Black: No random comments now! Jumping right into the story!! ^.^;

Chapter 17-Battles of the Mind, Heart and Body

Nikita stretched in anticipation for the battle to come.

It was now almost time, and they were at the location selected by the other team, called the Nova Team, manned by a Command Wolf, two Lightning Saixes, and two Blade Ligers.

He jumped into the cockpit of the Jackal, and grinned. "Well, Jackal, time for our first actual zoid battle. Ready buddy?"

The Jackal roared that he was.

Nikita put the "Year of the Spider" CD into the CD tray in the Jackal's stereo, and his zoid was thrown out of the Hover Cargo.

Soon, both teams were staring each other down on the desert sands; each filled with energy that this was the first battle of their zoid battling careers this season.

The judge capsule slammed into the ground from above with the force of a bomb.

{WARING!! WARING!! THE AREA WITHIN A THRITY KILOMETER RADIUS IS NOW A DESIGNATED ZOID BATTLEFIELD!!} The Judge blared loudly from its capsule frantically, its metal arms waving frantically. {The Nova Team versus the Blitz Team! No time limit!  Battle mode: ZERO, NINE, EIGHT, TWO! Ready…}

Nikita gripped his controls tightly, but his arms suddenly felt weird…as if they weren't his own…but he paid it little mind, as the battle would take his full concentration and energy…

{FIGHT!!!}

Both teams scattered; each firing wildly at the other, in a desperate hodgepodge of a strategy to get away from the other teams shots.  But suddenly, the Nova Team's zoids seemed to formulate a plan, and the Blade Ligers dodged and returned fire frantically, while the Saixes were running themselves around the battlefield itself, and the Command Wolf was suddenly nowhere to be found!

[Nikita!] Brad shouted over his comm. [You and Erin have to take out those Blade Ligers!! Jamie's got his hands full trying to find that Command Wolf and me and Bit gotta keep these Lightning Saixes at bay here!]

Nikita nodded solemnly. "Yeah, I understand." He said, taking a few deep breaths.

No way I'm scared…there's just no way I can be scared…not after all that training…not after all this time… He thought.

He turned his zoid towards the direction of the Blade Ligers, who seemed to be fleeing the area.

"Erin!! We've got to take out those Blade Ligers pronto!" He said over their private comm channel.

She nodded. [I hear ya!]

They both ran their zoids in the direction of the Blade Liger's, who now knew that they were being pursued. The enemy zoids hit their boosters, and roared at the challenge that Erin and Nikita posed.

Nikita gritted his teeth, and smirked. "OH NO YOU DON'T!!" He shouted as he hit his boosters, and soared over the sand after them, seemingly closing the gap in mere seconds as fired on them with his 50mm rifles.

Erin followed suit, hitting her boosters and firing wildly along the path of the enemy's feet, in an attempt to make the enemy zoids lose their balance.

Their attempt failed however, as the Blade Ligers not only moved out of the way, but turned themselves around skidding, and hit their boosters again to re-align themselves, and charged them, deploying their blades again.

Nikita and Erin both quickly hit their blade switches, each hoping the blades would deploy in time, and they did.

Both sets of blades crashed against one another with ferocity and energy, both pilots straining their zoids blades against the other's.

Finally, Nikita decided to try a strategy, and parried the enemy Blade Liger's blade, and made the Jackal jump backward a few hundred feet, and fired on the enemy again with his 50mm rifles.

The enemy Blade Liger put up its shield in defense, and the onslaught failed, making Nikita think of a different strategy…

Meanwhile, Jamie was desperately trying to find the lone sniper Command Wolf that had seemingly vanished from the battleground.

"Dammit, not here either…" The Wild Eagle muttered to himself.

All of a sudden, the Raynos shook with the massive force of an attack from below and slightly to the left, making The Wild Eagle increase his speed and bank steeply to the right to get a better view of his assailant.

Behind a rock formation and armed with a high-powered sniper rifle, was said Command Wolf.

