Author Note: Guess I am on a roll after all. At least a little bit. Two chapters, 3 days. Not bad. Hopefully this one answers some questions people have had about what else Green EDEN does. Of course, some information is repetitive, but I trust you understand why that has to be the case. As for one recurring comment in reviews, why didn't I make Kira go Seed mode... I guess I kinda forgot. Too much thinking on Lacus and Noah. I really intended for him to have been in a Seed mode that fight. And yes, Noah was still breaking him down, even in Seed mode. Because Kira's mental defenses are geared, more or less, towards protecting against Lacus like attacks. Brute force, those being the only kind he has any prior experience of. And while Noah can be pretty forceful, like one person said, his strength is his relative experience and finesse. And Kira is not so strong against that.
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"Yes, Mr. Secretary-General, I understand what you are saying, but you need to listen to me as well! I am the expert here, if not completely, at least compared to you!" Durandel rubbed at his forehead with one hand, glad that it was a voice only comm, so he could display his frustration and weariness without having to worry about offending the man who was, at least technically, his boss. "And what I am telling you, sir, is that this is not something that can just be labeled and fit into one of our pre-existing emergency response scenarios! We have to throw out everything we had planned, because a disaster on this scale is simply unprecedented! We are dealing with something that combines the worst aspects of a military defeat, a terrorist incident, and a natural disaster! Responding to just one facet of the situation will only result in the problem becoming worse!" Durandel opened his mouth to say more, but was cut off by an altogether waspish and unfriendly stream of comments from the other end of the line. He put his hand over the mouthpiece and sighed, rolling his eyes over at Rey, who was compiling a data analysis on the other side of the small private briefing chamber they were currently using as a control center.
"Yes... yes, I understand... yes... yes I know civilians are dying. They are my people too, sir. Yes, mass panic is very likely. Yes, we aren't prepared. I agree completely sir, it is my fault in part. But blaming people isn't going to solve the problem right now!" Durandel paused and waited out another brief tirade. "If that is how you really feel, sir, then we should just slit our throats right now, because it would be faster and less painful. I didn't think so. I apologize for being rude, sir, but we can't go to pieces now. Especially not people like you and me. Yes. Yes, I am working on it as hard as I can, and if you will permit me to say, these phone calls aren't helping much. Yes. Yes, sir. I will have a briefing for you before noon. Earlier. Yes. Yes sir, I have my very best people working around the clock. Thank you sir. I will talk to you later." Durandel hung up with a much louder sigh. "Politicians." He said in exasperation, to no one in particular.
"If I'm one of your best people, then we are in a lot of trouble." Rey said with a brief smile. "I don't know what to do, or make of this, I'm sorry to say. It's just... too much, too fast!"
"Damn Noah for his ghastly abilities to overwhelm us with the unexpected." Durandel acknowledged wearily. "All the same, we can't just give up. Not now. Not when we are so close to a golden age for humanity." He looked over at Rey, and smiled briefly himself. "I'm glad to see you focused on the task at hand, even if it is rather problematic. When I was your age, I would have been daydreaming by now. Perhaps about a certain young lady." Durandel was gratified to see Rey actually flush a little bit. Looked like Talia was right. And that was not a problem at all. If anything, it was a sign of hope, and a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Even in the darkest of times, when everyone was so busy and fighting for their lives, love and romance could still blossom. It was quite the beautiful thing.
"I don't know what you mean, Gil." Rey replied, somewhat stiffly.
"Rey, believe it or not, but I have been infatuated with more than one or two women during my life. When I was your age, it was almost a monthly obsession. Its nothing to be ashamed of. Its quite heartening, even, perhaps especially at the moment. Take your happiness where and when you can get it, my son, because the rest of life won't be so obliging." Durandel advised. Moment of levity passing, he adopted a more serious mein and nodded at the analysis Rey was working on. "So what do you have so far?"
"Not much." Rey heaved a heavy sigh of his own. "I'm starting to recall more details about the Great Endeavor, but the more I remember, the more hopeless it all seems. Now that he's on Earth, Noah's position is basically the strongest it has ever been. We've plotted his likely route, and he looks to be directly hitting or at least closely passing as many major population centers as he can while circumnavigating the globe. That is going to make striking at the Great Endeavor inherently dangerous, in terms of collateral damage. If we go in with full force, that is, a barrage of strategic level weaponry, we might... MIGHT be able to stop him. But we would lose a city or two in the process. Tens of millions of civilian casualties, at the minimum. Perhaps hundreds of millions affected by fallout and secondary effects. But if we go in with anything less, we stand a relatively good chance of being dismantled almost completely in a military fashion. The recent battle hit everyone hard. The largest losses in a single battle since World War One. Everyone sent the cream of their crop to the Armada... and over eighty five percent of them are just plain gone."
