Author Note: Thanks for all the wonderful reviews, folks. You guys and girls really fuel my muse, can't give you credit enough. A lot of people commented on Alkire's assessment of Athrun. Bear in mind that it is ALKIRE'S assessment. Whether or not Athrun really is the second most bad ass Coordinator out there, that is entirely a matter of personal opinion, and we're all going to think differently. As for the Brotherhood of Mankind... well, I never really got much into Command and Conquer, but I understand the reference. I was actually thinking more along the lines of some terrorist organizations from Marvel Comics, namely Hyrda (who's members shout the credo "Hail Hydra, Immortal Hydra, Cut off one head and two more shall take it's place!!", off which I based many Brotherhood chants), or AIM (Advanced Idea Mechanics), who's members always wore big bulky environment suit like things and used advanced weapon systems of all sorts. Asmus, I must hail you in particular, because I love your speculations and predictions. Most of the time, when I read your reviews the next chapter isn't written yet, and many times I have used your "guesses" to actually germinate an idea or two. Although you are as often wrong as not, I like that you try. I'm surprised that no one commented upon my little hintish spolier in the last author note, but perhaps I made it too subtle, especially since english isn't the first (only, in my case) language for everyone. Either that or you've all spotted it and are just too smart to be drawn in, which is equally likely. Oh well.
As for your question, a Plasma Sabot is actually a current military technology common to many armor piercing cannon shells or missiles, such as are used by the US Army's tanks. I'm no expert, but I believe the technology works by incorporating a "sheath" of relatively easily melting material, like copper, in the interior of the shell around a "spear" of much harder metal, like tungsten, which is heated to a charged gaseous (hence plasmatic) state by the explosion of impact, and the pressure of this plasma expansion upon a small area, which is the point where the tip of the shell strikes the armor plate pierces the armor plate and sprays the interior of the target with plasma and molten metal, to the detriment of the people inside. Secondary damage is caused by the overheating of ammunition and fuel carried by the target, which is what usually causes it to actually explode. Sabot comes from the term sabaton, I believe, which is a name for armor plate around the leg or foot... in essence, the plasma acts as "armor" for the warhead of the shell, increasing its ability to penetrate heavy armor.
In my story anyways, plasma saboted ammunition, which is common to many militaries and organizations, is inferior to the much newer beam blade tipped (or Phase Shift tipped and eventually Quantum Crystal tipped) munition systems the Brotherhood has, because the beam blade plasma is hotter and more damaging than the short lived (milliseconds at best) plasma created by the older rounds, and also since the plasma beam is on the outside of the shell's warhead, the warhead itself can be bigger and more powerful. In essence the beam tipped shells are like an add on that makes regular high explosive shells also armor piercing, while the old plasma sabot rounds are just armor piercing, and therefore less effective at actually blowing stuff apart or versus targets that are NOT heavily armored, since a large amount of resistance from the target is required to activate the plasma sabot trick. Before the Brotherhood, you could either pierce heavy armor or blow less armored stuff to little pieces... not both with the same shell.
That question was actually tricker to explain than I'd thought it was going to be. It was a term I'd borrowed from some military science fiction I'd read before, though it is a real technology, and not even a particularly modern one. It works so well, its one of those "don't fix it if it ain't broke" sort of things. It also sounds really cool and powerful, even moreso than it actually is.
I find it interesting that when people were rating some of the people they thought were scarier than Athrun... no one listed any villians. Cyprus WAS sort of a villian, I guess, but not really, compared to the REAL villians. Makes me wonder... given my representation of characters, both canon and original, who are your top five or ten or whatever number you wish to use people in my stories that you would NOT want to have angry at you? You can include why if you want, but you don't have to. Mostly idle curioisty, though it might help me make future villians and heroes better, at least when I want them to be scary. And now, on to the hotly anticipated, hopefully jaw dropping, inaugural Gundam battle of Eden Disaster!
-------------------------------------------------
Randolf detected the intrusion of the enemy Mobile Suit as soon as it fully penetrated the upper strata of the Haunted's Mist, like a captive shark scenting a drop of blood falling into its aquarium. He was surprised... by the Boss's calculations, the USN wouldn't have been able to mount a cohesive Mobile Suit attack for at least another hour or so. He had no doubt that they had the forces already nearby to conduct such an attack, but they hadn't even TRIED to negotiate with him or anyone else in the Brotherhood detachment, which seemed odd. That the USN and FNE considered the Brotherhood to be extremely dangerous and unpredictable was a given, that was the impression the recording Randolf had sent was meant to give them. But very much because of that impression, the USN and FNE should have been taking things slowly, and with the utmost care. They should attempt negotiations first, then they should send in scouting teams, then infantry assault forces with a few specialized vehicles and finally, lastly, they should send in the Mobile Suits, after the Brotherhood had already decimated everything else that had been sent in. That the enemy would start off with Mobile Suits was concerning. Had there been an information leak? Such a thing hardly seemed possible, given the nature of the Boss's connections and the extent of his technological control over most of the information gathering services of the USN and most of its member-states.
However, Randolf's fears of a Traitor... he knew exactly who it would've been too... or other critical failure in the plan was quickly allayed. There was only the one Mobile Suit, and it was moving very hesitantly, clearly taken quite off guard by the Haunted Mist. A lone cowboy in a Mobile Suit, trying to save the townsfolk? Strange. Concerningly strange. This element had NOT been accounted for in the mission plan, which was all oriented around creating an international stir, prolonging the situation as long as possible to garner media and public attention to the ineffectiveness of the current USN and member-state military forces, inflict casualties upon the same while testing the Brotherhood's technologies in the field, and then a orderly retreat back to the extraction location, hopefully though not essentially without many casualties of their own. The only truly essential person on the battlefield was the Haunted and Randolf, all else could be sacrificed if need be. The Zealots would self destruct if not destroyed by enemy fire, and the weapons and armor used by the Brotherhood soldiers would likewise rapidly disintegrate over the next twenty four hours, unless a countering code was sent to the Nanites that covered them in invisible, nigh intangible films. The only evidence left would be the bodies of the slain and perhaps a few injured. Brotherhood injured would kill themselves via sucide pills in their teeth, and their bodies, save for their tattoos, would tell the enemy little.
