A/N: Dear readers, fellow fans, and other assorted folks; ye have asked, and now ye shall receive. Never had I truly abandoned this project, it just fell out of my favor. And after a few weeks of Dynasty Warriors Gundam and a recent half-marathon of Full Metal Panic! (I say half-marathon because I want to watch it in English dub and I can only find the first 15 or 16 episodes of the first season dubbed online) I've gotten back into the mood to work on this. A certain knowledge I came across concerning two VAs that both were in FMP and also in another anime series I'm known to write for have put the idea in my head to add a little something to this work. Some arbitrarily-named prize to whoever figures out what I added and why. Yes, the why is important. You don't get the prize if you only get the what. But you'll get 10 points if you only figure out the what.

In a remote aristocratic town in the middle of Belgium, Colonel Noriyasu stood on the shooting range of his personal estate, sighting down the barrel of an outdated M14 carbine rifle as the automated, bird-shaped targets downrange shifted back and forth.

"So we've been forced into a stalemate, huh part-timer?"

On the table beside him, Uranami was once again transmitting over a video communications feed. "Considering that we don't know their objectives, our choice of responses is limited," the masked officer calmly replied. "But if we have to make the first move, I would do so at the Corsica Base in the Mediterranean Sea."

"That's the old manufacturing plant for Leos, right?" Noriyasu asked, staring intently downrange, seemingly-ignoring the shifting targets. "The Alliance has been considering added security there for some time. Perhaps we shouldn't discourage them."

"The Aries Middle East troops would be appropriate," Uranami said. "They're lacking in the way of combat experience, but an old friend of mine is one of the squad leaders, and I trust him to do his job well."

"You want to go, don't you?"

"What?"

Noriyasu smiled. "It's written all over your face, part-timer," he said.

The hunting dog lying beneath the table suddenly lifted its head, looking downrange. A moment later, a red bird fluttered up from the bushes behind the target box, screeching irritably as it began to take flight. Noriyasu shifted his aim just so, and the rifle kicked in his arms as the report of a single shot echoed off the surrounding hills.

Lowering the rifle, Noriyasu watched disinterestedly as the hunting dog went off to retrieve the downed bird. "Shoot 'em down for me, part-timer."

---

Standing in the Mobile Suit bay of the Specials submarine, Lieutenant Uranami looked up at the sole remaining Suit on board, a Cancer-class maritime Suit. As he stared up at the craft, he smirked at his superior's insight; Uranami had long since called for his carrier to rendezvous with the submarine for a ride to the Corsica Base even before he had contacted Colonel Noriyasu.

"So, even the latest Cancer Mobile Suit was defeated, huh?" a voice called out from behind Uranami.

The masked man turned to see his old friend, fellow pilot, and one of the few who had seen him without his mask. "It's a shame, isn't it, Shirai?"

Kimiaki Shirai nodded, stepping up beside Uranami and looking at the Cancer. "Is the wounded enemy's new model really that dangerous?"

Uranami nodded solemnly. "We've lost five good men, and that's just too many."

"So what's our next move, Lieutenant?" Shirai asked.

"Locate the five Gundams and determine their objectives," Uranami replied, turning away from the Mobile Suit. "We'll leave this to the Alliance's Marina."

"Lieutenant Uranami, we've made contact with your carrier," a voice reported over the PA system. "You may board whenever you're ready."

With an absent nod to the message, Uranami began the trek toward the top of the submarine, where he would disembark and board his aircraft. As he walked, he mused internally, The enemy is no longer in the ocean. They've gone far beyond what we've predicted and succeeded in a mission we deemed impossible.

---

At an Alliance army base in the center of downtown Tokyo, a technician idly looked over the instruments monitoring the status of the young woman secured to an examination table in the secure observation room beyond the bulletproof glass of the control room.

"Respiration twenty-seven, pulse fifty-seven, body temperature thirty-four degrees Celsius," the technician reported. "The numbers are slowly rising."

Inside the room, Naru slowly opened her eyes, carefully controlling her mental activities, and stared up at the ceiling. She noticed a steady, repetitive dripping sound, but didn't turn her head to determine that the sound was blood dripping to the floor from the gunshot wound on her arm.

Wha… I've been captured, she thought. She formed her left hand into a fist and flexed her arm, testing the strength of the restraints on her. They were solid. Letting go of the fist, she surreptitiously glanced around at her surroundings. Almost immediately, she recognized where she was from various technical briefings she had committed to memory during her days of training to pilot the Gundam.

Fiftieth floor, treatment room. Medical facility Three in Tokyo. Controlled by the Alliance.

Within the control room, the technician turned his chair toward the uniformed officer standing just behind him. "Major Seno, there's a call for you from the lobby."

Shifting his attention from the woman in the observation room down to the row of instruments and monitors on the control panel, the brown-haired Japanese man in the Alliance uniform reached forward and picked up a phone receiver from the console. "Nakakami here."

