy wrenched it away. The man, off balance, took a wild swing with his off hand and paid dearly for it. Ivy's mace came down and connected squarely with the back of his collarbone. His spine broken expertly, the man slumped to the ground, not even twitching.

Time to move on. Ivy broke out from behind the rock formation and dove into a roll, and only too late did she notice another shape moving out in the wilds. This was an imposing amazon woman, fully one and a half heads taller than Ivy. The amazon came tearing in at top speed, brandishing a large spear. Closer look - "ballista bolt" was more like it. Jeebus.

Ivy dove behind a tree to avoid another salvo of arrows, tearing up the dirt beneath the pine straw. The amazon raced through her salvo, a medium arrow slamming into her side and barely fazing the giant. Ivy shook her head, spitting a pine needle from her teeth. The longbows wouldn't fire again for a decent while, so that gave her a chance to play a little with this amazon, out in the open.

The amazon gave a yell and charged, her spear held low and braced against her good hip. Ivy sprang catlike to her feet and took off at top speed, shield held dead-on and perpendicular to the huge spear. Then the spear hit and Ivy released her shield, slipping aside and letting the amazon's momentum carry past her like a runaway train. The amazon knew it was too late - Ivy's mace came around and slammed the back of her knee. The huge woman crumpled like a house of cards, swinging the barbed spear wildly. Ivy jumped back as a small gash appeared along her ribs.

Blood dripping from her torso, Ivy carried the mace's momentum around. It met the amazon's face as the woman hit the ground.

Another kill. Time to move -

Stars appeared in her vision as Ivy dropped to her knees, stunned. A wave of nausea slammed into her and she nearly retched. As Ivy fell, receding into blackness, she saw a man with a dagger had appeared out of thin air behind her. A dagger dripping red, but...also something....something green.....

GAME OVER

"Stupid cheap-arse rogues." Ivy took off the helmet and plunked down in her seat, her T-shirt drenched in sweat. Despite the comment, she knew she should have seen that sneak attack coming. Her promise to Alex - to eschew battles until she returned from ZBC City - was eating at her, corroding the "Ivy Edge," as he'd called it. Her head was still spinning from UltraViolence: Medieval Battles, the latest and most intense virtual reality game in the arcades.

"I have got to find something better to do," Ivy mused, strolling into the bright afternoon sun of Monument Plaza, her spare tank top clinging to her skinny frame. She shook the last few stars from her eyes and went along leisurely, scattering the odd pigeon.

((Feel free to join in, folks. I'm doing this out of sheer boredom and my inability to battle right now. Oh, and, I read one of those frelling Drizzt books and wanted to do a medieval fight scene :P))

((I still can't believe you've read those damned Drizz't books. Bah!))

"Sucks that the Judgeman broke down before the battle could even start," Gary complained.
"You've said so before," Angel replied. They were out to Monument Plaza, a much more lively place than the Empire's Memorial Plaza. The Plaza was the centerpiece to one of the largest malls on Delpoi, an open-aired affair with transparent force fields over it preventing the inclement weather from getting through, keeping it tolerable year-round. The Plaza itself was a pleasant garden maintained by a team of crack gardeners.
Yes. There is such thing as a crack gardener.
It was a date. Of the sort that zoid pilots went on: To the arcade.
"Meh." He shrugged. "Speaking of things to do with the Peasant Cup, isn't that Kerrigan's teammate, Ivy?"
"You know it is, fanboy." Angel sighed. "Come on, let's get something to eat."
"A'ight." Gary shrugged. He was a fan of Ivy's skill and recklessness, which he tried to emulate, not a proper fanboy of the sort that obsessed over her. "I s'pose I'll buy. What're you in the mood for?"
"Something light." Angel shrugged. She wasn't on a diet, but never really had that much of an appetite during the day. She'd just gotten out of the habit of eating lunch. "How's about coffee?"
"Don't drink, but I'll have hot chocolate and pretend it's coffee." Gary made that crooked grin of his.
"You're kidding me."
"Nope." Gary chuckled. "Despite my hyperactivity, ADHD, and general bounciness, I do not, in fact, drink much of anything caffeinated."
"Wonders never cease," Angel remarked dryly.

((Blargh - wasn't able to get to a computer for a while. Western Continent IS the center of Helic operations these days, right? O_o))

Ivy wasn't just noticing the odd stares she was getting - she was rather enjoying them. She was a stranger in a strange land, a land her country had battled in several bloody wars in the past, leaving battlefields and scarred earth on both sides of the conflict. With her dark, nearly inky black hair falling over fair, freckled skin, the girl had clearly grown up under the stormy gray northern skies of the Guylos homeland.