Randolf considered what he should do with regards to this lone cowboy. Quite plainly, he could not be allowed to blunder around for too long, or else he would undoubtedly discover the fact that the townsfolk were all already dead, frozen in the mist. If this information was relayed to the USN, the Brotherhood's chief psychological advantage would be gone, and an overwhelming attack from the USN would shortly follow, which would likely result in a complete mission failure, which was simply not acceptable. However, if Randolf wasn't careful and overwhelming in his own attacks upon this cowboy intruder, all it would take would be a few missed missiles or cannon or railgun shots rising out of the mist and the fact that the Brotherhood had Mobile Suits would also be divulged, which would likewise nix the mission plan, which could not be allowed to happen. There was the risk that one or maybe even both of the Zealots would be damaged, perhaps even destroyed, by an encounter with this cowboy, which would make executing the rest of the mission harder, but it was the only thing Randolf could see to do. In a pinch, the Haunted was more than capable of hamstringing any USN or FNE Mobile assault by its lonesome anyway, so the Zealots were not necessary, merely convenient.
Mind made up, Randolf relayed instructions to his supporters. The infantry forces were ordered on even higher alert than they had been before, and were told to hunker down as best they were able to minimize any chance deaths from fallout from the Mobile Suit engagement. Randolf transmitted a sensor link from the Haunted to the two Zealots, allowing them to see the location of the intruder so that they could begin their flanking maneuvers, under strict orders to attack only in close quarters, to maximize the chance of taking the foe out without noisy collateral damage that might compromise the mission. The sonar picture he gave to the Zealots wasn't even a hundreth the quality of the one the Haunted used for its own vision in the Mist, but it was the best he could send to non-sonar equipped units, basically just a 3D plot of the town with a target icon where the foe was, and similar friendly icons for the two Zealots and the Haunted. Describing the Haunted's vision was difficult, at least if you'd never experienced it before. Suffice it to say, he could not only discern distance and bearing to other targets, he could map their every surface feature, creating a completely detailed, realistic 3D image as accurate or even more accurate than most regular camera sensors could manage. It was all colorless of course, in simple greyscale, but what need had a ghost of colors?
Even with the tactical map provided to them by the Haunted, the two Zealots moved with great care and even a bit of tenativity. Guiding a ninety ton war machine, even one that you could control as easily and naturally as your own body, wasn't exactly easy when you had at most ten meters of direct visibility, and maybe twice that of indistinct visibility, where buildings and trees looked like mobile suits looming up around corners and behind other buildings. Tripping over parked cars and almost stumbling into buildings was a matter of course, and their progress was loud enough to alert any ground forces within a block of their position. Fortunately, the audio pickups on most Mobile Suits weren't all that good, and so their foe remained unaware of their less than noiseless flanking maneuvers, his sensors, much like most of theirs, probing futiley at the all encompassing greyness. Over the course of several minutes the Zealots managed to split up and come at the intruder from either side as he edged his way down one of the main streets of the town. One waited about forty meters ahead of the intruder's progress, while the second stepped out onto the same road but about sixty meters behind their foe's current location. Tiptoeing, as much as his NIC-III systems would allow him, the Zealot stalked towards the foe, weapons ready to blast him brutally from behind, in a single instant excising this impediment to the Prophet's Great Vision!
-------------------------------------------------------
Athrun was definitely kicking himself as he brought the Phoenix King to a halt and peered, with mounting self annoyance and little success, at his surroundings. He ached to be able to switch sensor views, to get rid of the oppressive funeral shroud grey mist that cloaked everything on all sides of him, but he'd tried it several times already, with even less success than he'd had using the satellites on the flight here. Whatever this fog was, it was the best and most aggravating sensor camouflage system Athrun had ever had the misfortune of blundering around in. Diving right into the fog, like a knight in shining armor off to save the townsfolk from an evil monster had been a pretty hasty and stupid thing to do. A rookie mistake, something Kira would have done without hesitating. Athrun though, was supposed to be smarter than Kira, at least when it came to military tactics. Ethically, morally, it felt good to be doing something, to be trying to save the innocent hostages from the evil Brotherhood. Intellectually though, he wasn't going to be all that much help to ANYONE, even himself, considering he couldn't see the Devil Himself if he popped up farther than a gentle stone's throw away. He'd almost crashed the Phoenix King into the ground trying to land, that was how far he could see, and he'd been piloting Mobile Suits for what felt like half his life.
Even with a compounded view created by the vari-camera's the Phoenix King used for sensors, he could see at best perhaps thirty meters in any direction, and he could really only discern color and clear detail at about half that distance. Athrun didn't mind close combat, but having an effective quality sight radius of fifteen meters, when going up against at least one and likely more than one Mobile Suits of an entirely unknown type... that put a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. Even going up against Ginns or Strike Daggers, the original ones, wouldn't have been fun with this damn fog... and he had a damnable feeling that these Brotherhood machines were a great deal more capable than Strike Daggers or Ginns. He thought back to the green plasma beams that had cut their way out of the lodge Kira, Lacus, Dearka and Miriallia had been staying at. There had not been any vehicles involved in that fracas, but someone had been using beam based weapon technologies anyway. And since Orb didn't have any man portable beam systems... wasn't even particularly CLOSE to them... that meant that the Brotherhood had some technology that was just plain SCARY. If you could put beam rifles in the hands of your soldiers... what the HELL did you put on your Mobile Suits!?
Another extremely concerning fact was that he had no idea where the hostages were. One of the hotels, but his maps of the town were of little good to him when he couldn't see signposts or use the satellite to give him his exact geographical position. For that matter there might be townsfolk held in different locations not shown on the video recording, or even townsfolk that were free and hiding in homes and offices. A stray shot from Athrun, even a misstep on his part that sent him stumbling into a building, and civilains could be as dead as if the Brotherhood had hacked them up with their knives! And of course, the Brotherhood probably wouldn't be under nearly the same sort of moral restrictions that Athrun was... the terrorists always had that advantage, of being willing and able to kill people, even helpless people, all in the names of their goals or religion, while those trying to stop them had to be careful lest they do the terrorists job for them. The standard problem of being a person who cared too much going against people who cared too little, especially in a crowded area.