"Sir, the disc you gave us is protected with high-level encoding," a voice on the other end said. "Our access codes don't work, and none of our cryptologists have been able to get into it."

Seno's eyebrow went up as he leaned backward, amusement shining in his green eyes. "Sounds like a pretty tough nut to crack," he said. "The girl had the disc on her, so she must be someone of importance. Try to copy the data as is, but if you can't, run the disc down to the heavy thinkers at Corry Station."

The technician looked up from his monitors toward the Alliance officer. "So you think she's part of the rebel intelligence, Major Seno?" he asked.

"Could be," Seno replied, shrugging, as he hung up the receiver and turned to a medical analysis monitor. "Hell, she's been through quite a bit of punishment in her time. More bruises, hairline bone fractures, and other injuries than I can shake a stick at. The only one readily apparent, however, is the gunshot wound in her right arm. She's starting to make me a little nervous."

"Should we try truth serum on her?" the technician asked.

"I wouldn't," the officer replied. "Dosages always vary from person to person, and with someone as young as her, if you don't get it spot on the first time, you can't stick her again or you'll cause permanent physiological harm."

---

Outside the building, in an unobtrusive phone booth stood an unobtrusive young woman with short, light blonde hair, wearing tan pants and a purple shirt, with a beige backpack and what appeared to be a walking cane.

"Yeah, okay, that'll work just fine for me, Miss Haruka," Kitsune's inimitable voice said into the phone. "Oh, and don't worry none about the two pull carts with my stuff, I know they're both broken. Right. Uh huh. Dinner's at five? Okay, that sounds great. And I'll help ya close up the tea shop later."

With that short conversation completed, Kitsune returned the phone to its receiver, picked up the cane-like object she had leaning against a corner, and stepped out of the booth. Directly ahead of her, looming into the afternoon sun, was the Alliance hospital building.

"Well now, I think that I oughta pay a little visit to that young lady," she said to herself, smirking.

---

With his aircraft passing high over eastern China, Uranami leaned forward to pull the tactical map out of the printer and closely inspect the readings on it.

"It seems to know that we're tracking it," Shirai said. "It's the same unit that departed from the Kyoto region and destroyed that naval fleet in the Sea of Japan."

Looking up slightly from the map, Uranami crunched the numbers in his head, comparing the distance traveled by the craft with the amount of time it had been traveling. It was little more than simple algebra, but he found that it kept his mind sharp and fresh for the higher-level math usually associated with entrance examinations.

"It's a slow unit," he said finally. "It clearly isn't a unit meant for high-speed flight."

"So each of these different units has a different area of specialization, just as we thought?" Shirai asked.

"You guessed it," Uranami affirmed with a nod. "The one we encountered ourselves was a flight model with massive attack power. I believe the one we're looking at now specializes in close-range combat. We may see something entirely different in the one we're likely to encounter at the Corsica Base. We may even be able to destroy it right then and there." He paused, gave one last glance to the tactical map, then crumpled it in his hand and tossed it over his shoulder. "This machine won't make it to those ceremonies. It's heading directly for an offensive against the Alliance."

"Judging by its direction, the close-combat model is going to strike the Indus supply base."

Uranami shrugged uncaringly and turned away, moving back to his seat in the cockpit. "Pray they fight well. It's all we can do for them."

---

By that time, the close-combat Gundam had already reached the Indus base. With a single massive cleave of its titanium blade, the two guard Leos defending the south entrance were eradicated, leaving the base wide open to attack.

The Gundam marched into the base without hesitation, ignoring the hail of antiaircraft defensive fire raining down on it. Returning the sword to its sheath, the Gundam crouched, tensing as it gripped the hilt in its right hand.

"Hiken, Zangaken!"

With that one outburst, the Gundam's sword struck out at blinding speed, releasing a sweeping wave of ki that washed out across the antiaircraft turrets, destroying them all. That minor nuisance dealt with, the Gundam shifted the blade into its left hand and raised its right toward the huge fuel towers. The dragon crusher folded forward, and then the arm shot out to crash through the fuel tanks. Activating just a spark from the flamethrower nozzles on either side of the crusher, an explosion was triggered inside the fuel tank, igniting the entire stores of fuel.

As the base began to burn to the ground, the Gundam retracted its dragon crusher, and then swept a wave of flame across the faces of the Mobile Suit hangars, the intense heat melting and fusing the doors shut, trapping within any hapless pilots and Mobile Suits.

"They're defenseless," Motoko muttered irritably. "They can't be taking me seriously."

---

Within the observation room at the hospital, Naru took a deep breath to calm her nerves, then clenched her left hand into a fist and began to pull up against the restraints with all her might. She twisted her arm back and forth as she did so, knowing full well that her own flesh was likely to give way before the leather restraints, but still hoping she could force herself free.

