A/N: Okay, so let's be frank. I absolutely despised the ending of Xenosaga 3. I could not stand what Monolith Soft did to KOS-MOS. And so I decided to write this one-shot, sort of to throw back in their faces while appeasing my own psyche, which was very much traumatized by what happened to our favorite android. Obviously, there will be blatant spoilers from Xenosaga 3. Read at your own risk.
And since I'm new to the Xeno section, here's how it goes: When I submit something, I include my recommended original soundtrack listings, so the music can provide the full experience. The way it works is that the first part, in bold, is the name of the song. After the divider is the artist/group name, then the album information. After the next divider is the scene in which the music should be played. It's fairly straightforward.
Jr. #2 / Yuki Hajiura - Xenosaga Episode II OST, Disc 1 / Just Another Day on the Elsa
Gnosis (From 0:20 on) / London Philharmonic Orchestra - Xenosaga Episode I OST, Disc 1 / The Gnosis?
Blow Me Away (From 0:17 on) / Breaking Benjamin - Halo 2 OST / Enter the Star Destroyer and Full Frontal Assault
LONGING / Gackt - Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII OST / Musouka's Entry and the Proto-Crescens
KOS-MOS' Emotions ?? - Xenosaga The Animation OST / Reawakening and Recovery
REDEMPTION / Gackt - Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII OST / "Operation Broken Angel"
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Ten years is a long time to humans. One-tenth of their life. The time it takes for a child to become an adolescent, or an adolescent to become an adult. Wars can begin, ravage countless lives, and then peter out over ten years. Would-be empires rise and fall. On a galactic scale, however, ten years was absolutely nothing, not even a tenth of a clock's tick.
In deep space, far from any known or familiar land, measuring time was not only pointless, but also fairly difficult. For the crew of the star freighter Elsa von Braun, the day that marked their tenth year of flight across the galaxy toward Lost Jerusalem was a day unmarked by any form of celebration, unrecorded on any of their calendars. It was just another day spent staring out at the empty reaches of space, waiting and hoping that today would be the day that Lost Jerusalem appeared on their long-range sensors.
So far, that was not the case. As he was wont to do early in the morning, Jr. was walking an ovular groove into the deck of the bridge, pacing back and forth with his head down, lost in thought. Those who had known him would have expected him to spend that entire time griping about his boredom, but the current crew of the Elsa had learned after only a few days of this activity occurring that he spent his time pacing retreated into his own subconscious, visiting with Albedo.
Down in the forward section of the bridge, Tony kicked back in his chair with his feet up on his console, reading a magazine that he had already read countless times. There was a running gag going around the ship that he was trying to memorize the magazine cover to cover so that whenever he was bored, he could read it in his head.
Hammer was leaning on one arm on his console, idly tapping the keys with his other hand. He could not possibly have looked any more bored. Shelley occupied herself by sorting through the data contained in the Elsa's main computer; both the data they had left with and the data they had gathered on the various star systems they had passed along their route. Captain Matthews sat in his chair, elevated up so he could view the sea of stars beyond the upper viewports of the ship.
In other parts of the ship, Shion was finishing up the last of the dishes and cleaning from breakfast earlier, with help from Allen. Mary wandered the ship's corridors, looking in at the Robot Academy work area as Scott and the Professor tinkered away on their latest Erde Kaiser design.
All said, it was just another boring, tedious day on the search for Lost Jerusalem.
Looking down onto the main part of the bridge, Matthews called out, "What's the situation on that star system we're approaching?"
"At our present speed," Shelley replied, looking up from her console, "we'll reach the orbit of the outermost planet-like body this evening. The system consists of eight defined planets and another half dozen planet-like bodies"
Matthews looked down at the red-haired chief executive of the Kukai Foundation. "What do you say, Little Master? Do we investigate this system or bypass it?"
Having halted his pacing and temporarily suspended his internal conversation with his other half, Jr. stepped forward and stared intently into the holographic screen that projected a layout of the system. It wasn't a very impressive system by any means; a middle-of-life yellow sun blazing at the system's center, four small planets close to the sun, then an asteroid belt, and another four planets, considerably larger than the inner four, beyond that. There were a number of smaller planetoids scattered beyond the eighth planet.
"What are our long-range sensors saying?" Jr. asked. "Any of them habitable?"