"Damn you!" Wild Eagle shouted, diving in for an attack run, letting his machine guns howl to life from the Raynos' belly.

The zoid took the brunt of the assault, but managed to get off one last desperate shot before its system froze.

That shot hit the Raynos right in its left wing, which had already been damaged from the last attack, causing the Raynos to go into a nose-dive and crash-land safely.

[Oh shit!! JAMIE!!] Bit shouted as the Raynos took a dive.

[BIT!! PAY ATTENTION!!] Brad bellowed loudly, making Bit look up in surprise, and move his Liger Zero out of the way of a rifle shot from one of the Lightning Saixes.

Bit charged the enemy zoid again, and one of the Lightning Saixes shot at his zoid again, giving it a system freeze. He slammed his fist down on his console in anger. "SHIT!!"

Brad sighed, and kept firing on the two zoids, keeping them just far enough away not to try anything but evasion tactics.

Suddenly, Brad got an idea…

Meanwhile, Nikita had deployed his Weasel Unit missile pods, and had aimed them into the sky.

"Erin! I need you to keep those Blade Liger's at bay for me for five seconds!"

[WHAT ARE YOU?! CRAZY?!" She exclaimed in surprise. [I'll be slagged! There's no way I can hold them off for that long, especially by myself!]

"Erin, if there's any pilot in the world that can do it, its you…I just need you to run away in a straight line from the enemy and lead them away, okay?

He heard her sigh in frustration, and grunt. [Okay, but not a millisecond more.]

He smiled. "Thanks, I knew I could count on you…"

[Riiiiight…] She mused as she ran her zoid in the other direction. Lucky for him, they decided to take the bait and follow her.

Nikita almost laughed, but instead turned his attention towards the matter at hand.

He told the computer to give him an over head view of the entire battlefield and to identify all legal targets to him.

It did, and designated all of the Nova Team's zoids as targets, as well as his team member's zoids too.

He targeted Erin's Blade Liger in his sights, and pressed the trigger, firing his entire payload of missiles.

The waiting salvo of missiles seemingly paused in midair, and then sailed down towards the earth at horrific speed, arcing so they would turn before they hit the ground, and sail at their target.

Erin, who had been having fairly good luck evading the Blade Ligers, shouted aloud when her computer bleeped that she had been targeted for a missile. "Who the hell's targeting me?!" She cursed aloud, and then looked behind her, and saw all those missiles that Nikita had fired chasing her and the Blade Ligers!

"HOLY SHIT!!" She screamed in surprise, her speed seemingly increasing as her fear increased.

The Blade Liger's chasing her, however, were not fortunate enough to notice said missiles until it was too late…

The missiles hit their zoids with extreme prejudice; exploding and even giving one of the Blade Ligers a system freeze, while heavily damaging the other.

However, three missiles were still chasing her zoid, and now she was getting scared, that is, until all three of them seemingly feel apart in midair, and exploded behind her, causing her to slam on the brakes and stop.

There was the Black Jackal, its blades extended and glowing ominously green, and the smoking missile barrels and boosters.

"Hehehe…thanks Erin. That helped out a lot!" He exclaimed smiling.

[YOU MEAN TO TELL ME YOU ACTUALLY HAD THE BALLS TO TARGET MY BLADE LIGER!! WHAT IF YOU HAD MISSED?!?! HUH?!] She shouted in anger.

Her shouting was cut off however, as her Blade Liger was shot, and given a system freeze, by the last remaining Lightning Saix that Brad and Bit had failed to take care of.

He charged the assailant, his blades glowing green again, and his boosters igniting, as he attacked so fast his zoid was almost a blur of black shadow.

"TWIN BLADE ATTACK!" He bellowed with fury, slicing along the enemy's legs, cutting them at the knee-joints.

The Saix hit the ground with a boom, its system freezing instantly before it even hit the ground.