After a moment, the sound of static reached her ears and she paused in her efforts, looking over toward one of the monitors on her right. The monitors would normally be used for interrogations from the safety of the control room, but since none of the technicians were aware of her consciousness; she had gone to great pains to carefully remove most of the biosensors that had been attached to her body; there was no reason that the currently static-filled monitor should be active.

And then the static was replaced by the face of the woman who had gotten her stuck in the hospital in the first place; that blonde-haired buffoon that had tried to steal her Gundam. The woman was holding one finger to her lips, indicating a need for discretion. Right; like Naru wanted to talk to her anyway.

The woman's mouth began to move. Even though there was no sound from the monitor, Naru still understood every word she said; she'd been able to lip-read since she was five.

"Now I'm sure a talented girl like yourself can read my lips," the woman was saying, "so while you're just lyin' around, why don't you listen to me for a bit? I'm impressed that you've managed to get yourself back in the swing of things without the fellas in here knowin' anything about it."

Clearly, you didn't notice the unattached wires dangling somewhere below me, Naru thought dryly.

"Well anyways, if you're up for a little trip, I thought I'd help you get out of here. Sound good?"

For now, the restrained pilot thought, still working at her left arm restraints. She'd rubbed her flesh raw a while ago; she could feel blood leaking down her arm.

"I'll take that as a yes," the other pilot said. "Now if you'll just keep lookin' this way, I'll have another door open for ya in about…" She made a show of glancing at her wristwatch. "…five seconds."

Two seconds before that deadline, an explosion rocked the building, the heat and audio intensity letting Naru know that the blast had penetrated the observation room she was contained in. She looked over toward the source of the blast to find a large hole blown into the wall, with the other woman standing in it, grinning. "Time to liven things up!" she exclaimed triumphantly.

Setting her backpack down on the ground, she crossed the room to Naru's observation table and carefully inspected the restraints holding her down. "Damn, how am I supposed to get these things off? Isn't there some kinda switch somewhere or somethin'?"

And then, to the woman's great surprise, Naru's bloodied left hand appeared in her field of vision. "If you've got a knife, give it to me," she said calmly. "They're leather, so they'll cut easily."

The other woman looked up, saw the blood all but coating her arm, and recoiled in shock. "Jesus, what'd you do to your hand!?" She then looked up and saw that Naru had managed to wrench her arm free of the left side restraints, all on her own. Unnerved, she produced a pocket knife and handed it to Naru. "Well, you've certainly got some guts to ya."

Naru shot the woman a look, then went about the process of cutting herself free of the restraints. As soon as she stepped off the table, the woman was holding the backpack out to her. "It's a parachute," she explained. "We're gonna have to jump out the window to get outta here."

For a moment, Naru stared at the woman, attempting to judge her seriousness, then simply shrugged and donned the backpack. "Lead on then, fearless leader."

Nodding, the woman turned and threw a grenade toward the far end of the room, which looked out over Sagami Bay. As the two women took cover behind observational monitors, the grenade exploded, blasting out the far windows and filling the room with smoke.

"Come on!" the woman called, making a mad dash for the window. Still slightly hesitant about the intelligence behind jumping out a window to escape from a hospital, Naru cinched the straps on the parachute and followed.

Kicking off the blasted edge of the building's flooring, the woman spread her arms and legs out to the sides, taking a moment to relish in the invigorating feeling of completely unencumbered flight, unassisted by wings or engines or Mobile Suits. She watched as the woman, below her, flipped herself so that her feet were aimed down, raising the cane-like object in her left arm. A thermal energy spike activated from the end of the cane, which began to spin rapidly above her head, providing just enough lift to slow her descent toward the ground. Mimicking the woman's head over heels maneuver, Naru tugged the release handle of her parachute.

Nothing happened.

"Oh, you've got to be shi-"

"Hey, are you tryin' to kill yourself!?" she heard the sandy-haired woman call from above her as she plummeted toward the bay. "Hurry up and release your chute!"

"You gave me a broken parachute!" she screamed back up, pulling the handle again, still to no effect.

"Ah, damn, I grabbed the one I'd been meaning to fix..."

"Son of a bitch," Naru spat, reaching back with the other woman's knife and slicing open the flap of the parachute. The nylon flap of fabric finally deployed, the ground approaching rapidly, too rapidly, as the chute began to fully extend.

"Dammit, it's way too late to be any good now," the woman murmured to herself as she watched.

Knowing that the parachute couldn't possibly slow her descent in time, Naru guided herself toward the nearby cliffs, releasing the parachute just before hitting the rock face at an angle, sliding down its side to bleed off momentum. She knew she wouldn't come out of this unscathed; idly, she wondered how many bones she'd break and to what severity.

