Building Zoids in a World of Titans

 Recap of Book 1

Alex arrived on Terrax at thirteen, a lonely boy from Earth who had spent his childhood building plastic Zoid model kits in a room his parents rarely entered. The day he woke in a forest that shook with footsteps larger than houses, an anomalous interface called the System appeared in his mind. The fictional machines he had loved became blueprints for survival.

For six years, he scavenged Titan components in secret. He built the Arosaurer, his first combat Zoid, in a workshop on the outskirts of Veridia, a Xylosian frontier settlement. Borin Stonehand extended him credit when no one else would. Ziya, Borin's daughter, managed his inventory and quietly admired him. Rhian, a ten-year-old girl who brought him berries and watched him work, became his only real friend.

Then the Stormclaw Liger came.

The ancient apex predator had been watching Veridia for years. When it finally attacked, Alex piloted the Arosaurer into battle alongside Team Celestia, a squad of Wardens who had been hunting the machine they mistook for a rogue Titan. The fight was brutal. The Liger consumed a Crag-Spinner energy core and surged to B-rank thresholds. Alex and Celestia brought it down together.

His secret was exposed. Guildmaster Valerius Thorne promoted him from Rank 9 to Rank 7. Foreman Elara Vance offered a development contract: 340,000 Sols, a dedicated workshop, and salvage rights in exchange for Zoids to defend the city. Alex accepted.

He synthesized the Stormclaw Liger Core and unlocked four blueprints. He chose the Liger Zero. The core retained the Liger's personality and challenged him to single combat. Alex won its respect. He built the Lanstag from a Timber-Crest Bull core, established a production line for the Godos, and handed four units to Celestia for field testing.

Ziya kissed his cheek after dinner one night. He said yes to traveling together.

When Alex left Veridia for Ironwood Junction, Rhian stowed away on his transport rather than say goodbye. He found her after they had already departed.

The lobby of the Iron Mule felt smaller than it should have. Three people, two fold-down bunks, a kitchen table, and the weight of a conversation none of them had planned on having.

Rhian sat on the edge of the nearest bunk, her flour-sack bandolier pooled in her lap, her bare feet dangling above the floor. She was not looking at Alex. She was looking at a very interesting spot on the bulkhead.

Alex stood across from her, arms crossed. Ziya leaned against the kitchen counter beside him, arms crossed in the same configuration. They had not coordinated this. It had simply happened, the way two people who have been parenting a situation for ten minutes fall into formation without discussion.

"You want to tell me," Alex said, "how long you were in the cargo bay?"

Rhian twisted the hem of her tunic. "……A little while."

"A little while."

"Two days. Maybe two and a half. The dried meat was good, though."

Ziya pressed her lips together. Her eyes were doing something that was not quite amusement and not quite horror.

Alex uncrossed his arms. Rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Rhian. Why?"

The question landed differently than he expected. She looked up. Her eyes were bright and certain and completely unrepentant.

"Because I didn't want you to leave without me."

"You could have told me."

"You would have said no."

She was right. He would have. That was the worst part.

"Your parents," he said. "They're going to be—"

"I left a note."

"A note."

"On the kitchen table. Next to the blue stone."

Alex stared at her. The blue stone. She had placed her matching pendant next to the note so they would know she had chosen this. So they would understand it was not an accident, not a kidnapping, not something done to her.

Something she had done.

He felt the headache arrive. It settled behind his left eye with the precision of a well-calibrated instrument.

"How," he said slowly, "did you even get on board?"

"Well…"

* * *

Rhian had been watching the Iron Mule for three days before they left. She knew the loading schedule. She knew which panel on the cargo bay's undercarriage had a loose latch — the one Alex kept meaning to fix between builds. She knew that Ziya always did a final walkthrough at dawn, and that Alex spent those last mornings in his workshop, running diagnostics on the Liger Zero's core one final time.

She waited until the walkthrough passed. Then she crawled in.

The cargo bay smelled like hydraulic fluid and Titan bone. She wedged herself between a crate of spare actuators and the folded chassis of a Godos unit, pulled a tarp over her legs, and went very still.

That was when she heard it.

A low, vibrating thrum from the far end of the bay. The sound moved through the floor and up through the crate and into her ribs.

GRRR-RR-VUMMM…

Rhian froze. Slowly, she turned her head.

The Arosaurer stood in its docking cradle, twenty meters away. Its amber canopy was dark. Its eyes were dark. But the thrum was coming from somewhere deep inside its chest, and it was not the sound of a machine at rest.

It was the sound of something paying attention.

Rhian's heart hammered. She pressed herself flatter against the crate.

The Arosaurer's head shifted. Just slightly. The way a dog turns its ear toward a sound it cannot yet identify.

Then the jaw servos clicked. Once. Twice.

CHAK. CHAK.

It knew.

Rhian did the only thing she could think of. She sat up, pulled the tarp off her legs, and looked directly at the Zoid's dark eyes.

"Please," she whispered. "Please don't tell him."

The thrum quieted. The Arosaurer did not move.

"Please," Rian said, twisting her tunic hem, her voice small and uneven.

A long pause. Then the canopy flickered — a brief pulse of amber light, there and gone.

Rhian took that as consideration.

"He would send me back. You know he would. He'd say it's too dangerous, that I'm too small, that—" She stopped. Swallowed. "I'm just a child…"

The Arosaurer's head tilted. The thrum returned, softer now. Not a growl. Something else. Something that resonated in the space between warning and acknowledgment.

Then the massive jaw opened slightly and closed again. A single, deliberate motion.

CLACK.

Rhian exhaled.

"Thank you."

She did not know if the Zoid understood gratitude. But over the next two days, every time Alex or Ziya came near the cargo bay, a low hiss would sound from the Arosaurer's direction — HSSSSS-THT — and Rhian would press herself flat and silent until they passed.

The machine kept her secret. Not because it was programmed to. Because it chose to.

And Rhian, curled between crates with dried meat and a flour sack full of rocks, decided that the Arosaurer was her favorite Zoid.

Advance chapters on my p@tR$0n/Najicablitz.

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