episode 8: the road to the republic
	russo is talking to marcus because he wants to rejoin the impires military but marcus tells him that after what he did at the battle there is no way they would allow him to rejoin. russo tryies to tell him that he was given orders to do it but marcus doesn't listen to what he said. russo is now more convinced that if he gets the organoid van has he will get his spot back. herman is talking to van and tells him about a research facility in the republic capital. so van decides to go there. meanwhile irvine is trying to get zeke and van catches him and they start to fight each other. later they leave and moonbay decided to stay at a hotel. at the town that they are in van and moonbay got seperated from fiona, zeke, and irvine. van and moonbay are shopping for food and so is fiona but irvine is forced to pay for the food that fiona got and also carry. van and moonbay decided to go and look for fiona and irvine but all they find is the desert alcabalino gang and they are trapped. van and moonbay manage to escape by going through a window and they run off with the gang in hot pursuit. back at the hotel irvine and fiona are waiting for van and moonbay when they hear a gunshot and when they look they see van and moonbay. the two start to run again and they come to a dead end and they try to get over a wall but only moonbay gets up before and van is trapped below. the gang comes and can't find them. they see moonbay though and then van starts to charge at them from a barrel he was hiding in and then they are on the run again. they come to another deadend with barrels and when the gang shows up they fire into the barrel but the two of them are not there and they decide to get their zoids. they get there and find that viola is already there and they are taken hostage. fiona and irvine and zeke are watching this happen and fiona decided to go and try to free them and they see her and try to capture her and irvine shows up out of  nowhere and frees them zeke merged with the liger and van got in but was getting fired at by russo and then he fought back while irvine got in his command wolf and just when russo fired a shot to defeat van when the smoke cleared van was protected by the shield liger's shield. he charged at russo but they rammed each other and russo broke vans shield and then the empire showed up to get russo so he disbanded the gang and told them to leave and told van not to get captured.