Momentum soon turned against her as she overbalanced and began to fall forward. She managed to twist so that she rolled sideways down the cliff, as opposed to headfirst, and braced herself for the ground looming up before her. She struck a small outcrop as she rolled, unable to bite back a cry of pain as she felt her femur snap from the impact.

The edge of the incline dropped off to vertical before the last dozen feet, leaving her to topple head-first toward the ground at a decent clip. Instinctively, she put her arm out before her to break her fall, and received a broken arm for her troubles. She flipped over, her arm serving as a fulcrum, and landed on her back on the sandy shore, thoroughly winded, pain throbbing through her body. "That sucked..."

A short distance away, the sandy-haired woman came to a halt above ground, then released her hovering device, dropping the last five feet to the ground. Walking over to Naru, she grabbed her by her good arm, a strong hand-to-wrist grip, and pulled her upright, supporting her broken leg against her own. "That was some damn fine thinking on your feet up there," she said, looking up toward the bay as a fishing trawler pulled near. "Now listen, I know you're probably still pissed about me stealin' your Mobile Suit earlier, but now we're in this together so we oughta stick together. I'm Konno, Mitsune Konno. But you can call me Kitsune."

"Narusegawa," she said, grimacing, as she cradled her broken arm against her chest. "Naru."

"Well, Naru, what's say we go pick up our Mobile Suits, eh?"

---

"Now, in military news, mass production of Leo Mobile Suits is expected to resume at full capacity at the Corsica Mobile Suit factory without further delay. The factory had experienced major delays following an explosion, the source of which is still unknown. In order to continue inquiries into the explosion, and as a safety precaution, special troops from the Middle East garrison will oversee the factory."

On the base's tarmac, Mobile Suit transport planes carrying the Aries pilots and mecha from the Middle Eastern garrison sat simmering in the midday heat. The rear bay of the lead transport dropped, allowing a single Aries to disembark and stand on the runway.

"Lieutenant Uranami should be there by now," the pilot said to himself, then reported into the radio, "I'll return in two hours. Masayuki Haitani, launching!"

The Aries rose on its heavy thrusters, folded its legs up and in for flight mode, and then flared its boosters to roar off into the sky, soon disappearing as a small twinkle at the end of a white streak.

Across the base, Uranami's shuttle landed on a service tarmac, coming to a halt before a line formation of eight Aries Mobile Suits, standing in perfect line with their light assault rifles held pointing toward the sky in their hands. The main door of the shuttle opened and Uranami stepped out onto the rolling staircase, looking out over the base even as he sweated underneath his uniform. "Ah, I see I'm still in time for the ceremonies."

In the center of the base, a large dirigible bearing the UESA insignia stood guarded by a dozen Leos, this dirigible being the personal transport craft of the base commander for the reactivation ceremony of the Mobile Suit production plant. Uranami considered it a foolish gesture at best, not to mention a tactical disaster.

The leader of the Leo troops, a violet-colored unit sporting dual short-barreled beam rifles and additional shoulder-mounted beam cannons, also questioned the commander's decision. "Commander Bonapart, it's too risky to oversee operations in this."

Commander Bonapart, a middle-aged man sporting a greying beard and a superior air, laughed off the Leo commander's concerns. "Lieutenant Akashi, you fool," he derided. "It's the best way to make our intentions known to both the enemy and the Specials. We don't need those Specials to help us; they use these types of situations as an excuse to expand their power."

The elite Mobile Suit troops known as the Specials made great progress within the military of the United Earth Sphere Alliance in the expansion of armaments; however, there were many that disliked and distrusted the Specials. Colonel Seta Noriyasu, the young aristocratic founder of the Specials, is also an official of the mysterious Romefeller Foundation, financially backed by royalty and aristocrats who place importance on tradition. With this strong backing, Seta has focused on the development of Mobile Suits.

The Specials is an autonomous unit that not only supplies Mobile Suits to the Alliance, but has also started instructing the combat army corps. Their reputation on the battleground is excellent, earning them the right to act independently anytime, and at any battle they wished. However, it can't be denied that this status has angered the elder soldiers even more.

"These men confuse the battleground for some kind of aristocratic game," Commander Bonapart continued on his tirade, even though Lieutenant Akashi had long since tuned him out. "They want to kill so badly that they're starting things up themselves. We mustn't be persuaded by them; if we proceed cautiously then we can avoid unnecessary battles. I'll teach those bloodthirsty Specials a few things about intelligent battle."

In the cockpit of her commander's unit, Alliance Lieutenant Yuuna Akashi sighed and slouched in her command seat, planting her left arm on her side console and resting her head against her fist. "Intelligent battle my ass," she muttered, glancing to her communications console to ensure she wasn't transmitting. "You're the dumbass flying a dirigible in an age of Mobile Suits."

---

Lieutenant Uranami stood outside the Corsica base's command center, trying to maintain a semblance of military discipline as he took in the news he'd just been given. "So, Commander Bonapart isn't even here to see me."