Well, Athrun wasn't going to do much of ANYTHING, besides slowly turn into an ice sculpture, unless he got more proactive, he reminded himself with a tightening of his eyes and lips. He dialled up the cockpit heating system of the Phoenix King another notch, noting with a subconscious shiver that his external temperature sensor was currently reading almost negative ninety degree's fahrenheit, without even a wind chill. It was as cold or colder than the Antarctic night in this town, because of this heat sapping fog, which billowed even more thickly around the cooling system exhaust ports for his reactor and other electrical systems. He was getting some pretty screwy atmospheric readings as well... humidity was in the pits while air pressure was way down as well. It was drier than a desert under noon sun, and the oxygen and nitrogen content was about as thin at ground level in the town as it would be at around twenty five thousand feet in the air anywhere else. Anyone out in the fog without the protection of extreme weather gear and likely their own portable air source, would succumb to hypothermia and anyoxia in a matter of minutes, less if they were exerting themselves. A note to bear in mind if and when he defeated the enemy Mobile Suits and could go looking for the hostages themselves... minimize time outside either a powered building or the Phoenix King.
He was just about to take another step forward when something caught his peripheral vision and he froze, eyes scanning greedily for any input whatsoever. He hadn't really seen what it was, but there'd been a motion that was out of place and... THERE! Athrun watched as a car parked by the side of the street, about ten feet behind and to the right of the Phoenix King, suddenly bobbed up and down on its suspension, this time harder enough to set off its burglar alarm, though the fog muted the sound so much Athrun could barely even hear it, and his audio pickups had been dialed to the maximum ever since he landed. But he was barely even paying attention to the sound, because to make a car jump like that while it was sitting still meant that there was a pretty serious ground tremor involved. And since the town was high up in the mountains, on pretty much solid granite bedrock, an earthquake powerful enough to make the car move was unlikely, besides Athrun would have felt it himself. Other things could cause ground tremors like that, especially in a very localized sense. Things like Mobile Suits...
Athrun spun the Phoenix King around abruptly, catching sight of an unidentifed but definitely Mobile Suitish figure trying to sneak up on him from behind. Athrun had to admit, in the brief instant before the enemy realized that he'd been seen, that whoever was in the other machine was pretty damned good. Mobile Suits were not ordinarily designed for moving stealthily on the ground, and this guy had been practically tiptoeing forward, at the speed of a unassisted man walking. Athrun could do it himself, he knew how hard it was... and the fact that this guy had done it in a fog, basically blindly... that was impressive. His reaction time was pretty good too, only a few hairs slower than Athrun's, as he thrust his weapons forward even as Athrun was beginning his turn. Still, Athrun knew, just from those few fractions of a second, that he definitely had the advantage over the other guy. If this had been Frost sneaking up on him, Athrun would already be dead. With reflexes honed against foes like THAT, not too much of lower caliber impressed him for long anymore.
The Citadel Shield projectors mounted on the Phoenix King's forearms blossomed to life with plenty of time to spare in order to block a linear cannon round launched from a sleek rifle in the enemy's right fist, while the glowing orange tracers from a twin machine cannon mount splintered and sparked against the translucent green-blue energy fields for a second before the enemy eased off on the trigger. Athrun was surprised to see that the enemy designers had located the machine cannons in the middle of the torso, where the cockpit generally was. Where did the pilot sit then? If the cannons were there... then the recoil and cooling systems must be there... and the ammo and feed system there... that didn't leave many spots for a cockpit. A bright green energy beam flared from each shoulder of the enemy, splashing against Athrun's Citadel shields with no effect beyond pyrotechnics. Even a quadruplet of CIWS systems in the head opened fire, though Athrun ignored those as inconsequential.
Athrun dropped his shields and took a step forward, eager to bring the fight into closer quarters, where he could hopefully quickly minimize the ability of the terrorist to cause damage to their surroundings. Even as he did so though, two more green high enerby plasma beams seared through the air, this time from BEHIND him, back the way he'd been facing before he'd detected his stalker. There was at LEAST one more enemy out there! There was still time to dodge, or at least attempt to dodge, but Athrun made no effort, sucking in his breath a little as he put his faith... and life... in the hands of more of Erica Simmons's vaunted technological prowess. If the HAC armor didn't work right, he'd probably never know it, though that didn't make him feel any better. Thankfully, the armor worked like a charm, as the Phoenix King took both beam blasts square across the middle of the back, the Heat Absorbing Conductive armor siphoning away all of the energy of the attacks and distributing it across the entire surface of the Gundam, which rapidly recooled to normal temperatures, actually helped by the heat leeching fog all around it. Which grew slightly thicker for a moment, leaving a Phoenix King shaped thick spot in the fog as Athrun pirouetted the Gundam around so that he had one side facing toward either foe.
Obviously nonplussed by the total ineffectiveness of the dead on beam strikes, the opponent he could see took an uncertain step back. A second later, a second enemy Mobile Suit, identical in appearance to the first, stepped into view on the opposite side of Athrun. Perhaps heartened again by the thought that they still had their enemy surroudned, the two Brotherhood machines thrust forward their shields and opened up with their weapons again, besieging Athrun from both sides at once. The Phoenix King's Citadel shields were more than sufficient to handle the threat, although splash damage and deflected cannon rounds did cause a moderate degree of collateral damage to the buildings on either side of Athrun. Still, he did not flee the relatively dangerous zone between the two Brotherhood machines, even as they slowly closed in on him, egged on by his lack of retaliation. Athrun smiled to himself, not even sweating, as the two terrorists allowed themselves to be drawn right into Athrun's hands, like puppies on leashes.
Athrun waited until his foes were almost within an arms reach of the Phoenix King's shivering and pulsing but still strong Citadel Shields before he moved. He struck in the carefully planned moment where both enemy machines had just fired rounds from their linear cannons and machine cannons, and were in the process of reloading those weapons. Athrun spun around again, crouching low as he did so, while blazing orange and red plasma fire coursed from his forearm projectors to form a coalscent ball between his palms. The ball straightened out into a pair of jagged beam blades, which Athrun thrust at the terrorist who had initially been behind him. Even as he lashed forward, Athrun brought the Phoenix King's wings slicing smoothly upwards, the feathers already glowing cherry red with heat, to impact the other terrorist right in the chest, melting a deep furrow in the torso and ripping the machine cannons out with a small explosion, the force of the twin blows knocking the enemy machine backwards and to the ground.