The cheeky, bright red "I WUB MOLGA" shirt clinging to her scrawny frame didn't really hurt either. It had a stylized, cartoony caterpillar zoid bonking an equally foolish Gojulas over the head with a big wooden mallet in place of the CP-07.

But Ivy wasn't really out to pick a fight. She ambled along, stomping like Godzilla into a flock of pigeons. Rawr, crash, bang. The pigeons scattered in a huge cloud as Ivy pursued them in slow motion. A tan-skinned old Helic lady trying to feed the things gave her a dirty look and Ivy innocently smiled back.

"Wonders never cease..."

Borne on the breeze, a familiar female voice floated to her. It wasn't that familiar, but she was pretty sure she had heard it before. During a battle, maybe? Ivy pivoted around on the ball of her left foot, raising a hand to shield her eyes from the glaring sun. She might as well check things out; after all, Zoid pilots were like radioactive elements. Get enough of them together, as the Peasant Cup proved, and something interesting was bound to happen.

"Interesting." Not necessarily "safe."

Gorram typoes...

((Sure hope so. I'm gonna make a jump so that we can actually get to interaction, 'kay?))

Ivy strolled up just as Angel departed for the women's restroom. Gary was sitting at a table in the food court with a hot chocolate in front of him, Angel's coffee steaming in front of an empty chair across from him. They were at one of the larger tables, rather than a couple's table, as the couple's tables were all occupied.
"'Ello, Imp." Gary grinned. "You know, most Gojuli would simply stomp on a Molga and call it good."

Ivy raised an eyebrow. She'd heard the voice before, but she hadn't met its owner. Then she remembered his words and glanced down at her flattish torso.

"Oh, heh - the shirt," she said, adopting a sheepish look. There was a conspicuous flicker of mischievous delight in those coal-like eyes, though. "Y'like it?" she asked, leaning absently on the back of a chair. Nearly imperceptibly, those eyes were scanning Gary down to each wrinkle. Big guy, broad shouldered and well built. Tanned and weathered. Clearly from warm climes and exuded an easy confidence. Rather standard in build for a Rep - she figured he would pilot something like a Shield Liger, but something about him didn't seem like brute-force material.

This bit had her brain ticking over for a few moments, so she tossed out a bit of light conversation while processing. "Heh, typical Rep," she prodded with a nonchalant grin, "Wade in and stick all two-thirty tons right in their face. Any Molga pilot that gets stomped by that sluggish junkpile deserves it." Her voice was light like a breeze, taking the sting out of the otherwise harsh words.

But behind that airy facade, her brain was was humming like an engine. King Liger? Possibly; she could see him working all that ridiculous equipment with zeal, but there wasn't one in the Peasant Cup, where she'd heard that voice. The options were clicking out one by one, the female teammate's voice ringing in her ears. She'd have to weasel his name and team out of him somehow - it was kind of embarrassing forgetting this sort of thing.

Gary shrugged. "Most Molga pilots would, too. Half of 'em are dumbass kids trying to play Jules Gerred, and the other half are too broke to afford a real zoid."
Jules Gerred, of course, was a fictional television character on the show Metal Machine Music. A massive soap opera, it was difficult to keep track of the numerous subplots running in it. It had spawned numerous spin-offs, most of which were pale imitations of the real thing.
Not that Gary watched soaps, mind you. Jules, Mac, Paris, and the Alistairs were all pop culture icons.
"So, Gary, your goddess actually know your name?" Angel, back from the restroom, rested a hand on Gary's shoulder. If he didn't know better, he'd figure she was being protective of territory.
He was too much the good-guy leader-type to play with that can of worms, though.

"Jules Garred's the comic-relief nerd, if I recall, the one that's always getting himself blown up," mused Ivy thoughtfully. "That's why you get lots of these novices that don't consider the Molga a real Zoid," she added with faux angelic innocence. She wore that facetiousness on her sleeve. Much as Ivy, being a self-important Imperial fangirl, enjoyed pruning self-important Republic fanboys down to size, she rather liked this one. More than anything, she had to admire the tenacity - he came back swinging rather than folding like most Reps. Reminded her of Alex in a less, uh, dorky way.

This actually answered the long-debated question of whether Ivy has diplomatic tact and, to a greater extent, reason at all. She does.

It's just entirely too much fun if she does without them.

That's when the girl walked up. "So, Gary, your goddess actually know your name?" A particularly observant one would have noticed the tiny spark of recognition that slipped through from the stadium floodlights that just flicked on in her head. That voice and its "G" sounds jogged Ivy's memory like jumper cables. Gary. Goddess. Guysack. He was that looney in the scorpion! And his teammate was...hm, she'd have to press with some derivative of "Angel" and hope for the best. Angelina? Angelica? Frellit, she was going with "Angel."