"No, sir, sorry sir," the guard standing at the door answered. "He left some time ago to oversee the ceremonies."

Uranami chuckled and commented to himself, "I've heard that he doesn't like me."

Gripped with terror at displeasing the infamous Lightning Count, the guard stood even more upright and snapped a salute. "My apologies, sir!"

Uranami chuckled again. "Don't worry about it," he said. "I can't fault you for the way that man feels about me." He turned at the sound of an engine, in time to see a familiar figure on a motorcycle pull up behind him. "Well, Officer Haitani, it's been quite a while."

Demonstrating the fact that the two were old friends, Haitani remained on the motorcycle rather than step off and salute his superior officer. "You haven't changed a bit, Lieutenant Uranami," he said with a grin.

"So, have you got a machine for me?"

"Something like that, sir. I'll lead you there."

A short vehicle ride later brought Uranami and Haitani to an old storage hangar. Inside, Uranami was met with a white Mobile Suit, almost half again the size of most modern Mobile Suits, suspended in the air above the hangar floor, clutching its own unattached head unit in its right hand.

"This thing is massive," Uranami said.

"It's one of the original Mobile Suit prototype models," Haitani explained. "As you can see, it's two percent larger than a Leo unit. It's outdated, twenty years old, but when you showed me the data on Gundam, it reminded me of this unit, which is supposedly a historic artifact."

"You're assigned to Corsica, aren't you?" Uranami asked.

Haitani shook his head. "Not right now, no. I was a few duty rotations ago. I came here because this unit was here. This unit is the only one I can find that can compare with the Gundam data. I don't know how it's made, but I know it has to be this big to maintain its power. It exceeded their needs back then, so the Leo became the standard model." Haitani turned to regard the massive white Mobile Suit. "Tallgeese. That's what they call this thing."

"So this unit, if completed, can compete with Gundam?"

"Authorization has been given to take it from this storage facility," Haitani replied, tactfully avoiding voicing his own opinion on the unit's capabilities.

"Are you counting on dying, Haitani?" Uranami asked, turning to his old friend.

The other pilot smirked. "Everything I've done has been for the sake of the soldiers of tomorrow."

"Huh. You're a brave and noble soldier, Haitani. How many Gundams do you expect?"

"The maximum, as you always taught us."

"You can rest assured, then. There are four. One, at least, is not heading here."

"Lieutenant, I'd be grateful if we destroyed even one."

---

"Squad Six, fan out and secure the commander's dirigible," Yuuna ordered. "Commander Bonapart, I urge you to reconsider."

"Tch, no enemies are coming."

As he climbed into the cockpit of his Aries, Haitani said, "No, they are coming."

"Lieutenant Masayuki, I'm counting on you to cover the skies and keep us informed of any approaching enemies."

Locking in his restraints and sealing the cockpit, Haitani pulled on his flight helmet and adjusted his boom mic. "You have my team's support, Lieutenant Akashi. No enemies will approach without us knowing it."

"You idiots, what enemy would dare try attacking against this level of security?" Bonapart derided the ace pilots as the docking lines detached from his dirigible and the airship began to lift into the sky. Below, the Leos of Yuuna's squad patrolled the grounds diligently, sensors tuned outward for any sign of an enemy assault.

Across the base, within the storage hangar where the Tallgeese was being loaded onto Uranami's shuttle, the ace pilot's attention was drawn out to the east, where he spotted a small dot, obviously a Mobile Suit, approaching the base at a high rate of speed. He smiled humorlessly. "See for yourself."

"Lieutenant Akashi, object approaching from the east at high speed!" a Leo pilot reported.

"Keep your eyes open, folks, here they come! Spread out and get some cover!"

The squad of Leos dispersed, taking cover behind buildings and sighting down their weapons as Anti-Mobile Suit turrets tracked the skies to the east. The squad of Specials Aries rotated in their formation to cover the other direction, as Haitani said, "We'll cover the opposite end, Lieutenant Akashi. Give 'em hell."

And then the enemy unit was suddenly there, the white-and-black Gundam bearing the scimitars as its weapon, in amongst the dug-in Leo troops. The scimitars flashed out at blinding speed, cleaving a Leo completely in half with a cross slash before the Mobile Suit turned, crossing its blades before it to block the incoming fire from a turret.

"Get back!" Yuuna ordered as she fired her weapons at the Gundam. "It's a close-range unit, so stay out of range of those blades! Keep moving and hammer it!"

Haitani watched with tightly-closed lips as the Gundam moved from one Mobile Suit to the next, systemically decimating the Leo squad. Most of the Leos' fire was wide and panicked; Yuuna's shots, carefully-aimed as she paused between moving from cover to cover, all forced the Gundam to either evade or take the beams on the shield attached to its left arm. It seemed that Yuuna was the only competent pilot in her group. She had the skills to become a true ace, of that there was no doubt.