Athrun's left hand sword took the Brotherhood machine right on its linear cannon, slicing away the entire barrel in one neat stroke, while his right hand blade splashed heavily against the Citadel equipped physical shield the terrorist had in his other hand. Athrun grunted a sour note, unhappy to see what should have been USN or FNE or Orb only technology in the hands of terroists, but there wasn't much use complaining about it now, was there? The force of the right hand strike pushed the Brotherhood machine backwards another few steps, and Athrun was forced to admire the fancy footwork demonstrated by his foe, who almost danced his machine back to full balance again, whipping out a beam sword in the process. The terrorist Athrun had knocked down fired a few shots from his linear cannon to clear the air right over himself and then rolled sideways across the street before rising to one knee in a well practised defensive move. Athrun found himself staring in shock... nobody could just ROLL a Mobile Suit like that, the controls just didn't allow for that sort of motion. Mobile Suits LOOKED humanish, but they were really not human in their full range of motion. Well, that wasn't ALWAYS true, Athrun supposed, a sinking sensation growing much worse in his stomach. There had been ONE Mobile Suit that operated just like a human being would...
But that was CRAZY! Both of these machines, well constructed and well armed though they might be, were still just terroist weapons! How could THEY have that kind of control system!? Nobody knew how to replicate that system! Athrun had seen it more up close and personally than almost anyone, and he knew something that was basically unique when he saw one! The technology to even begin to get close to that sort of control system was still at least a decade away in Orb, and he didn't think the PLANTS were doing any better. Anyone else was right out, they wouldn't even be able to conceive of it! But now it looked like SOMEONE had mass produced it! At least twice, and who knew how many more times!? Even as he was staring in disbelief, Athrun's instincts were keeping his defenses up, dodging the Phoenix King to the side so that the shots from the kneeling terrorist streaked harmlessly by him, ricocheting off the standing terrorist with no effect. Athrun's eyes grew even wider... he also knew Phase Shift Armor when he saw it, but he didn't like seeing it here! One of the few advantages they'd had the last time his friends and him had encoutnered a control system like this, the Gundam using it had been practically unarmored, so that even CIWS was somewhat threatening to it. But not these guys, with fully functional Phase Shift, these were practically Gundams he was facing! Just about the only saving grace to the situation was that his Gundam was much more powerful, or so he hoped!
The standing terrorist threw wide his arms and sent a long burst from his machine cannons at Athrun, while his kneeling friend picked away at Athrun's back with his linear cannon. Athrun was forced to let his swords dissolve away and bring the Citadel Shields back to defend against attacks from both directions. He really wished, in that instant, to have Phase Shift Armor of his own again, so he could just shrug off the incoming fire like a spring rain. Neither enemy had yet used their shoulder mounted beam cannons on him again, after they'd both seen how ineffective the first hit had been. Not only technologically advanced, but not stupid. That was wonderful. He sure knew how to pick his fights well, didn't he? Athrun forced himself to conentrate fully on the here and now. Regrets and recriminations could come at a later time, likely aided ably by Cagalli. Right now, he was starting to get irritated... it was time to even the odds some. Athrun decided that the weapons remaining on the standing terrorist were the lesser threat versus the large caliber linear cannon the kneeling foe had, so he directed his immediate attention at removing the greater threat.
Athrun brought both of his arms together, dispelling the Citadel shields in the same motion as he drew up more gouts of plasma from his arm projectors. He drew another jagged bladed sword in each hand, but he slammed their hilts together, creating a double bladed beam staff instead of two swords. Spinning the weapon expertly over his head, Athrun charged the kneeling foe, ducking and dodging the suddenly unsettled linear cannon shots from his chosen foe, who rose from his crouch even as Athrun bore down on him. Sparks and small armor chips exploded from the Phoenix King's back as the other terrorist walked his 55mm machine cannon fire into the legs, back and shoulders of the Gundam, but the shells were too lightweight to do serious damage very quickly, and the HAC armor withstood the attack without much more than cosmetic damage. Athrun closed to within striking range, held his blow a moment longer, and then swung down as hard as he could with both hands. If it hadn't struck the Citadel Shield, the attack would have cleaved the Zealot in half from crown to groin without slowing, but the Brotherhood pilot did manage to interpose the shield, rocking back and being forced to one knee by the force of the blow.
Athrun pressed his glowing blade of fire as hard as he could into the citadel shield, keeping up the pressure on his foe even as the Phoenix King shuddered under a fresh barrage from the other foe, who was even then charging towards Athrun's back, beam sword extended, torso cannons flashing indiscriminately and wildly, sending almost as many shells to the sides of or above the Phoenix King as he put on target. Athrun took one hand off his double headed blade-staff, forming a new ball of plasma energy in the free palm even as he adjusted his grip on his beam construct slightly, tuning the magnetic fields already in place. This tuning had a startling effect, at least to the Zealot trying to hold the blade away from himself. The top third of the enemy beam blade suddenly curved dowards and inwards sharply, like a hook, sliding down past the top edge of the Citadel Shield and burrowing into the back side of the physical shield underneath the Citadel field.
Athrun spun at the last moment before the second enemy arrived, yanking hard on his blade-staff-hook, the magentically contained plasma edges catching on the impenetrable Citadel field, tearing the shield out of the stunned hand of the Zealot and discarding it in a high, slingshot toss, up and over a row of buildings and out of sight. Atrhun's other hand snaked out and thrust the plasma ball at the charging foe, releasing control of the magnetic fields and hurling a wide cone of unfocused plasma fire right in the Zealot's face. The fire wasn't focused enough to do more than singe and charr the outer surface of the Zealot, but that wasn't the purpose of the attack. The fire washed up in a roaring cone that fully engulfed the torso and head of the Brotherhood machine, creating a visual wall made of fire that completely disoriented the Zealot pilot for a fatal second. The pilot was still blinking the flame glare out of his stunned eyes when his control signal went dead, and the simulator pod he'd been using to remotely control the Zealot went dead and quiet. The words unit lost scrolled up onto his screen in red.
Back down on Earth, Athrun's other hand, with the blade-staff, had come around with its other blade and sliced through the Zealot at the waist, cutting it fully in half, with the legs actually running out from underneath the torso and arms before losing balance and skidding to a halt several dozen meters further down the roadway. The remaining Zealot came out shooting, glancing a 200mm linear cannon round from the back of the upper right arm of the Phoenix King, even as the Zealot drew out its own beam saber with its suddenly shieldless hand. The Zealot swung the sword, somewhat awkwardly with its off hand, while settling its rifle for a more steady shot. The left wing of the Phoenix King came crashing down into the path of the beam swing, slashing easily through the plasma beam to dig into the arm and side of the Zealot, sending it staggering to the side and throwing off its aim once more. Damaged but not fully disabled, the left arm of the Zealot stabbed with its blade again, even as the Phoenix King turned once more to face it full on.