"Checking it now," Hammer replied, leaning forward intently and typing commands into his console. There was silence for a few minutes, before he turned back to Jr. and said, "The third planet is already suitable for human habitation. The fourth looks like a likely candidate for terraformation."
Frowning, Jr. stuck his left pinky into his mouth and chewed on it slightly, a nervous habit that he still hadn't managed to shake. In the back of his mind, Albedo taunted him good-naturedly over it. "How are ship supplies looking? Do we need to put down anytime soon to scavenge?"
Matthews tapped a command into the arm of his command chair, then looked back to Jr. and shook his head. "No, we should be good at least until the next system."
Waving his left hand dismissively, Jr. turned his back to the viewport. "Pass, then. We don't need to waste the fuel."
"You got it, Little Master," Matthews said. "Tony, take us around and set for the next star system."
"Aye, aye, Captain," Tony replied automatically, tugging on the control levers of the Elsa to turn it away from the minor system before them.
Hammer's console pinged. "Hmm?" Curious, he keyed in a series of commands.
"What is it?" Matthews asked.
"Metallic sensors picked something up for a moment," the Elsa's navigator replied. "Probably just debris from an iron asteroid."
"Oh."
Several minutes passed in silence, during which time Shion and Allen came up to the bridge. "I heard the engine pitch change," Shion said. "Are we changing course?"
Spinning around, Jr. nodded to the former Vector chief. "Yeah, this system doesn't have anything we're interested in, so we're bypassing it."
A tremor coursed through the ship, momentarily sending anyone on their feet stumbling. It ended just as quickly as it began, almost as if it had never existed to begin with. Steadying herself against Shelley's console, Shion looked around. "What was that?"
"We encountered a gravitic anomaly," Hammer answered, his hands flying over his console. "The tremor was the ship's artificial gravity compensating."
"What could have caused it?" Allen asked.
"Checking now…" He was silent for a few moments, then jerked in his seat as if he'd been stunned. "What the hell? There's no way!"
Lowering his chair down to its down position, Matthews booted the headrest of Hammer's seat and growled, "Spit it out, ya moron. If you know what caused it, then tell us!"
"I haven't seen these readings in years…" the navigator murmured, as if he hadn't heard or felt Matthews' assault.
Jr. crossed the bridge and slammed his palms down on Hammer's console. "What the hell did you see, man?" he shouted. "Tell us already!"
"G-g-g-gnosis!" Hammer cried, pointing toward the upper viewport.
Instinctively, the entire crew looked out to see a horde of the semi-corporeal aliens floating in the void before them, having materialized out of seemingly nowhere. Every type of Gnosis that had ever been encountered in space was there before them, slowly and inexorably making their way toward the ship.
"What the hell?" Matthews roared. "Gnosis? They're all supposed to be gone!"
"Damn it!" Jr. swore. "We don't have anything or anyone aboard capable of projecting the Hilbert Effect. We're sitting ducks out here!"
In muted horror, Shion fell to her knees on the deck, her hands rising up to cover her slack-jawed mouth. Jr. was right. Without the Hilbert Effect at their disposal, they could do nothing against the Gnosis fleet. Even with the Hilbert on their side, taking on a fleet of the size they were up against was still an unpleasant way of committing suicide.
It just wasn't fair. Everything that had happened since the events at Michtam ten years ago. KOS-MOS, chaos, and Jin disappearing into the depths of space. Though, in Jin's case, Shion knew in her heart that Jin had done more than just disappear. Strange though it may sound to some, she knew that she had felt him die, back there at Michtam.
She had made a promise with chaos, and with KOS-MOS. She had promised to see them again, on Lost Jerusalem. On Earth. Somewhere deep down inside her, she knew that they were almost there. That their former homeworld was within reach. But cruel, cruel fate was stepping in to deny them that which they sought, to be reunited with their friends, no, their family long missing.
Her take on the situation was shared by most of the rest of the crew. Tony and Jr. were in the process of cursing the longest blue streak either of them had ever uttered, and the only reason one couldn't hear Matthews joining in was because Jr. and Tony's combined volume drowned him out. Hammer was committing his namesake on his console, pounding his fists on his console and cursing existence in a less-colorful fashion than his shipmates. Allen simply knelt down and held onto Shion from behind, and Shelley sat quietly at her console, perhaps mentally preparing herself for that final, great journey.