She didn't, of course, miss a beat when "goddess" was mentioned. This topic was way too good to pass up. With a Herculean job of hiding her already large ego, Ivy flashed a cherubic smile to Angel -an actual one, for once- and shifted a bit uncertainly. "Er, goddess?" Ivy asked. "And heya, Angel, how go things after the Peasant Cup?"

Gary guffawed. "Nope." He turned around and looked up at Angel. "She didn't have a clue."
Angel smiled down at him, then looked to Ivy. She was a lot softer person off the field of combat, where she was usually so tense she wound up being a bit of a . . . well, it rhymes with witch.
Although Gary's called her that, too.
"I would've thought you'd seen it in Pilot's Digest. Gary's a fan of yours."
"Hey, it takes guts to fly a Sinker on a field with real zoids in it." Gary grinned. "And the Peasant Cup was cancelled due to technical difficulties. They're going to be awarding prizes by default, last I heard."
"Where'd you hear that, Gary?"
"Digest." Gary drummed his fingers on the table. "Oh, your coffee's right there, Angel."
"I saw."
"'Kay." Gary continued. "The big prize is going to Hiro's next-of-kin, of course, 'cause he bit the big one in the first go-round. They're having all of the pilots in that fight sign a card, too. Small condolence, but that's the game we play, eh?"

Ivy briefly morphed into Scarlett O'Hara. Or whatever the closest equivalent was on Zi. "Whah, ah'm shocked, Gary Guysack Stuart!" she began, pirating a line from a completely different movie. "Shocked that you'd be fan o' little ol' me!" She gently pinched his cheek for emphasis.

Scarlett vanished as Ivy vaulted over the chair she'd been leaning on, coming down in a physics-defyingly gentle landing. "And, unfortunately, I don't really read Pilot's Digest these days. Something about there being a five-typo minimum on each page prompted me to cancel. Have they got me in there as Public Enemy #1?" she grinned. "'Cos then I'll really be flattered."

In truth, Pilot's Digest was something of a laugh for any Guylos mainlander. They were famous for printing ridiculous articles on the weakness of Imperial forces, glorifying Helic to an extent that bordered on boot-licking. It stood to reason, of course; PD was printed in Helic's capital. Guylos, of course, had an identical periodical, Charged Particle Journal, or CPJ as the cover read. Neither was really all that popular in the other's home country, except for particularly thick-skinned pilots that picked them up for a laugh.

Now we wouldn't know anyone like that, would we?

Ivy raised an eyebrow. "Hiro?" she asked. "I dropped him off in our Gustav after the first fight. You're thinking of that nutter in the Iron Kong, no?"

"You were thinking about Valen, dear." Angel also sat down, deciding hovering protectively would probably make 'em all paranoid.
"Oh, yeah. I can never keep names straight." Gary chuckled.

"Yep, Valen," mused Ivy, chewing pensively on her lower lip. "Though I'm not entirely sure he bought it back there - even those crappy diVossi-built Kongs like he was driving have an ejection system," she added. She said "diVossi" with a hint of aggravated frustration. "And the zoid's usually smart enough to at least get its pilot to safety."

Ivy flagged down a waiter. He regarded her shirt for a second, during which Ivy set up her sweetest and most cherubic smile. It met his look of resignated politeness.

"Bottle o' Deadman's Fire, iffa please," she added in her Guylos-tainted English, digging a few coins from her pocket and handing it to the waiter. He accepted them and walked off, doubtlessly mumbling something about the frelling cockney tourists.

Ivy reclined back in the chair. The last dregs of adrenalin ebbed out of her system and she figured a bit more light conversation would help. "So, Gary, how's the old scorpion handle?" she asked, back in the common Helic accent she usually spoke when around new acquaintances. Helped ease tension and all that.

"It's surprisingly twitchy," Gary replied. "I mean, you'd think the thing would handle rather jerkily -- is that a word?"
"Probably."
"Anyways, it handles really, really twitchy-like and doesn't much like to go in one direction for very long. You ever see footage of Rick in the thing? The man handles it like I wish I could." He didn't remark on her change of accent. Angel sometimes switched back and forth between a Helic and a very faint Guylos accent, too.

"So not for those Brianne Ryiak wannabes, then," Ivy replied, making another reference to that soap opera. Unlike her odd-couple partner, Jules, "Bree" was a focused demon in battle, preferring to charge straight at her opponents and beat the living hell out of them in her favorite ride of either a Hound Soldier or a Blade Liger. The fanfiction websites were littered with absolutely hideous works of "shippers" pairing the Molga pilot with his melee-centric friend, Bree.

Ivy physically winced when she recalled these. She wouldn't be surprised if the two sitting across from her followed the same though-train and did likewise, either.