Athrun caught the stabbing beam blade within the palm of one hand, the BGCS in that hand easily overpowering the static magnetic fields generated by the beam saber hilt, and he twisted the captive blade upwards and then back around towards the Zealot, like a man bending a piece of rubber hose. The tip of the Zealot's own beam saber carved into its left shoulder joint, destroying it and severing its own arm, even as the blade-staff came around, morphing as it swung, so that it was in the form of a huge, double bladed axe when it struck, slicing off the right arm of the Zealot at the shoulder. When the hands converged, the beam axe melted into twin beam lances, which Athrun spun like knives on his palms before stabbing deeply into either thigh of his armless foe. He didn't want to destroy this one, just disable it. He wanted some people he knew to get a GOOD look at this enemy machine, that was for sure.
Apparently that wasn't in the Brotherhood pilot's game plan though, because no sooner had his machine been disabled then it went up in a huge ball of fire and a shockwave that threw the Phoenix King stumbling backwards and down to its hands and knees. Athrun swore bitterly as he held on through the tremors and shocks... he'd not seen any sort of ejection mechanism go off. The pilot had self destructed along with the machine, committing suicide rather than be captured! Athrun gritted his teeth as he got back to his feet. Truly, fanatical terrorists had NO PLACE at the controls of Mobile Suits! What sort of man or woman would willingly choose explosive death in a situation like that? Athrun just couldn't understand. What made a person hate like that? How could people let themselves becomes so twisted? It wasn't like he thought the world was a perfect place... but it wasn't such an awful place that killing yourself or other people wantonly was an acceptable response to it! If you were alive, you could work to change things for the better... once you were dead, that was it... it was OVER! Forever! He had needed help learning that for himself, but maybe that was why he couldn't understand why others would choose death when they were offered life... he'd been there, been given the same choice... it hadn't been a hard one!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Randolf was, despite himself, quite impressed with the mettle of this cowboy. For that matter, he was quite a bit more impressed with the power of the cowboy's Mobile Suit, which was most DEFINITELY a Gundam. A new Gundam, of quite frightening capabilities, at least so far that Randolf had seen. He was not sure how the Gundam could posess such fine control over the creation and manipulation of its melee beam weaponry, or even manipulate the beam weaponry of other machines, but he had to admit, it was a stirring sight. Even the Boss didn't have technology like that, or the armor that was apparently immune to beam blasts as well. The Boss was not going to be pleased. He liked to think that he was the smartest person alive, and that no one could think of something that he had not thought of before, first. Randolf shrugged... the Boss likely WAS the smartest person alive, but that didn't mean that he was omniscient, no matter how much he wanted to be. If there was anything that sixty years of life, with several heartbreaking tragedies worth of experience had taught Randolf, it was that nothing human was perfect, and that no matter how good or talented someone was, there was no way they could be everything, all the time. He didn't think the Boss would understand that, not until someone handed him his own ass... but that was probably going to be a long time in coming, because while not perfect, the Boss was pretty DAMNED close.
Randolf was disappointed in the Zealot pilots, though he supposed he should not have been. This was a Gundam pilot, a real Gundam pilot, that they'd gone up against and lost against, in a relatively short amount of time. They, despite the advantages of their control systems, were still only mediocre pilots, and it had definitely showed. They had none of the creativity and snap second reflexes of their foe, and they had not been able to adapt as quickly to the rigors of fighting mostly blind in the Haunted Mist, despite the fact that they had had several hours longer than their foe to adjust. It just went to show, skill and talent are great equaliziers, especially coupled with advanced technology and a healthy dose of self confidence, in the face of almost any adverse battlefield condition. Randolf wondered whom he'd drawn, which Gundam pilot that he'd shortly be snuffing out? He shrugged, it really didn't matter much. It wasn't Yamato, that much he knew. Yamato would never have killed the first Zealot, and this Gundam had done so without hesistating. Perhaps it was Joule, who was known to enjoy melee combat. That would be satisfying... the Joule's had always been a bunch of arrogant snobs, and taking them down a peg or two by eliminating their male heir wouldn't be a bad days work. It was also possible it was Zala. Randolf hoped not though... he'd always respected the Zala's.
In any case, it was time for Randolf to take a personal hand. The enemy Gundam was powerful indeed, and it would need to be eliminated before it became a threat to not only this mission, but perhaps even to future missions. It would be most embarassing if Randolf's entire force was defeated by a single machine, even a Gundam. The Boss would be livid if that happened, and that was not something Randolf was keen to see any more often than he had to. Still, for all the power of the enemy, it mattered very little. The Gundam had defeated his lackey's, but now he would be facing the very master of the Mist himself, and there was no escaping from the Haunted on its home territory! He rose from his prone position to a balanced crouch, extending both arms as he tuned his sonar to a more active setting, granting him an ever clearer picture of his victim, who was just now recovering fully from the detonation of the second Zealot. Cloaked by almost a half kilometer of fog, there was no chance whatsoever that the Gundam would be able to see the attack coming, even without the silencer and flash suppressor the twin 100mm sniper cannons featured. Randolf centered his aim on the center chest of the enemy Gundam, and he smiled a hard smile as he gently squeezed his triggers. Tough luck for the cowboy, because even Gundams were trumped by Ghosts.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The first two shots caught Athrun COMPLETELY off guard. He was just standing up from the self destruct blast that had consumed the second Zealot without warning and the Phoenix King was standing almost fully upright when without warning, the Gundam slammed backwards under the thunderous impact of two high caliber explosive shells. The only thing that saved the Phoenix King was its HAC armor, which was totally unaffected by the beam tips on the Haunted's explosive shells. Unable to initially pierce the Gundam's armor, much of the explosive power in the shells was wasted as they exploded outwards in all directions from the point of impact, putting several cracks in the Phoenix King's torso, but leaving the cockpit, which had been the target of the sniper attack, completely intact. Still, the impacts had been hard enough to cause several secondary systems to fail, and had almost knocked the Phoenix King entirely over backwards, if not for its slightly spread wings digging into the buildings on either side of the street and slowing its backwards momentum long enough for Athrun to catch himself.