He turned his zoid to face the last Blade Liger, which was already stumbling for its footing. Its bright metal paint was dented in and burned.

He suddenly heard something in his ears…it was faint, but it was still there…it was laughter…

"What?!" He exclaimed in surprise, looking from side to side for the source. "Who is that?!"

The laugher grew, until it was a deathly evil howl in his ears, driving him mad with every second of its eerie wail.

He gripped his head in agony, a sudden wave of pain splitting down his skull.

"Ah!" He screamed.

Meanwhile, everyone else heard what was going on.

Erin shivered. "Oh no…" She whispered, a tingle of fear running up her spine. "It's happening…"

"Dammit! Not now Anubis!" He shouted, his head splitting with more agony then before. He slammed his head into the control panel a few times to stop the laughing, to no avail.

In his mind, the dark, blood-colored organoid appeared, and turned into its human form. He wore an eerie smirk on his expression, his face contorted into a mask of pure psychotic glee.

"Hey, kid, its time to play a little game…" He chuckled, taking a step closer to him, and unsheathing one of his black daggers.

In his mind, Nikita fell backward, trying to get away from the homicidal lunatic.

"Get away! I don't want you in my head! Get away from me!!" He screamed in fear, shielding his vision.

Anubis was chuckling, the mask of eerie joy on his face, as he slowly raised the dagger above his head. It gleamed with a flash of bright darkness, and descended, making him scream in agony in real life, his vision going crimson.

After a few moments, he stopped screaming, and slowly he looked up, and smirked, his eyes no longer dark brown, but blood red.

[Nikita?! What was all that screaming about?!?!?] Bit yelled frantically over the comm unit.

His smirk grew. "Nothing…" He said in a calm, yet dark and malicious voice. "Nothing at all…"

To Anubis, that Blade Liger was nothing but a stepping-stone…on the way to his reputation's revival…

He turned the Jackal to it, the pilot of the Blade Liger now thoroughly scared.

He started moving towards it, advancing slowly, and then increasing his speed, like a jackal pouncing on its wounded and defeated prey.

His blades started to glow again, this time turning almost red from the speed that he was going at, as he jumped into the air, and turned so he could slice along the cockpit, cutting the pilot in half while he would do so.

His blade drew nearer, as he gave a horrifying scream of bloodlust, and he cried, "TWIN BLADE ATTACK!!!"

His blades neared the cockpit of the doomed pilot, making the pilot scream in metaphorical agony.

[NIKITA!!!! STOP IT NOW!!!!!!!] Came a sudden shout over his comm from Erin.

He snapped out of his bloodlust, his eyes quickly turning brown. He swerved his blades out of the way at the last minute, slicing along the top of the cockpit and the guns, cutting through them like a hot knife through butter.

He skidded to a stop, shivering at what he had almost gone through with.

Inside his mind, Anubis put the dagger near his mouth, cutting a long gash across the right side of his face, and licking the mixture of his blood and Nikita's blood off of it as well, and then sheathed it again in its proper sheath.

Nikita shivered internally (in his mind), the fresh gash on the left side of his face, still dripping blood onto the ground beneath him.

"W-what did you do to me?" He shuddered, gripping his astral-projected face with his hand.

Anubis smirked. "That, my friend, is what will bind me to you…"

Nikita gave him a look.

"Its an ancient spell that bonds the souls of two beings together in one body…I have connected us via your blood…now whenever you have bloodlust, I'll be there…" He smirked again.

Nikita's eyes widened in fear, and he blacked out, resurfacing in the outside world again.

[Nikita?! Nikita! Say something!] Bit yelled over the comm.

He grunted. He heard Bit and Jamie sigh. [Oh thank god!]

[Nikita…you okay?] Brad asked worriedly.

"Yeah…" He panted. "Yeah…I'm fine…"

In a dark corner of his mind, Anubis laughed, and he put his hand on his cheek, then recoiled slightly when he felt something…wet…

He drew his hand away slowly…it was blood…fresh blood…