A/N: This is a renga story that I co-wrote with anja-chan and Tobi Tortue. We used Gundam SEED as our series, "aliens" as our main theme, and the prompt, "I found the strangest thing in my pocket." We each wrote for ten minutes before rotating laptops, but during our turns, we were only allowed to read the page that came directly before our turn. If there are points that don't connect or make sense, that be why. We did three of these stories and the results were amusing; please check my friends' profiles for the other pieces.
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The Vesalius jumped forward with a surge of its thrusters as Captain Ades barked orders. A craggy asteroid loomed on the port side of the ship, revolving slowly like a rotisserie chicken in the void of space. A shudder passed through the battleship's thick frame, as if the very steel were shivering at the almost-impact. At a safe distance, the thrusters were disengaged, and the Vesalius returned to cruising speed as the hunk of space rock passed them with little room to spare. The crewmembers on the bridge breathed a collective sigh of relief.
Rau Le Creuset grinned at Captain Ades.
"Try not to look so frustrated, Ades," he said smoothly, his voice silken like fine fabric. "This is uncharted territory we're entering. You can hardly expect to avoid every piece of debris with a mass of spare kilometers."
Ades pursed his lips and waited until Le Creuset had turned away to mutter his response. "Those 'spare kilometers' are what keep us from getting rammed and sunk."
Le Creuset brushed his pale hair away from his mask and floated to the digital map in the center of the bridge. "Now," he said eagerly, pointing to a blinking green mark that represented the Vesalius. "We are here, and the Earth Forces legged ship has passed around the colony and headed for the moon. If we're to catch them, we're going to have to take a shortcut through the strip of debris that's lying here." Ades watched him skeptically as he pointed to another spot on the lit map.
"We don't know what's out there," the Captain said carefully.
"Oh, but we have to try," insisted Rau Le Creuset suavely. "That Mu La Flaga is tempting me — I can feel it. We're going to fight, and this time, the legged ship will fall."
"Yes, sir," Ades answered heavily. He turned to focus on getting the ship and crew safely through the debris belt so his commander could chase after the Naturals and his damned Mu La Flaga.
"Captain!" yelled the helmsman suddenly, twisting in his seat to face his superiors. "Something's wrong with the ship! She's not responding!"
The Velasilus's CIC suddenly gave a yelp and threw off her headset. She looked around in a mixture of fear and embarrassment as she bent to pick up the fallen headset. "I-I'm sorry. But there was… s-something…" She held the earphones at face level, and then the entire crew cringed as an unearthly wail sprung from the headset and echoed throughout the bridge.
"What is that?" Le Creuset demanded, his voice dripping with tightly-restrained venom. "What is going on here?" The masked commander turned suddenly to Captain Ades. "Whatever is happening, it needs to be fixed. Now." Even through the silver eyes of the mask, Ades could feel his commander's icy stare.
"Captain!" yelled the helmsman again, this time his voice straining desperately. "If we don't get the thrusters to reengage and the wheel to work again, we're going to crash into that chunk of debris!" Ades and Le Creuset watched as the young man threw his weight into turning the wheel, and failed miserably.
A scream echoed throughout the bridge, another voice to the erupting chaos. "That's not debris!"
Rau Le Creuset jumped from the map in the back of the bridge to the large screens at the bow of the Vesalius where he could see the scene unfolding with greater clarity.
What the helmsman had mistaken for a lump of rock and space debris appeared to be writhing, unfolding somehow like a complex origami in the hand of a curious child. Long spindles grew from its center as it became enveloped in some kind of luminiferous gas.
"Ready the G-pilots, and have them sortie at once!" Le Creuset commanded, turning back to the crew and throwing forward one white-gloved hand. "I need that thing cleared away immediately!" He pushed off from the screens and as his boots tapped lightly on the floor of the upper bridge, he turned to Captain Ades. "We shall consider it hostile, and a weapon of the Earth Forces.
"It must be destroyed."
The message was relayed throughout the Vesalius, but Le Crueset's typically bemused expression was gone, replaced with a tight-lipped frown as the G-pilots launched from the ship. The fog that surrounded the unidentified object had slowed somewhat, but was still creeping around the midsection of what seemed to be many antennae. It was unlike any other ship the masked commander had ever seen and he didn't like it. The Vesalius was still rudderless and headed directly for the smoky center.
"Dearka, stay well back and use the Buster's cannon from the left. Yzak, you cover him in case of enemy fire. Nicol, Mirage Colloid and go in for a closer look. I'll take the—" Athrun Zala's voice, crackling with the air of command over the radio channel, suddenly cut off. The entire bridge was completely silent for several seconds, the hair on the back of Le Creuset's neck prickling uncomfortably. Then before he could issue any commands, the strange wailing erupted across all radio frequencies, permeating the bridge with its unearthly sound. The crew simultaneously fell into a state of near panic, a note of hysteria in the yelps and shouts from the soldiers.
Slamming one hand over his left ear, Le Creuset gestured violently with his right hand and shouted, "Cut the radio!"
It was only then that Rau Le Creuset realized that the CIC was frantically switching the entire system on and offline with no success. Whatever the sound was, it was now echoing inside the ship in normal range of hearing and off the radio waves.
He made a decision and turned towards Ades. "I'm going to sortie," Le Creuset nearly mimed, frustrated with the lack of communications on his ship. He'd leave that business to the captain and take on the real enemy himself. With a swirl of his white coat, he exited the bridge.