"What the HELL...!?" Athrun shouted, even though there was no one to hear him besides himself. To say that getting shot in the chest was a surprise was putting it almost comically mildly. Getting shot once in the chest from far enough away that Athrun couldn't even begin to detect where the shot had come from was one thing. Flukes happen. But he'd taken TWO shots... two shots was NO fluke. Someone was sniping him. Which meant that someone had a way of seeing through the mist. Which also meant he still had at least one enemy out there. And that enemy was more dangerous than the other two, because he wasn't limited by the fog in anything near the way Athrun was. Pure instinct brought both his arms up across his damaged chest, Citadel Shields flickering into existance quickly enough to deflect another shot at his chest, but with both shields up high, the other sniper shot cleanly struck the Phoenix King's right knee. The joint held up, though armor spalled away from the wound like shed skin, and Athrun was forced to drop one shield down to cover his lower torso and legs to prevent being crippled.
Two more sniper shots detonated against the Citadel Shields before a third and fourth snuck through gaps in Athrun's coverage, scoring against his left hip and right shoulder. The Phoenix King rocked under the blows, and more alarms began beeping at him. The shots couldn't kill him in one go, but if he let the bastard shoot him more than once or twice in the same spot, Athrun had the uncomfortable feeling that the HAC armor would quickly show its relative vulnerability to standard explosive and solid munitions. And the bastard shooting him seemed more than proficient at his craft, able to pretty much pick wherever he wanted his shots to go, sneaking them around the edges of Athrun's shifting Citadel Shields in a nearly unbelievable fashion. Any remaining doubts that his foe could not only see him, but see him clearly, were quickly dispelled, as the sniper placed shots Athrun himself wasn't sure he could make, and that even Kira might have had some trouble emulating. Of course, it didn't help that the Phoenix King was basically a standing target, but Athrun didn't have much choice... he had no idea where the shells were coming from, besides somewhere in his frontal arc, and he didn't feel comfortable flying around in the fog... he'd be sure to crash into buildings before long, and it wouldn't help him find his enemy except by great accident.
A sudden thought struck him, which might buy him at least a little bit of time to think. Athrun crouched the Phoenix King down slightly, lowering his center of balance and gravity even as he enfolded the front of the Phoenix King with its wings, forming a thick wall of armored feathers between him and his attacker that reached from the tips of the Gundam's feet all the way up to the top of its head, and covered it along its full width as well. Almost immediately the sniper started pouring shot after well aimed shot into the wings, and Athrun knew he wasn't going to have very long, maybe ten or fifteen seconds, before the wings started to give way and he lost his defense, not to mention the ace up his sleeve offense, which he was saving for when he finally got a good lock on the location of his foe. The image of the thicker cloud of fog that the Phoenix King had left behind after its armor had absorbed the surprise beam blasts from the Brotherhood machine flashed behind Athrun's eyes. He smiled grimly, inspired. The enemy wanted to play with fog? Well, Athrun had a few ideas of his own to show off.
With no gain to be had in wasting any more time and risking possible severe damage to his wings, Athrun flicked them back over his shoulders even as he sprang forward, crouching low to the ground. A green SEED dropped slowly through an infinite void inside his mind before detonating in a cloud of red light that shook the whole universe. Athrun jerked the Phoenix King to a halt after advancing about twenty meters, stopping so fast the sniper actually overcorrected and blasted two shots into the street about five meters ahead of him. Athrun thrust his arms out, down low to either side of his body. Still crouched down low, he began backing up as quickly as possible, while gouting flames from both hands upwards in geysers as wide and tall as he could make them. Exactly as he'd expected, whatever was making the fog bloomed into massive overstimulation as soon as the fire hit the air, and the fog doubled in thickness and then doubled again, and again, as the Phoenix King poured heat energy into the greedy fog. Athrun stopped when he'd reached his original position, then turned off his flames and backed up a few more steps. Almost immediately the vastly thickened and rising cloud of fog he'd created paid dividends. It didn't stop his foe from shooting at him, but with his SEED enhanced senses Athrun was quite easily able to see the paths the shell's made as they passed through the thick fog and into the relatively thinner fog between him and his jury made smoke screen. Once he could see them coming, with the grace space his few extra steps gave him, moving his shields in time to block the shells with SEED reflexes was childs play.
The impromptu smokescreen also let Athrun see the path the shells arrived along, which, as he'd expected, showed him that his sniper was on a rooftop or in the air somewhere, shooting downward at him at an angle. This was actually good news for Athrun, though the sniper wouldn't realize it... it meant he didn't have to worry nearly so much about hitting civilian structures when shooting back. Which he did after deflecting the next two sniper shots, the Phoenix King's hands darting to its hips, where a dual 57mm beam rifle was slung on either side. Athrun snapped a pair of shots from each two barreled weapon back along the trajectory from the last two sniper shots, the bright green energy beams leaving thickened trails of fog behind them as they seared towards the sniper. Athrun was easily able to maintain his hold on the rifles while also using the shields to deflect incoming fire, and he smiled in a predatorial fashion. Just TRY and keep sniping him... it wouldn't take Athrun long at all to trace his enemy's shots back to him, and then the shoe might be on the other foot!
-----------------------------------------------------------------
It hadn't taken Randolf long at all to realize that his vaunted sniping plan had become outdated. His strength had become something of a weakness, which was never a pleasant feeling to have. He could still see the Gundam fine, despite the cloud of thicker fog that his enemy had cunningly created. Initially Randolf had thought the ploy was to create a visual blind, which of course was utterly pointless. But he'd been wrong... and HOW! Instead of cowering once more behind his shields and the so called visual blind, his foe had used the differences in the density of the thick fog and thin fog to track incoming shells from Randolf's sniper cannons, which he then deflected with terrifying ease. Not ONLY that, but the enemy Gundam Pilot had used his brief glimpses of the incoming trajectories of the shells to back-trace them to their point of origin. Which was Randolf, of course. The four twinned beam blasts from the enemy Gundam had nearly blasted the Haunted's hands off, that was how uncannily accurate the other pilot was! If Randolf had been a few fractions of a second slower, he'd have been the one that was crippled!
He'd moved of course, before taking the next few shots, with distressingly similar results, but there was another advantage the enemy Gundam had over him, one that kept growing more dire with the passing of time. That advantage was the ever approaching time when the USN and FNE would send in negotiators and scout teams to assess the situation within the town. Once they discovered a Mobile Suit battle raging within the town, they would not be slow to send in their own forces. Though they would be greatly hampered by the fog, the USN and FNE had forces to spare, and they would be able to swamp the town with their numbers. Perhaps not very good for the town, but all its inhabitents were dead as it was, and the action would only serve to showcase the strength of the USN, which was the opposite of the mission goal. Randolf just didn't have the time to waste for a prolonged sniper duel with this extremely skilled and adaptable opponent. He'd have to get closer, to the point where smoke screens could not compensate for his shots, despite the peternatural reflexes of the Gundam Pilot.