"You know, I don't usually say this about Helic zoids, but I've actually got to admire the little thing. It's so uncharacteristic for their battle ethos (read: Breeyiak), yet it's got a strong core of fans." Her voice was objective at this point. "And it's awfully mechanically complex; you don't see that on a lot of Helic zoids. Most people figure we've cornered the design of creepy-crawlies-" - she glanced at her shirt - "and forget about the Guysack. I guess old Xaratan did wonders for the thing."

The waiter was taking his time.

"Yeah, but his kid's a real jerk. Kyne Xaratan needs to be taken out back and shot." Gary's grin faded. "Isn't that right?"
"I wouldn't put it that way," Angel said guardedly, "but he is certainly more arrogant than Rick reputedly was."
"He's got an ego big enough to knock Zi and the moons out of orbit," Gary chuckled. "The bastard pilots a Liger Zero, too. Ain't nobody piloting that thing right since Bit Cloud."
"You're just sour because you didn't win the Cup."
"And I'm just sour because I didn't win the Cup." Gary's grin reappeared.

The waiter returned with a bottle of clear liquid, the top already popped off. The low-hanging mist of cold carbonation floated between the lip of the bottle and the surface of the thin liquid. Ivy took a swig and choked.

"Deadman's Fire" was a modestly successful soft drink based on the cactus juice of the same name. Back during the colonial days, the folks in the wastelands of Delpoi would tap a cactus for its juice when water wasn't available. Being native Zoidian life, it had a high mineral content and contained a respectably healthy degree of electrolytes. It was quite possibly one of the only healthy carbonated beverages on the planet, despite the addition of artificial sweeteners to increase its marketability.

It got its name because it burned like the fires of Hell itself on the way down. Ivy grinned half-bakedly and took another swig.

"Jeebus, that's good," she managed, feeling like a health nut. Still, it was better for her than water, especially after that sim took it out of her.

Gary chuckled. "Trust an Imp to not be able to handle anything a little sharp," he said as he downed a swig of steaming hot chocolate.
"You can't handle coffee," Angel pointed out dryly.
"So?" Gary didn't even wince when the scorching liquid came down his throat. "Y'know, battles have been pretty slow of late. Think we could arrange a Judgeman?"

Ivy grinned. One of these days she'd have to drink old Gary under the table. (Inner Ivy: Are you -kidding- me?! You're barely fifty kilo yourself. I swear, one of these -)

That's the voice of her common sense. It gets a lot of exercise.

In futility.

"Battle, hrm?" Ivy said, swigging another gulp of the cold fire. Her eyes watered a bit. "Oh, and, you can't get this stuff back home. Something about cacti not liking Nyx for some reason." Refocusing, she pondered thoughtfully.

"Problem is, old Alex is somewhere off east - think he went to Athens or something. And I, ah, kind of promised him I wouldn't battle until he got back." Ivy briefly entered a liquid phase as she stretched, bending all the way back and over the top of the metal chair. A passing chiropractor looked in her direction, salivating slightly with pupils resembling dollar signs. He promptly ran headlong into the fountain.

"But hey, if you're up for a sim or something," Ivy said, solidifying, "I'm your girl, baby. Tried the new UltraViolence yet?"

((This is disturbingly reminiscent of the rough plotline I'd come up with . . .))

"Ugh. I hate violent video games." Gary shook his head. "Too gory. Too-"
"You're a player in one of the most violent hobbies on the planet," Angel pointed out. "Which is real, not some game."
"Touche. Alright, I'm game. You in?"
Angel shrugged. "Might as well."

Ivy finished the bottle and removed some coins from her pocket. She talked as she counted out the price of the drink.

"So. We've got Medieval Battles, which is your basic melee-style nastiness, Medieval: Extended, but nobody plays that since the magic they added is unbelievably cheap. All the tourneys are full of snot-nosed twelve-year-olds running around yelling 'lightning bolt!' and one-shotting each other."

"Then you've got Footsoldier, it's the one that's been getting all the flak from the parents and governments recently. You've heard of it, yeah? Take the place of an infantryman during the old Guylos-Helic war and run around dodging fire from stuff that can squash you like an ant."

She glanced over at the fountain. Some guy was sitting in it babbling happy dazed thoughts about the importance of paying lots of money for a healthy spine. "Or there's always just the Zoid battle sims. There's that crazy museum around here, right?"

"Mm. Zoid battle sims," Angel murmured. "I suppose that somebody should pay to go through those old, fossilized museum-pieces, eh?"
"That sounds spiffy." Gary shrugged. "Sure. Which do you prefer, Ivy?"

"Meh."

She shrugged. "Honestly, I'm up for anything right now. How do the sims sound, then? I want to check if they've still got that promotion going," said Ivy. "And it isn't technically battling, so..."

An expression of mock conspiracy came over her features. "Old Metalhead, wherever he is, won't have to worry."