Just as Mary appeared on the bridge, attracted by all the commotion she could hear throughout the ship, Hammer's console began chiming again. Raising his head from where he'd lowered it in surrender, he blinked in confusion at the readouts appearing on his monitor. "Huh?"
"Hammer, if you're about to tell me any more bad news," Matthews growled, "then the Gnosis won't get the chance to kill you."
"Actually, I can't make heads or tails of this," Hammer said meekly. "I'm reading a fragmentation of the barrier between realspace and hyperspace. It's completely different than any UMN interaction, but it also matches nothing that the Gnosis cause when they use their gravity distortions."
"You don't have any idea what the hell's causing it?" Matthews asked.
"None whatsoever," the navigator replied, shrugging.
"You don't need to bother with your sensors to know what's causing it," Jr. said, his voice filled with awe. As the others looked to him, he pointed out the forward viewport. "Look!"
Ahead of them, appearing between them and the Gnosis fleet, a vastly-huge white dagger thrust itself through the fabric of realspace on a course that drove it directly between the Elsa and her antagonists like the weapon it resembled. As their vision caught up with the massive acceleration of the craft, the crew of the Elsa took in the details of the ship: a milky white hue, constructed in the shape of an arrowhead with a series of stepped ziggurats on the rear portion of the hull, which supported a T-shaped command tower.
As soon as it fully emerged into realspace, a massive globular pulse of blue energy spiraled out of some point in the center of the craft, expanding outwards in the infinitely-familiar visual aspect of the life-saving Hilbert Effect. The wave expanded out hundreds of kilometers, enveloping more space than the Elsa's short-range sensors could monitor. And every single Gnosis that the wave touched was forced into realspace as well, making them vulnerable to the ensuing assault.
No sooner had the Hilbert Effect pulsed out of the craft than it had opened fire with an eye-opening array of energy weapons, sending waves of green energy flowing out at the Gnosis. These waves, actually individual laser bolts being fired in such speed that they appeared to coalesce together and form a wave of pure energy, were far more potent against the Gnosis; incinerating any smaller Gnosis they came in contact with, and burning crippling holes through the larger ones.
"God Almighty," Jr. uttered, awestruck as he and the others watched the massive newcomer waltz fields of fire through the Gnosis fleet, swatting them down as easily as if they were annoying gnats.
They may have been gnats when it came to absorbing that kind of firepower, but the Gnosis were no less aggressive because of it. They wheeled on the new attacker almost in tandem, returning fire with energy bolts and Gnosis torpedoes, all of which were effortlessly nullified ten meters above the ship's surface by an invisible energy shield that flashed green whenever struck. The new ship continued to rip the Gnosis attackers to shreds, but it seemed as if the more were destroyed, the more came to challenge them.
A handful of the Gnosis, however, maintained their prior interest in the Elsa. A handful of fighter-type Gnosis swarmed over the ship, pummeling it with energy attacks and physical strikes to its frame. The automatic point-defense laser cannons of the Elsa returned fire, but to no avail; the enemies were simply far too maneuverable for the cannons to lock onto.
"Hull damage is increasing!" Hammer reported. "We can't take this much longer!"
As if that statement had reached the ears of a benevolent god, divine intervention came in the form of two of the fighter Gnosis exploding as they made another pass by the bridge. The cause of this stirred confusion amongst the crew until they saw a pair of Vector-built VX-7000s roar past the bridge, firing laser rifles at the enemy still around the ship.
"Attention, Elsa crew," a voice burst out over the ship speakers. "Hold your position and maintain defensive fire until further notice. We'll have you out of this in no time."
This transmission was coincided by a third mech unit looming into view beyond the forward screens, but this was unlike anything ever before seen by any of the crew. A dark maroon in color, the mech was head and shoulders above even the old ES units that they had employed so many years ago. Humanoid in form, the mech's design seemed to have been patterned with a draconic influence. The head of the mech was more human-like than most units they had previously seen, primarily the feature of the two eyes glowing a brilliant green. The mech's most notable feature, however, was the pair of wings that rose above its shoulders; white over the left shoulder, black over the right shoulder.