She has to survive this battle. She's the kind of pilot we'll need to fight these things. Nodding, reaching a decision, Haitani pulled his flight goggles down over his eyes. Inside a closed cockpit, they served no purpose, but they were part of tradition for Aries pilots, particularly squad leaders. "Specials, we'll start our counterattack at once," he ordered his men. "All units, go!"

"All units?" one of his men questioned. "But there's only one of them here, sir."

"It doesn't matter," Haitani said, a cold determination settling itself on his features. "One's all they need."

With no further argument, the dozen Aries of the Specials rose up from the tarmac, folding their legs into flight mode, and roared toward the battle. The Gundam had moved deeper into the base, closer to Commander Bonapart's dirigible, leaving a path of destruction in its wake. It sidestepped the blasts from an artillery unit and then stepped in to smash the blunt side of its right-handed scimitar into the guns' barrels and the artillery gunners, either ignorant or oblivious, were destroyed as the next volley of shells exploded in the crimped barrels; a quartet of Leos near the artillery guns fell victim to fractricide as the artillery units' explosion consumed them. The Gundam then turned toward a trio of VTOL fighter jets as they neared, unleashing a storm of 20mm Vulcan fire that decimated the oncoming fighters.

In the midst of the roiling explosion clouds and bullet trails, Bonapart's dirigible drifted as fast as it could away from the Mobile Suit, coordinators inside the airship screaming back and forth to each other in a panic.

"Calm down!" Bonapart ordered. "We know there's only one of them, so surround and destroy it!"

"It's not showing on the radar," a technician reported. "Switching to observation monitor." Bonapart leaned over the technician's console as a video image of the marauding Gundam appeared on the monitor. "Enemy confirmed!" Almost immediately, the Mobile Suit appeared to take notice of the observation drones and turned toward them, destroying them in a similar rain of 20mm fire.

Bonapart blinked. "This is what happens when you rely on equipment."

---

Within the cockpit of the Gundam, Shinobu watched calmly as a group of enemy tanks, obsolete weapons in this day and age, moved to encircle her. Individually, the tanks were worthless, but their combined fire could significantly damage her Mobile Suit. "The enemy commander had the right idea to surround and destroy the enemy, in this case," she murmured to herself and the battle recorder. "However, he shouldn't have committed his forces before understanding his enemy's capabilities."

Sheathing one of the scimitars on her Mobile Suit's back, Shinobu leaned over to scoop up a discarded 105mm Leo rifle, spraying the weapon across the clustered tanks, obliterating them in under thirty seconds.

It was after she had discarded the Leo rifle and was reaching for her scimitar again when the violet Leo shoulder-tackled her Mobile Suit from the side, slamming her into a barracks building. Pinning her beneath it, the Leo fired its shoulder cannons into her Gundam at point-blank range, scouring deep gouges into the chest armor of her Mobile Suit.

The enemy Leo discarded one of the short-barreled beam rifles it carried, reaching over her Gundam's shoulder to grab her own scimitar and bringing the weapon up in preparation to impale her Mobile Suit. Whether the enemy was aiming for her head or her cockpit she didn't know, and had no intention of finding out. She blocked the downward strike with the shield on her left arm, then slammed the shield back against the Leo, shoving the Mobile Suit back.

With her right arm now free, Shinobu swung the scimitar in that hand laterally, expecting to cleave her foe asunder, but her enemy evaded the attack with a timely vernier boost, pulling it back out of range except for its right arm, which was weighed down by the unfamiliar weapon, and thus neatly severed.

Bringing her Gundam back to its feet, Shinobu retrieved her stolen scimitar and stared across the way at her formidable opponent, the eye monitors of her Gundam glowing a fierce green.

---

Bonapart watched in a mix of apprehension and terror at the battle unfolding before him between the enemy Mobile Suit and Lieutenant Akashi. The fact that the pilot was brazen enough to close to melee range with the Gundam was one thing; she'd damn near taken the enemy by surprise and destroyed it in one fell swoop. "How could we have possibly made such a huge miscalculation?"

An Aries swooping into view obscured his view of the battle, and looking around, Bonapart noticed that the Specials unit had formed up around the dirigible. He heard Haitani order over the battlenet, "Assist retreat of the commander's vessel. Everyone else, attack the enemy!"

"Sir!" "Yes, sir!"

"What are you doing?" Bonapart shouted into the radio.

"Given the enemy's strength, we won't make it out of here alive," Haitani answered. "Give appropriate instructions to the flight academies and the factories. For the soldiers of tomorrow..."

It was then that the enormity of Bonapart's failure collapsed in upon him. He hung his head, ashamed to meet the eyes of his staff, and mutely uttered, "I'm sorry..."

"Attack up close and stay focused!"

"Roger!" "Roger!"