He slipped into his mobile suit with the ease of practice, his fingers brushing closely over the unit's controls and pressing down in various patterns to bring the machine to life.
"Can you hear what I hear, Mu La Flaga?" Le Creuset whispered darkly as his unit awoke. "We're connected at our cores, you and I, and I wonder…." There was no one to give him clearance to launch, so he zipped from the hangar on his own, raising his voice over the sound of his mobile suit's engines. "I wonder, Mu La Flaga — are you the one that sent this being down upon us?" A corner of his mouth turned up in a wry smirk. "Did you head for the moon because you came across this foreign specimen first? Knowing the Earth Forces, you escaped by the skin of your teeth and are waiting on the other side to see if I'll make it out alive. Well, don't count the Vesalius out just yet."
He squinted through the eyeholes of his mask. Through the smog, he could see the Buster and Duel frantically fighting off the whipping and gyrating fronds of antennae, while the Aegis fired a succession of beams at the core of the fog cloud. He steered his mobile suit to the right, moving to flank the object from behind. The Blitz flickered into view, its Phase Shift armor engaging just in time to block a hazardous backlash from another antennae before flickering back out of sight somewhere inside the fray. But the noise, that awful noise… it still clogged Le Creuset's head with its unearthly wailing shriek.
"I'll take you out," the Commander of the Vesalius hissed through his teeth, flying his high maneuver Ginn in close to fire off a round. It exploded and burned the surrounding fog pink and orange with bright light.
The wailing faltered.
"You can't stand up to four G units and my own mobile suit all at once," Le Creuset spoke sinisterly to the object on his screen, "Nor can you avoid a run-in with the Vesalius itself if you venture too near." He pulled off a tight barrel roll to avoid a flinging antennae and sliced it off above his head, in time to save the wildly fighting Duel. "Oh, Yzak, you're mother would be disappointed that your commander just had to cover your back." But he grinned.
The Duel whirled around, and through the now broken wailing of the alien unit, Le Creuset could make out the voice of the angry Joule boy.
"C-Commander?! You launched your unit? What about the Vesalius? Where's the—"
"Patience, Yzak," Le Creuset responded. "You mustn't allow yourself to grow irritated during a battle. Our communication system seems to be working again. This thing isn't indestructible. Tell Athrun to call the other units together and we'll fire on the count of three." Without waiting for a response, the masked commander reached forward to switch his line to the ship's captain. "Ades," he said, "Fire all forward cannons upon my mark. Aim straight for the center of the fog cloud." With a smirk of satisfaction, he tightened his grip on his unit's controls. "Now we have it," he murmured smoothly.
"Commander," rang Athrun's voice through the radio static, "We've surrounded it, and we're ready for your signal."
"Very well," Le Cresuet responded, feeling his senses tingle at the danger in the maneuver they were about to execute. "You're at the twelve o'clock point, Athrun. The Vesalius will be firing as well, from six o'clock. Do not let the Aegis get caught in the same fire, should our guns penetrate all the way through the fog cloud. Nicol, Yzak, Dearka, you are at surrounding points on the clock, I presume?" He received three affirmatives and bared his teeth in a feral grin of triumph. "Good. On my mark, then. Ades?"
"Ready, sir." The Captain's skepticism traveled surprisingly well over the broken radio connection.
"The countdown, then." Antennae slashed and writhed in protest. "Three…."
"Shit," came Dearka's voice over the line in a panic. "I just found the…."
"Two," Le Creuset went on eagerly.
"…strangest thing in my pocket…."
"One…."
"What?" snapped Yzak Joule. "Elsman, this is not the time to—"
"Guys," Nicol began, while Athrun shouted, "Not now! Just—"
"FIRE," ordered Rau Le Creuset excitedly.
Fire and flame burst forth in unison from all directions to hit the alien object dead center. There was a deafening screech of extraterrestrial proportions and the UFO exploded into a fireworks display of broken parts and debris. Le Creuset grinned like a satisfied tiger. He heard Nicol sigh, Ades let out a shout of relief, and Athrun clear his throat coolly. He fine-tuned his now clear radio system and addressed the remaining two.
"Dearka, Yzak — might I ask what the disruption was?"
Yzak sputtered for a moment, but Dearka's features emerged on his screen looking concerned.
"Commander," the blond boy began, "There's something really weird in my pocket."
"I cannot help it if you insert odd items where they don't belong, Mr. Elsman," Le Creuset responded smoothly. Yzak made a choking noise. "Perhaps you'd like to take care of your personal playthings before launching in the Buster next time. Either way, you'll be cleaning the mess hall as a disciplinary measure for breaking protocol…."
"But sir, it's not even mine," Dearka protested, and Le Creuset raised an eyebrow behind his mask.
"Oh?"
"I… don't know… how it got here…."
"And what is it?" the commander inquired patiently, allowing his unit to drift among the pieces of alien debris that marked his conquest.
Dearka sounded nervous. "It's some sort of alien device, sir," he replied. "It's… beeping. And flashing. Faster and brighter as the seconds go by."
"How did it get in your pocket, Dearka?" Yzak sounded horrified.
"Wait," Athrun interrupted, and Le Creuset perked up his ears. "The radar… there are…"
"Three more unidentified units headed our way," Nicol finished gravely, and when Rau glanced down at his navigator, he found the youngest G pilot was right.
"It's an alien homing device!" Le Creuset hissed through his teeth, and his resounding holler echoed over the radio signal louder than the alien wailing. "DAMN YOU, MWU LA FLAGA!"