It certainly wasn't lacking in the weapons department either. Its right hand held an active, dark blue beam sword that had an attached power line connecting to a presumed power generator on its back. A shield on its left forearm had a segmented whip attached to it, and judging by the way that the whip flexed and coiled occasionally, the pilot of the craft clearly had full control over every segment of the whip. Its most intimidating weapon, however, was the dull silver twin-barreled cannon that it held in its left hand that simply screamed 'massive area-of-effect destruction.'
Without a doubt, the mech they were looking at had been designed to inflict the maximum amount of damage to the widest variety of enemies, at any range it found itself competing in.
Somewhat hesitantly, Matthews opened a transmission to the unidentified mech. "Uhh… this is Captain Matthews of the freighter Elsa von Braun…"
"I know who you are, Captain," the mech's pilot interrupted. "I know all there is to know about your ship and crew. Do not be alarmed, however, for I am on your side. As for me? You can call my chariot the ES Streich, even though it operates on a different power generator than an Anima Vessel. But I digress. As to me? Well, I'm sure two among you know who I am. Perhaps they can even recognize my voice."
Blinking, Allen's mouth slowly fell open. "Hey, wait a minute…"
A real-time holoimage was suddenly added to the transmission, revealing an adult man sitting within the mech's cockpit, which itself looked radically different than anything they were used to. He had short, close-cut black hair, dark blue eyes, and a smirk the size of the cannon in his mech's left hand.
"Vynn!" Shion and Allen exclaimed simultaneously.
The man's smirk only grew. "Good to see you remember me, Chief, Allen. Sorry I haven't talked to you guys much since that incident on the Woglinde so many years ago, but I've been keeping myself busy." His expression darkened. "Especially these past ten years. Creating a starship and an entirely-new AMWS model dedicated to absolute destruction isn't easy, after all."
"So that's what you've been up to all this time, huh, you sneaky old bastard?" Allen asked, grinning.
The man, Vynn, gave him a thin smile. "Only the past ten years. Before that I contented myself to keep an eye on you lot."
Allen nodded knowingly. "The special code, right?"
"You knew?"
"I figured you would do something like that, so I set my diagnostics to watch for any new code inserted into the program," Allen replied, grinning.
"Smart."
"Shion, you guys know him?" Jr. asked.
Turning toward the URTV, the former Vector employee nodded. "He was one of the coding technicians who was with us working on KOS-MOS," she answered. "Even though he was a very junior member of the project at the time, he actually knew a lot more about coding and hardwiring her OS than his superiors did." She smiled fondly, as if thinking back to the old days. "You could almost say that her personality and soul are a result of his efforts."
Jr. grinned that infectious grin of his. "Then I bet she'll be glad to see him again once we meet her at Lost Jerusalem," he said.
Having overheard them, Vynn's face darkened once again. "You guys…" he said quietly. "You don't know, do you?"
With a sudden sense of foreboding washing over her, Shion turned back toward the holoimage. "Know what? Vynn, did something happen to KOS-MOS?"
Closing his eyes, the Streich's pilot nodded slowly. "She won't be waiting for you at Lost Jerusalem. The special code I had installed in her OS showed me her final battle on Michtam. She sacrificed herself by charging up that attack she learned from T-elos and then ramming into a carrier-type Gnosis. I'm…I'm sorry, Shion. That's why…these past ten years, I've had the Streich and Intrepid built. To make those bastards pay for what they did to her."
Shion and Allen exchanged glances. However projective and attached to KOS-MOS Shion had been, both former Vector employees knew it was much, much worse in Vynn's case. He had, in effect, breathed life into her, and had immediately become extremely attached to her. To this day, neither Shion nor Allen had figured out if that attachment was simply pride in his work, or if it was something deeper.
"Vynn, I…" Shion began, but stopped herself. She knew there was nothing she could say to ease even a little of the pain he had to be carrying around inside him.
Fortunately, he glanced off-screen as a sensor device in his cockpit flashed, throwing red highlights onto his face. "Sorry to cut the reunion short, Chief, but there's still a fight going on out here. Like I said, just stay put and keep up your defensive fire. Leave this to me and the boys. Streich out."
With that, the transmission went dead, and the Streich shot off toward the battlefield with unbelievable speed. Shion watched its flight path; wherever that bloody-red mech went, dead Gnosis filled the space behind it.