As five of the Aries led the dirigible away from battle, the other seven roared forward into battle to meet the enemy.

---

Across the base, Uranami listened to the distant battle in silence, tilting his head only slightly as Shirai approached him. "The Tallgeese has been finished loading," he reported. "We're ready to leave at any time."

"And Commander Bonapart?"

"We received a transmission confirming his escape. I was about to head over on the Leo to provide support."

"I wish you wouldn't do that," Uranami said as a particularly-violent explosion rattled the walkway they stood on. "I'm just about ready to take on the responsibility of reviving this Tallgeese to combat Gundam, and I'm going to need your help."

"Yes, sir."

---

"Lieutenant Akashi, fall back and retreat with the rest of the unit!" Haitani ordered as he and his wingmate roared in low at the enemy Mobile Suit, firing their chain rifles in a suppressive fire pattern at the mecha. It turned toward them and fired a burst from its 20mm cannons, which the two flight models nimbly rose above.

"Yes, sir!" Yuuna replied, wasting no time in boosting her vernier engines and soaring away from the battlefield.

Haitani and his wingmate spiraled down toward the Mobile Suit, now focusing their fire on it, despite the fact that their shots pinged harmlessly off the armor. The two dropped down on either side of the Mobile Suit, out of range of its scimitars, as it turned and fired toward Haitani. The ace pilot roared to the side, out of the line of fire, but noticed too late the trap the enemy had set.

"Hunter, no, don't close!"

Too late; his wingmate had closed to attack the Gundam with its back turned, but Hunter had been the Gundam's target all along, now realized as it swiftly spun around and cleave his Aries in half with a precision stroke.

Despite himself, Haitani remained calm in the face of his wingmate's death, as he and the other five Aries surrounded the Gundam on all sides. Calmly, the Mobile Suit took stock of its situation, then turned its head to fire the Vulcan guns at Haitani. However, all that came of it was the buzz of the gun barrels spinning and a puff of smoke; the Mobile Suit had expended all its ammunition.

"He's out of bullets! We did it!"

Haitani stared at the Mobile Suit dispassionately; this one was tricky, and he was determined not to lose any more men to a simple trap. "Don't let your guard down."

"I'll show you what the Specials are made of!" the previous pilot shouted over an open channel as he charged toward the Gundam.

"Get back in formation, you fool!" Haitani shouted. "We can't afford a mistake at this point!"

The reckless Aries, heedless of the orders Haitani had issued, rose up over the enemy Mobile Suit, seemingly intent on bashing the Gundam into submission with its rifle. Before it could attack, however, the Aries suddenly stopped in its tracks, still carried forward by momentum. As Shinobu watched inside her Gundam, a hole appeared in the head of the Aries, created by a high-caliber sniper round that passed harmlessly over her own Gundam's head. The Aries collapsed bonelessly to the ground before her.

That was when all hell broke loose. From the west, a heavy barrage of rifle fire poured into the fracas, catching off-guard and obliterating a pair of Aries. Turning her Gundam in the direction of the incoming fire, Shinobu spotted a large force of unknown Mobile Suits built like large turtles shifting their fire to suppressive. None of their shots were hitting her, but that may have been as much due to accident as intent on their part.

A new signal roared in out of the northwest, a red-and-white Mobile Suit with missile pods attached to the shoulders and legs, and a huge Gatling gun in place of its left arm. The Mobile Suit raised its gun arm and fired as it bore in, the recoil of the massive weapon enough to visibly reduce the Mobile Suit's forward speed. Heavy 120mm cannon rounds ripped through two of the remaining three Aries, but Haitani was quick to boost his Aries upward away from the field of fire, spraying his chain rifle down at the two enemy Suits.

"Come get me, you monster!" he screamed over an open frequency.

Shinobu obliged him. Locking her scimitars into their special configuration on her shield to form a pincer, she kicked in her vernier boosters and roared up toward the Aries, clamping the pincer around its midsection and applying pressure.

Haitani swore, a cold sweat running over his body as he realized the imminence of his death. The light armor of the Aries began to crumple immediately, crushing the cockpit hatch and viewscreens and allowing brilliant light from outside his craft to stream in at him. "Well, I wanted to find out what this thing could handle..." he murmured to himself.

Even as she applied more crushing force to the pincer, Shinobu lowered her head within the cockpit of her Mobile Suit, a tear streaking down from her left eye as she transmitted a single word to Haitani over a tight-beam open frequency: "Sorry."

"A...girl...? It's...wrong..." Haitani whispered in disbelief, an instant before the fusion reactor detonated, consuming the ace Specials pilot in a searing blaze of white fire.

Shinobu disengaged her scimitars and sheathed them over the back of her Gundam as she landed, turning to face the red-and-white unit, and its large support army. All 31 Mobile Suits regarded her silently, unmoving. She divided her attention between her viewscreens and a tactical readout of the other unit. "It'll still have a full load of ammunition after such a small skirmish," she mused quietly, "but that pilot... I imagine he doesn't rely on his firearms as much as it seems."