Randolf was not afraid to admit that the thought of closing to proximity with the enemy Gundam gave him some cold sweats. This guy, whichever one he was, had mopped the floor with two Zealots while adapating to a strange environment, and he'd done it without too much trouble. Not only that, but he'd adjusted on the fly to Randolf's own attacks, and had even figured out a way to use Randolf's self created environment against him! Randolf stripped away any thoughts that he was at all superior to this Gundam Pilot... hell, the only thing even keeping them close to even was the fact that Randolf could see and his opponent could not. Just about the last thing Randolf wanted to do was negate that great advantage of his, but he did not have too much choice in the matter. He had all of minutes remaining before the USN would start sending people in... this had to end NOW. Even if it meant closing with an opponent that was in a skill class quite a bit better than Randolf's own.
That wasn't to say that Randolf was desperate and completely out of tricks. Oh no, he still had a few aces up his sleeves, which would HOPEFULLY be enough to unbalance and surprise his foe long enough for Randolf to strike enough telling blows that the enemy would not be able to recover. Withdrawing the sniper cannons back into the interior of his forearms, Randolf took out and loaded the quad barreled 155mm sawed off shotcannon, even as he thruster jumped well over the head of his opponent, landing a hundred meters further down the street. Stalking swiftly and almost silently forward, Randolf put his other hand up onto the grip of the two handed anti-ship axe slung across his upper back. He'd blast his foe off balance from behind with the shotcannon, and then hack him to pieces with the axe before he could recover. Just to be sure that he'd catch his opponent with his guard down, as if chameleonic Phase Shift wouldn't conceal him well enough, Randolf activated the holoprojectors mounted on the Haunted's head and shoulders. Each would project a fully life sized, completely visually accurate image of the Haunted up to one hundred meters away, and could even make those images move and somewhat react to outside stimuli. Still, their primary purpose was to confuse and draw fire from foes, while the real Haunted struck from an unexpected angle. Let's see how this Gundam liked tangling with some spectres...
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Athrun was stunned when the form of an unknown mobile suit appeared out of the mist, only a few meters ahead of him. One moment there was nothing there at all, the next, perhaps decloaking from mirage colloid or some other high tech stealth system, a Gundam nearly as big as the Phoenix King, if lacking wings, was practically nose to nose with Athrun. The enemy Gundam, for it had to be a Gundam, with that head shape and the stealth systems he'd just seen it use, not to mention the sniper cannons it had been using on him earlier, though they weren't in current evidence, was holding a short, quad barreled gun of wicked looking design, while the hilt of a large, physical melee weapon of some sort poked over its shoulder. Athrun didn't wait for the enemy to open fire, he brought his left arm up with the shield ready to take whatever it was the gun was going to dish out, while his right hand fired three quick beam blasts into the foe, point blank. Impossibly, none hit their targets, as the enemy Gundam moved so fast it BLURRED, reappearing, completely unharmed, about ten meters to Athrun's left.
Athrun's jaw tightened... he'd seen a Gundam move like that once before, when he'd been helping defeat Frost in the Pulsar at the end of the Second Valentine War. Frost had moved so quickly that shooting at him was almost pointless, even without the basically invincible shields the Pulsar could project from its palms. He was just so fast, in terms of reflexes and pure speed that he could dodge pretty much anything that wasn't point blank, and even the point blank stuff he could usually evade without too much of a sweat. If this new enemy Gundam was piloted by someone even CLOSE to Frost, then Athrun was in deep, deep shit. They'd beaten Frost, but only by a slimmer margin than anyone was comfortable with, and it had taken the combined efforts of all of Athrun's friends plus a few other people to do it. Just by himself, he didn't give himself very long odds, even with the Phoenix King's power. Not in this fog. Not in the middle of a town of innocent people.
It was very strange though... no matter how hard he tried, the enemy Gundam always evaded his shots with contemptuous ease, blurring with speed and reappearing a short distance away, in mostly random directions. Athrun wasn't even mussing the guy's hair, or so it seemed. But despite having been left open on multiple occasions, the enemy pilot had done nothing to actually attack Athrun. If this was a Frost like person, they were playing a very sick game, which was not unknown... but things weren't adding up. Athrun could have sworn that this guy was trying to kill him as quickly as possible when he'd been sniping at Athrun. But now, here he was, gun alreadly leveled, dancing around Athrun like a man around a glass sculpture, and he was holding his fire? If the bastard wanted to kill Athrun, he could have done it several times by now! It was almost like he was shooting at something that wasn't actually there.
With that odd thought in his mind, Athrun decided to take a chance. He fired at the foe again, but turned away from where the guy was going to go, if he followed his usual pattern. Somewhat to Athrun's surprise and concern, the enemy Gundam was standing in the direction he'd turned to face, as if the pilot had read his move. Still, Athrun had to be totally sure, and though it made every piloting and soldierly sense in his body scream in protest, Athrun forced himself to turn away from the foe threatening him with a gun to his front, and looked over his shoulder at where he'd thought the guy would go. Athrun smiled, relief tingling throughout his body. There was another, identical enemy Gundam where Athrun had thought there would be. He was flanked by Gundams, but they weren't firing at him? Athrun didn't think so. He scanned the area slowly, and discovered an additional two Gundams lurking around. Or at least, that was what his opponent wanted him to think. If four Gundams were really surrounding him, Athrun would already be dead. So the obvious conclusion was that these Gundams he could see, which avoided his shots with ease and never fired back despite the oppotunity too, weren't actually real. They were images of Gundam's, nothing more. A speculative shot at one while he carefully observed it showed that though the Gundam moved, its legs did not, nor did thrusters fire. The fog made it hard to detect, but once he was looking for it, it was almost obvious.
So if none of these four Gundams were real... but he hadn't been gunned down by the sniper while dealing with the images... and the images all stayed mostly to his front or sides... that meant... Athrun spun the Phoenix King as fast as he could, both arms coming up across his chest with Citadel Shields at maximum power, barely in time to catch the four barreled shotcannon blast from the fifth Gundam, which was the real one. The real one did not obligingly make itself visible like its images did. No, it blended into the fog like it was part of it, and all Athrun could really see was a vague blurred outline where the mist parted around the edges of the Gundam's frame. He couldn't even see it's eyes, either because it had none, or because they too were covered by the cloaking effect. It wasn't mirage colloid, since the Phoenix King's vari-camera arrays would have stripped that invisibility away within seconds at this range, but whatever it was made it almost impossible to see the Gundam. Color and pattern changing paint maybe? The Brotherhood terrorists had had an active camouflage system on their armor that Athrun had seen in the recording... it wasn't too much of a stretch to imagine similar technology for their Mobile Suits. Though the other two hadn't had it, which made Athrun even more sure that this machine was in fact an enemy Gundam, while the other two were... just Gundam-like.