---
With its engines flaring at maximum acceleration, the Streich dove into a cluster of Gnosis fighters, the Hyper Saber in its right hand and the heat rod on its shield humming. To any onlookers, the mech never once struck with its weapons; merely passing through the formation before diving away and moving on. But the assumption that Streich had not struck the enemy was put to a lie as they all simultaneously burst into nothingness.
"Squad Two, form up on the Elsa and screen their weak fire zones," Vynn ordered as he sent his mech swooping and diving through the battlefield. "Squad Four, keep the Gnosis fighters off the Intrepid so she can get in closer and start punishing their capital ship. Fighters, see if you can get in and start harassing their ships. If it gets too troublesome, break off and join the screen around the Elsa."
A staccato of acknowledgements returned from his orders, but he barely paid them any mind. He was focusing on the bigger picture. With the experimental awareness-enhancing cockpit system in his mech, codenamed ZERO, he could see every action taken on the battlefield as it was occurring, and two seconds into the future.
Suddenly, he halted in midspace and extended the Hyper Saber. A Gnosis that had been lining up to hit one of Squad Three's AGWS units from the side ran full on into the saber, bisecting itself. Vynn smirked, chalked up another win for the ZERO System, and moved on.
From ahead, two fighter-type Gnosis angled in on the Streich, diving headlong toward the ES craft. Inside the cockpit, Vynn smiled coldly. "I'll give you my pain, magnified a thousandfold!"
Raising its left arm high over its head, the Streich snapped the heat rod forward, wrapping the segmented metal whip around the torso of the rightmost alien attacker. Pulling its arm sideways, the ensnared Gnosis was thrown against its fellow attacker, stunning them both long enough for the Streich to unleash a hailstorm of machine cannon fire from the small cannons mounted on its collar.
"Playing games with the small fries, are we, Vynn?" a feminine voice called over the comm system.
The maroon mech turned to its left as another mech of similar size, but vastly different design, drifted down from above to become 'level' with it. The new mech had a much slimmer body than that of the Streich, and was mostly metallic silver in color, save for a handful of sections that were painted a mixture of purple and red. The two most outstanding features of the mech were the vaguely hand-shaped purple-and-red wings adorning its back, and the fact that it had no arms.
Streich's pilot smirked. "Finally taking the Proto-Crescens out of her cage, eh, Musouka?"
"It's necessary, from time to time," the now-identified other pilot replied. "Especially against these sheep who refuse to bend to God's will."
"Well-spoken," Vynn said. As he looked to his right, the Gundam's head matched his movement, viewing the battlefield. "So. Cover the left quadrant, will you? The Gnosis seem to be pretty interested in something over there on the right, so I'll go and discourage them a little."
"If you insist," Musouka replied, her tone indicating that she didn't like to follow orders.
The engines of her craft flared, and then she vanished in a flash of light toward the left sector of the battlefield. A veritable minefield of explosions blossomed up from that direction, indicating that she was wasting no time in going to work.
He turned his own craft toward his intended destination. "Now, let's see what's gotten you bastards so excited…" he muttered, then pulled the throttle lever back so violently that the metal groaned in protest.
But the mech itself reacted with an unnatural speed, its engines flaring white-hot and sending the craft blazing through the battlefield. Explosions burst all around him, Gnosis and AGWS whipping through the void, but between his piloting skills and the precognitive warnings of the ZERO System, nothing came close to touching him.
Dozens of meters ahead of him, a skirmish line composed of over a dozen cruiser and fighter-type Gnosis set itself directly in his path and began raining heavy fire down on him. The bi-colored wings of the mech swung up and in front of the Streich, their heavy armor ablating most of the incoming fire away. Behind the wings, the mech drew back its saber and prepared to blow right through the enemy lines.
Before it could reach effective range, however, two heavy laser beams sheared up into the Gnosis formation from below, accompanied by dozens of smaller gunfire streams. Not stopping his forward momentum, Kagi looked toward the source of the fire to see the Elsa and its escort squad driving up toward the Gnosis lines.
"We're not just here to watch the party, you know!" Matthews announced as his ship's forward laser cannons burned through the remaining cruiser-type Gnosis, allowing the escort AGWS units to wipe out the fighters.
