"Hyuuma would be a good choice," Papillon agreed. "Guy, J, and Renais would also be able to train you."

"If I ain't getting my powers back, I need to know everything I can."

His eyes narrowed. "I'm gonna be like Batman or something. That's awesome."

(OOC: *has a heart attack*)

This was the chance he had been waiting for! His attacks may not have made it, but it had only been so Kujo's attention would be on him. R.D. gathered energy for the most awesome of attacks. His body shook as he channeled Earth energy through him, raising his arms up. He suddenly flung his right arm up behind him, then snapped it upwards into the air. Green energy erupted out from his elbows, up from his wrists, and out from his back, each one spiraling into glowing points--drills.

"Giga...!"

Angling his right arm again, R.D. thrust the arm up into the air. Each energy drill shrank back into his body at a rapid pace, and an immensely long drill, silvery and metal, sprang forward from his wrist, covering his fist and aiming towards the heavens. It quickly widened into a drill of massive proportions--almost twice as long as he was tall, and easily wide enough to obscure his body in its shadow.

"Drill...!"

R.D. swung the massive drill across the side until it was in front of him, aiming it at the second in command of Sheena's forces. The drill bit began to spin at insane speeds, blasting wind across the icy seas. Pushing off from the ground, R.D. shot into the air as emerald flames issued from the back end of the drill bit, covering him in flame that eradicated the cold winds, freeing it from the ice. R.D., equipped with his giant drill, flew to pierce Kujo, the heavens, and into tomorrow.

"BREEEEEAAAAAAAKAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"

===Repli-Earth===

Papillon smiled slightly. The reports had said that Matt had been prone to spouting an obscene amount of references, much to the chagrin of his comrades and GGG in general. "It may take a bit to convince Renais to train you," she said, "But if I can't convince her, I'm sure J would be able to."

Edited by RisingDragon on May 24, 2008 at 14:23:37.

"I need all the help I can get," Matt said, his tone turning serious. "I really appreciate anything you can do to help me." He scoffed. "Hell...I'm already grateful, you know? God knows I don't deserve this."

"What makes you say that?" Papillon asked, concerned. "You've done plenty to help others."

"Maybe. All the same, I wanna do everything I can to make up for this." He dismissed the awkward matter with a gesture. "But enough of that stuff."

Shattered debris of metal scattered in the air as the Giga Drill was smashed to pieces, causing R.D. to fall back in shock. Gritting his teeth and growling as he fell back towards the boat, he opened his right hand while channeling, causing a sphere of golden power to manifest, lancing out with rays of shining light as its power increased. Thrusting his hand out at Kujo, he roared, "Giga Flare!'

The beam ripped out of the sphere in an instant, spearing across the air as it sped for Kujo's scaly chest. Feeding more power into the attack, the beam widened substantially, expanding in an attempt to swallow Kujo whole.

===Repli-Earth===

"Okay," Papillon said. "It's starting to get late, and there's more work to do tomorrow, with HyoRyu and EnRyu's reactivation coming up. You'd better get some sleep. I'll talk to Renais about training you."

The seas were tumultuous as the attacks collided in midair, creating a maelstrom of power where they struck. R.D. braced himself against the backlash of the two attacks and continued to feed power into the Giga Flare. He just needed to figure out a way to counter the blasted dragon's technique. He held his free hand back behind him, delving into the Dragon King Armor's pocket dimension, snatching up one particular item. And after he made sure that the Riptide had gotten out of the way thanks to the Hartnett's piloting, he disappeared in a flash of Chaos Control, his beam disappearing and allowing the Giga Blizzard to smash into cold waters below.

He appeared right beneath Kujo's head, channeling fire out from him into the air. In an instant, spheres of blazing fire plummeted from the sky from above Kujo, streaking down like meteors at the ice dragon's backside. And beneath Kujo, R.D.'s hip cannons swung into place as he aimed his arm cannons at them. Five cannons fired simultaneously at Kujo's head, two from the hands, two from the hip cannons, and one from the torso cannon, each fired at nearly point blank range.

Matt allowed himself a small smile. "Thanks, Papllion."

It'd take a lot of hard work to be Batman...but with everyone helping him, he figured he could make it.

R.D. felt a tingle as the double vanished, and swore. That cloning trick was going to tick him off one day, he felt. Dismissing his cannon weaponry, R.D. hovered in the air and watched as Reckoning transformed, and Kujo flee. So that's why the scanner said he was a monster, he thought sourly while looking at Reckoning's monstrous form. Looking away, he looked back at Antarctica, where Sheena and Kujo lay. So now what happens?

Turning around and looking at the frozen waters, where the seaborne Reaverbots lay immobilized by the ice, he activated an arm cannon and aimed down, firing a wave of fire at the ice and melting it. Dropping back down to the Riptide's deck, he dismissed his armor completely and looked around. Something was off here.

Over a period of time, Matt prepared himself for what was coming. Sure, he didn't have any idea what it was, exactly, but he had to stay on target. During his spare time, when he wasn't assisting with the Mobile Unit's repairs, he alternated between his new teachers, gathering as much knowledge and skill as he could. With Hyuuma and Guy, he worked on increasing his strength and speed, and honing his hand-to-hand combat skills back to a fine point. Renais, after some careful convincing, began training Matt on the use of firearms, using any substitutes they could for actual weapons due to their current supply problems.

And outside of training, after a particularly hard sparring session or waiting until the next person became avaliable, he poured over the databanks aboard the J-Ark, reading and thinking and questioning himself and everything.

Looking at him the wrong way gave the impression that he was like a madman working toward some grand, awful realization. The general consensus, though, was that he was unusually driven. Matt didn't pay attention to either opinion. He was busy enough getting where he wanted to be.