The force of all four barrels unloading their payload into the Phoenix King's shields pushed Athrun backwards a few steps, but it was by no means nearly the effect his opponent had probably been hoping for. Athrun shuddered, once, at the thought of what that shotcannon blast would have done had it hit him while his back was turned and he was unprepared... major damage at the best, lights out for good at worst! The enemy Gundam dropped its weapon, and unlimbered a huge two handed axe from its back. It was disconcerting, seeing the gun and then the axe, which weren't camouflaged, besides a flat grey-white paint coat, apparently floating in midair, until you looked really, really close and saw the blur lines that showed where the Gundam itself was. The enemy Gundam hammered its axe into the Phoenix King's shields as hard as it could, trying to batter them out of the way so that the next blow could fall upon the vulnerable cockpit section. Not that there was a chance in hell of that happening. The Haunted was strong, but the Phoenix King was more massive, just as strong if not stronger and well braced.
Athrun turned and deflected the second axe stroke down and to the side, before lashing out with a side kick that only clipped the Haunted's legs because Athrun had to guess at the actual dimensions of the Gundam, using his memory of the ghost-images, which fortunately proved to be accurate. A mistake on the part of the ghost-machine, making its images look just like itself, so that a skilled pilot could approximate what he should aim for even if he couldn't see the real machine. Athrun lost some of his smile when the other four images of the enemy dissolved and then reformed, along with the fifth Gundam, the real one. Athrun found himself facing a semicircle of Gundams, all identical, each holding its axe in a slightly different pose. He wanted to believe that the enemy hadn't managed to change position, but he doubted that the foe would reveal himself and remain in the same spot. Now Athrun saw why all the images were the exact same... in the fog, without sensors more complex than cameras, there was no way he could tell which was the real threat. A lesser pilot, or one without the Phoenix King, might have been worried or intimidated. As things were, Athrun's smile quickly regenerated itself.
The five Gundams began edging their way forward, maneuvering for what the other pilot obviously thought was the kill stroke with malicious glee evident in their stride and posture. Athrun ignored the lot of them raising both of his hands high above his head and turning the plasma projectors on to maximum flow. He generated a two handed beam sword at least as big as the one Frost had used so well with the Pulsar, and Athrun kept pouring more fire into his fields, until fire literally ran in streams up and down and around the Phoenix King's arms, even looping up and down the coursucating blade of the massive sword. Athrun glanced up at his sword, compared it to the anti-ship axe his foe had, and thought, what the hell, why not? So he made the sword about twenty percent bigger in all dimensions, straining the BGCS to its regular limits, holding a pillar of flame in the general shape of a sword in his hands, big enough to immolate a small Mobile Suit with a single strike. However, the attack came from the wings. Flickering out to full extension to either side and then sweeping forward in a great single wingbeat, the Phoenix King shed its feathers in a horizontal hurricane of fire and blazing metal.
To say that the Haunted was caught by surprise would be quite the understatement. Its confused and scared and almost defeated foe had suddenly stood up and generated a sword of truly mind boggling power, drawing his attention to that gleaming pillar warily. And then, out of nowhere, the wings had come out and swept forward and unleashed too many red hot, thruster boosted, razor sharp feathers for Randolf to count, at less than twenty meters range! Of course, there were five different targets for the feathers, all attempting strenuous evasive maneuvers, so Athrun could not detect which was the real enemy right off the bat. Not until several feathers struck the Haunted and plowed black scars across its arms and legs and torso, soon making it appear like the ghostly Gundam had laid out along a barbecue grill and gotten sear marks on its flesh. His foe finally marked out, Athrun wasted no time in leaping forward to engage more closely, ignoring the darting phantoms of the other images that leaped suicidally into his way. Still, Randolf wasn't totally helpless, and he managed to get the beam edge of his axe interposed between himself and the oncoming sword.
For all its size, the BGCS sword had much less mass than the physical form of the Haunted's anti-ship axe, so the intial blow didn't do much besides send the Haunted sliding backwards, heels digging a trench through the ground, until its back smashed into a building. If the sword had been a physical weapon, Randolf knew that he'd have been dead, his axe battered out of his hands and then his body split apart in the same motion. He tried to press up with his axe and force the giant sword away, but in a clinch, where the Phoenix King could use the strength of its BGCS fields to press down, there was no longer any constest of strength. The Haunted's axe was slowly forced down, until its opposite blade was starting to cut into its own shoulder. Trapped between the building and the blade, Randolf grew desperate. This was no longer a battle he could win. Escape was the utmost priority, even over mission completion. Gambling, Randolf took one hand off his axe and shoved it towards the Phoenix King's chest, the palm irising open to reveal the muzzle of the sniper cannon. Athrun recognized the threat the instant it appeared, and he adjusted his BGCS accordingly, reversing the sword so that its tip protruded down from where the hilt used to be, shooting downwards like a spear to cleanly slice off the Haunted's hand at the wrist, before the Haunted could open fire.
Still, the end result was in Randolf's favor, as the maneuver released the pressure of the sword on the Haunted's axe. Able to at last get a moment breather, Randolf launched himself straight back through the building, collapsing it around himself before shooting out the other side. By the time the Phoenix King had cleared the dust and debris cloud from the collapsed building, the Haunted was gone, disappearing like a ghost into its fog. Athrun stood on guard for several minutes, before he reached down and recovered the severed hand. It wasn't much, but it was at least some proof that he'd fought an enemy Gundam. Perhaps Erica Simmons would be able to glean something of import from it. Athrun was about to turn to go back to his original purpose of searching for townsfolk to help, when he saw more shapes looming out of the fog, coming towards him in a group. More enemies... that was JUST what he needed, as the scattered feathers began to slot themselves back into place on his wings after pulling themselves out of wherever they'd ended up embedding themselves. However, this time it WASN'T more enemies. In some ways, it was worse, Athrun thought with a pained groan, as the first USN Mobile Assault squads slowly spread out to surround him, demanding that he surrender his machine as a potential terrorist. This was not going to ge over well in the media...