"We'll cover your tail, Commander," one of the AGWS pilots called out. "Give 'em hell!"
Smirking, Vynn retracted the Streich's wings and weaved between the formation of AGWS craft, eliciting cheers from the pilots before they returned to the business of keeping any tailing Gnosis off of their commander. As the Elsa and her escorts receded rapidly behind him, the gaggle of Gnosis swarming one particular area came into view.
"Time to crash the party," Streich's pilot muttered to himself, manipulating several controls.
Lowering the black wing over its right shoulder, the mech shoulder-rammed a cruiser-type Gnosis at full speed. Screeching in pain, the Gnosis reeled back and prepared to make a retaliatory strike, but this action was circumvented by the Streich leveling the twin buster rifle and firing. A golden burst of ionized energy shot out of the weapon's emitters, slamming into and incinerating the Gnosis on contact.
As the other Gnosis began to react to the sudden arrival and assault of the mech, Streich abandoned the buster rifle in favor of a pure-melee approach. The heat rod dangling from the shield began to glow a pale blue color, indicating that it had gone into plasma-charged mode, a much more destructive mode than the standard thermal energy used to power the heat rod.
"Alone against all these Gnosis?" Vynn grinned. "They don't stand a chance!"
---
In pitch blackness, something clicked. A switch thrown, a failsafe disabled. The words "SYSTEM START" appeared in red, hovering in the void of absolutely blackness. After a moment, the words retreated down and to the left as the blackness flickered and vanished as though a light switch had been thrown.
In its place was a vast vista of stars, the same image last recorded in the memory banks. A system diagnostic flashed into view, displaying external damage, which was reported as being immense, and internal damage, which was only slightly less so. The power generator was leaking energy at a steady rate whenever activated, and would likely run out completely if not powered down or replaced within a few hours.
That knowledge, however, did nothing to diminish the feeling of calm, of peace that surrounded the personality core. Though these days, that personality core could be considered more of a true heart, if only in the emotional sense. Despite knowing of its own impending mortality, the personality core felt calm, peaceful. Fulfilled.
But that peaceful feeling went right out the window when visual sensors registered a maroon-colored AMWS craft surging past it, a beam saber of some sort held in its right hand, and a fighter-type Gnosis impaled on the beam. Halting its forward momentum, the AMWS kicked the dead or dying Gnosis off its saber, then turned and shredded another Gnosis with a burst of cannon fire from guns mounted near or on its head.
Almost as an instinct action, insofar as machines have instincts, scanners attacked the unidentified AMWS scientifically, recording every possible detail about it, from size and mass down to weapons and other equipment. Judging by its armaments, the craft was designed specifically for engaging Gnosis from just about any range. But no name or official registry came up from the memory banks.
Red eyes blinked twice in a face framed by blue, as she quietly began to catalogue within her memory banks the battle she was observing, perhaps in preparation to contemplate it and its meaning once her reactor had run out of power, once whatever it was inside her that made her a living being had taken leave of her shattered mortal shell.
But still, despite it all, she held onto the desperate hope that this unidentified AMWS was there for her, to rescue her from a cold, lonely death in space.
---
Ignoring the Gnosis that was still twitching slightly following the barrage of machine cannon fire, Vynn glanced to the ammo counter for the guns, which were still holding fairly high. Drawing his craft's right arm behind him and bringing the left across his torso, he prepared to strike out again at the now-routed Gnosis, when the sensors began to beep for his attention to be turned to something behind him.
He turned Streich around, and his eyes widened when he laid eyes on the object his craft had detected. Shaking his head, he instructed the mech to perform a full sensor scan. Visual boxes began cropping up on the viewscreens surrounding him, one a wire-frame blueprint of what he was looking at, the other a zoomed-in visual image.
Even without having to confirm it from the Streich's databank, Vynn knew immediately that it was her, floating there in space, seemingly staring directly back at him.
"I…can't believe it…" he muttered to himself. "It's really you…"
An impact against the back of his mech threw him forward, and he snarled as he brought the right arm forward, slamming the elbow back into the Gnosis that had struck him. He then lifted that arm high above him and cleaved down, a hard vertical strike that completely bisected the alien.