Just then, Uranami's shuttle blasted out of the underground hangar at maximum speed, having waited for the battle to die down to make his escape. Shinobu instinctively looked over toward it. "No, I let an OZ aircraft get away!"

It wasn't until her sensors shrieked at her that she realized her mistake in taking her attention away from the other Mobile Suit. By the time she turned back to it, it was already upon her, its Gatling gun jettisoned behind it, revealing a normal arm underneath, and a combat knife swung out from beneath its right arm driving up into the shoulder joint of her own Gundam. The heavy shriek of Gundanium resisting the sharp blade forced her to wince.

Fortunately for her, her enemy paused as well upon realizing that his attack hadn't literally disarmed her; he clearly wasn't expecting her Suit to be made of Gundanium. Taking advantage of the pause, Shinobu drove her Gundam's left arm up underneath her foe's right, locking the arm in place and preventing it from having use of its knife. She applied pressure to the joint lock and received an energy cascade as part of the flexible material between the upper and lower arm gave way.

Unfortunately, Mobile Suit pilots didn't feel pain that they would if the joint hold was applied to them, so the red unit immediately drove its knee up into Shinobu's Gundam, forcing her back a step. She gave it two additional steps, then brought back her right fist. Judging by the fact that she hadn't ripped her opponent's arm off, it was also made of Gundanium, but if she struck it hard enough in the head, she'd destroy its sensors and control unit.

Her enemy read her movement perfectly, bringing up its own left hand to catch her right, and applying pressure of its own to her unit's hand. She watched as new energy cascades appeared, and knew that if this was a physical confrontation between pilots, she'd be looking at no less than three broken fingers. The two Mobile Suits strained against one another for several moments, until Shinobu finally realized something.

Both their Mobile Suits were made out of Gundanium. That meant both of them had come from space. She wasn't aware of there being other pilots with the same mission as her, but if there were other such pilots, then this one was probably one of them, and that made this pilot an ally.

"This isn't right..." she whispered to herself. "We shouldn't be fighting."

Reaching down to her console, she keyed in the commands to power down her Mobile Suit, then unsealed the cockpit hatch and opened it up, blinking as the bright light struck her eyes. Stepping out onto the lowered hatch, she looked up at the other Mobile Suit's head and declared, "You and I should not be fighting each other."

It took a few moments, but then she saw the active lights vanish from the other Mobile Suit's 'eyes,' before its cockpit opened as well, revealing a dark-skinned, blonde-haired young girl who looked to be no older than Shinobu, wearing anonymous military fatigues. The young pilot stepped out onto her hatch, wearing the perfect expression of a scolded child, and meekly raised her hands.

Shinobu couldn't help but smile, even as she noticed the other pilot's support units all repeating the hand-raising motion. "Put your hands down," she said gently. "I was the first one to surrender and come out, remember?"

The other girl lowered her hands and looked up at Shinobu in momentary awe, then a wide smile broke out on her face as well.

---

Far out in Sagami Bay, Kitsune and Naru had traded in the fishing trawler for a massive deep-sea recovery vessel. Already laid out on the deck was Kitsune's Deathscythe Gundam, and from the wheelhouse of a recovery crane, Kitsune watched as Naru's own Gundam likewise breached the surface. With both Gundams now recovered, Kitsune looked over toward where she had last seen Naru and said, "Okay, I brought yours up too, just like I promise... Hey, what're you doin'?"

Naru, her leg already set in a temporary splint and brace until proper medical facilities could be reached, was leaning her upper arm, above the fracture in that arm, against one of the ship's railings, and was steadily applying pressure to her lower arm, below the fracture. The grimace on her face indicated that what she was doing was fairly painful.

"Oh, no," Kitsune muttered. "She's not about to..."

A loud snap, followed by a few grinding sounds, sent Kitsune into a full-body shiver. She looked on, a disgusted grimace on her own face, as Naru set a wrench against her arm to act as a splint and then wrapped it in place with medical tape.

"God, I don't think I can take too much more of that..." the fox lady sighed. "She just goes and grinds a broken bone back into place like it ain't nothin'. Makes me wanna never pop my neck again."

Limping on her mending leg, Naru crossed the deck to stare down at her Gundam, suspended by cables in the water, which seemed to be staring right back at her.

To be continued...

---

Kitsune and I depart for another battleground. In the meantime, Motoko heads for the Mahora training base, in southeast Japan. At the base are OZ's advanced Space Taurus Mobile Suits, as well as Instructor Kanako Urashima, an instructor of top pilots. There, Instructor Kanako encounters a nightmarish incident.

Next, on Shooting Stars Episode 4: The Mahora Nightmare.