During the first days of Matt's new regime, repairs of the first two Vehicle Machines concluded. The Gutsy Galaxy Guard had to wait one more day for their A.I. to repair themselves before it'd be safe to reactivate them. That morning, metallic, clanking footsteps could be heard as Renais approached the door to Matt's room, rapped on it twice sharply, before opening it up abruptly, as was her nature.

"Oi," she said to Matt, "We're ready to reactivate them. Let's go."

Matt looked up from the monitor. "...okay."

This was it...even though Matt had spent a good amount of time working on HyoRyu and EnRyu during his time on Repli-Earth, he knew that the crew had worked on the Mobile Unit for even longer. Now they were finally ready to start bringing the Mobile Unit back online.

As he stood, he wondered, not for the first time, what they were really like. Well, now was his chance to find out.

Renais led the way out of the J-Ark's structure, out into the main campsite, which had far less people milling about on daily tasks than usual. Hands in her cooling coat's pockets, Renais headed straight for the storage building that contained the Mobile Unit, which had its doors open. Inside, surrounded by the bodies of the deactivated robots, the massive blue and red forms of HyoRyu and EnRyu lay side by side on the floor. The many crewmembers of GGG made a large circle around the two Vehicle Machines.

Renais made her way up one of the catwalks, where Kazuo was overseeing the operation. "What's the holdup?" she asked as she approached, causing the heavyset man to look up at the Cyborg in surprise. "We're still waiting for the Commander, Sgt. Hyuuma, and Dr. Liger to arrive."

Matt peered up at the massive red and blue robots. Suddenly their familiar features became interesting again-his imagination rushed like it did, imagining the two springing to unexpected life.

Guy noticed him, and clapped a hand on the boy's large armored shoulderpad. "You excited?"

"Well, yeah," Matt replied. "I've been wanting to meet these guys for a while now, especially considering all the press they get."

Guy smiled. "I think you'll get along with them both pretty well."

"All right, everyone!" Taiga's voice suddenly called out, as the commander approached the crew with Hyuuma and Liger in tow. "Now that we're all finally here...let's get ready to welcome back some old friends of ours!"

A cheer arose from the crew.

There was a flurry of motion as the last preparations were made, and the final computer terminals were disconnected from the robots. Hyuuma motioned for people to clear the area in case something went wrong. Outside, the four Carpenters stood on standby for damage control. Silence fell as the crew could hear the two of them powering up as the reactivation sequence went into effect.

The first motion was seen in HyoRyu's hands, which twitched fitfully for a moment, then clenched into a fist and opened; the action was repeated twice by EnRyu only moments after. Two pairs of pink optical units suddenly lit, and a cheer rose as first HyoRyu, then EnRyu sat up. With powerful movements, HyoRyu stood up to his full height of 20.5 meters, towering over the gathered crew. HyoRyu reached over and helped lift his brother up off of the ground and up into a standing position.

The operation, it seemed, was a total success.

"Hot damn!" Matt whooped, clapping his hands as the cheers rose into overjoyed roars.

When the noise calmed down, Taiga stepped foward with a big smile. "It's good to see you active again, HyoRyu and EnRyu."

"It's great to be back!" EnRyu greeted in a strong, energetic voice, raising a hand in a friendly gesture. "We thought we were goners for a while there!"

HyoRyu looked around at the other ruined Mobile Unit mechanoids. "The others haven't been repaired yet?" he asked in a reserved, cooler voice than EnRyu.

"It'll take some time before the rest of the Unit is up and running," Liger said. "And considering that we don't have all the usual resources, it took longer than normal to repair you two." He adjusted his hat back in place with a smirk. "But now that you two are back online, fixing everyone else is a piece of cake!"

"We're just glad we were able to bring you back online in the first place," Guy added.

"We'll do what we can to help," HyoRyu said with a nod. He then looked out the doorway, to the illuminated campsite. "Where are we? Surely we're not back on Earth, are we?"

"We're still on Repli-Earth," Guy explained. "After we defeated the Sol Masters, we managed to land back here. We've been repairing the Kushinada and the J-Ark since then."

"So we managed to win, huh?" EnRyu said, picking up the large ladder-like rifle and attaching it to his back, then handing the crane-like one to his brother unit, who did the same.

"It appears that way," HyoRyu then said, looking out towards the dark sky. "All that's left is to rebuild the Mobile Unit, and then we can go home."

EnRyu, however, had found his attention diverted. Pink optical units locked onto Matt, immediately recognizing him, though not the black and emerald armor he wore. "Hey!" he greeted, lowering himself down onto one knee. "When did you show up, Matt?"

"Hey." He made a curt gesture with his pointer and middle finger. "It's kinda of a long story, boys. I'll tell it to ya later."

Of course, he didn't know who they were at all, but he figured it'd be better to play along for the moment.

"Alright," EnRyu said, still kneeling. The red robot looked about the room for a brief moment. "Are your friends here? I don't see them."

"Nah," Matt replied, never one to skip a beat. "They're fine, though. Don't worry about it."

That was his business, anyway.

Before Matt could speak again, Liger stepped foward. "HyoRyu, EnRyu, we still need to run tests on you both to confirm that your systems are running properly. If you like, we can do that while we show you the area."

Edited by The Helldragon on June 3, 2008 at 21:07:20.

"Roger," the two brother units said simultaneously to Dr. Liger, as EnRyu stood back up to his full height.

Descending the catwalk, Kazuo approached Dr. Liger. "We're ready to begin the tests at any time," he reported, scrawling a few more notes on his clipboard.