With that threat dealt with, he turned his craft back toward her, powering down the hyper saber and returning the hilt to its docking station on the right hip. He brought his craft toward her with small, controlled thruster bursts, until he was close enough for his mech's right hand to reach out and gently take hold of her.
As the arm drew her toward his craft, he reached up and pressed a button on the back of his space suit's helmet, causing the protective visor to lock into place, sealing him into an internal environment. He next entered the command sequence to open the cockpit, purging the atmosphere as the dual layers of armor slid away, with the inner layer sliding down to become a hatch. The forward viewscreens slid to either side of the cockpit, and the forward control panel rose up toward the ceiling.
Shucking off his harness, Vynn stepped out onto the hatch of his mech, to where she laid in the palm of Streich's hand, regarding him steadily with those same red eyes. Even though he had seen the damage she had sustained on the sensor scan, being able to reach out and touch the sheared-off shoulder joint that was all that remained of her right arm, to look down and see where her body ended at her waist, it was something completely different.
"Those bastards," he growled. "Look what they did to you…"
"It was not the Gnosis that did this to me," she replied coolly. "This damage is self-inflicted, a result of my being caught in the resultant explosion of D-Teneritas."
Her voice was the same as he remembered it, and yet not. There was a warmth in her tone that hadn't been there all those years ago, indicating just how far along she had come in her understanding of humans.
"It doesn't matter," he told her. "They're still going to pay. I spent ten years hunting these bastards down. These are the last Gnosis, and they're not going to get away."
As he said that, he witnessed for the first time ever, with his own eyes, as her facial expression changed. Her look became one of surprise, then of sadness. "Ten years?" she asked quietly, and the sadness in her tone caught him off-guard.
Smiling faintly, he picked her up out of Streich's hand and carried her back into the cockpit, the mech automatically resealing the cockpit behind him. "It's been a long time," he said. "But that doesn't matter anymore. We've found you, and now everything is going to be okay."
"My reactor core has been–"
"Shh, nevermind that now," he said as he seated himself again, not bothering to strap in, and let her lean back against him. He reached around her to grip the control levers. "Rest now, princess. You don't need to fight anymore."
She nodded, then leaned her head back against his chest. Even though she knew he could not see it, she smiled anyway. "Thank you."
"Attention, all pilots and crew," he called out over an open communications frequency. "Operation Broken Angel is, at this moment, a complete success."
For a moment, absolute silence filled the airwaves. Then, Musouka's voice: "You are positive? You have recovered the broken angel?"
He grinned. "Got it aboard right now," he answered, using a gender-neutral identifier in order to surprise Shion and the others later.
With that confirmation, the comm system popped, and the noise that filled the cockpit of every AGWS and AMWS, every corridor of the Intrepid, and the bridge of the Elsa was not a voice, but the cheering and applause of the entire crew compliment of the massive Destroyer.
Still grinning wickedly, Vynn cut in over the cheers, "Ladies, gentlemen, I wish to thank you for your years of service and hard work toward accomplishing this goal. But our mission is only halfway complete. Now that we have recovered the broken angel, we must focus our efforts on wiping the Gnosis from our galaxy completely. Show them no mercy!"
"SIR, YES, SIR!" literally thousands of voices echoed in response.
From the outset, she knew that she was the 'broken angel' they were referring to, and she quietly sat there digesting the knowledge that all these men and women had spent years of their lives searching just for her. That knowledge caused her personality core to glow warmly, and she smiled.
Vynn leaned his head forward so that he was speaking directly into her right ear, and quietly said, "It's good to have you back, KOS-MOS."
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A/N: Whelp, that's pretty much it. You can thank my friend Jess for the inclusion of her character Musouka and the Proto-Crescens, which is just a scaled-back version of her Neo-Crescens, which originally came from the same Gundam Wing RP that the Streich came from as well. For those of you who couldn't figure it out, Streich combines the body of Epyon with the wings of Wing ZERO Custom, and a more powerful variant of the beam saber and heat rod.
I've also come to the realization that a lot of people are probably going to clamor for this to be more than just a one-shot. Well, I can't make any guarantees. But feel free to ask away. Any other questions you may have about this bastardization, feel free. A word of warning tho: If I construe anything as a flame, I'll respond violently. It's like cracking one of the later XS3 bosses with a short-range attack without first having a Revenge-nullifying item equipped. It tends to hurt you.