"At least we managed to deal heavy blows to his own military forces at the same time. We annihilated his mass production forces, and took that blasted Revenant out of the picture for good!" Durandel half argued. He neglected to mention it was the Clyne Faction that had done most of the annihilating and taking out, but that was how he was spinning it to the media, and it helped when doing that if you actually somewhat believed it yourself. Durandel frowned when Rey started shaking his head almost at once. "What?"
"The only loss Noah suffered was the Revenant. That is the only pilot he lost. Losing machines means nothing to him." Rey answered quietly. "Look at this." He called up an image on his computer screen. The picture was hazy, and tinged with what looked like greenish static all across it, but it was clear enough. There wasn't much to see... a large stretch of flat plains, pockmarked by a series of huge, roughly circular craters punched into the ground in a repeating pattern. A scale popped up over one such crater, and Durandel's eyes widened as he saw it was most of fifty meters across and a good fifteen meters deep.
"What are those!? Explosion craters? I thought we had pulled back all major forces from the line of advance..." Durandel protested.
"Those are footprints, Gil. Of the Great Endeavor." Rey clarified, somewhat unnessecarily. "If you look closer you'll see the bottom of each crater is actually filled with a mixture of rubble and fine particulate. Those craters actually go down another ten to twenty meters, they just backfilled when the Great Endeavor shifted position."
"You're right. What's it mean?" Durandel asked.
"From what I recall, the Great Endeavor's support legs each contain a modified form of the sonic weapon the Tormented was equipped with. However, this time it is used in a much more industrial manner, rather than military. When it places its foot down, it sinks into the ground, and the sonic device activates, pulverizing the earth and stone around the bottom of the foot, rendering it down into a fine sand or powder. That powder is then sucked up into the leg and transferred deeper into the rest of the SATMARS, where it is put to use as raw materials for the construction of new war machines or other supplies." Rey reported.
"But its just sandy grit. You can't make anything important out of sandy grit." Durandel pointed out.
"We can't." Rey said grimly. "Noah doesn't seem as handicapped. I don't know how he's done it, but its the only even slightly rational explanation I can come up with. Noah has managed to master a cost effective form of transmutation of matter on a large scale."
"Transmutation of matter? Lead into gold... that sort of rubbish died out in the middle ages!" Durandel scoffed. "That's impossible. Even if it WERE possible, the energy requirements would be..."
"Well in line with what we have seen the Great Endeavor is capable of producing." Rey finished quietly. "A lot of what Noah has already done would have been considered impossible a few years ago. Hell, a few weeks ago! Like I said, I have no idea how he's done it, but he has. We have to face that he has. And my most conservative rough estimate says with the amount of materials he is pulling in, assuming he has anything like an efficient conversion ratio, we could be looking at three or more mass production models being produced every DAY! Perhaps more. In less than a month he will have rejuvenated his forces completely, even increased them from what we just recently encountered!"
"The clock is ticking then." Durandel mused. "The longer we wait to attack, the stronger his defenses will become. We have to strike while he is weak. I'll get an assault plan started right no..."
"No. That's what he wants." Rey interrupted quickly, halting Durandel as he reached for the phone.
"What?" Durandel frowned at his son.
"Noah knows that I'd be able to give you this kind of insight into his situation. I would be very surprised if he hasn't already accounted for it. Even hoped for it. He is weak, yes, but he is still too strong for us to just haphazardly rush, especially after the casualties we have just taken. Another major loss will be the end of any sort of unified strategy... people will lose faith in the ability of the USN to stand up to the Brotherhood. Our next attack HAS to beat him, and beat him utterly. Rushing to assault him while he appears weak is only going to end with us getting another bloody nose." Rey insisted. "Damn the bastard, but he's not a fool. He's smarter than both of us, perhaps combined. He wants us to attack him as soon as possible, I'd bet my life on it. He's putting the pressure on us from the political side with the attacks on civilians, and he's tempting us on the military side with a show of weakness. It's too good of a situation. I just don't buy it. He's got something planned."
"More of that Blue Stuff?" Durandel said darkly, his fists clenching at the horrid and fresh memories those words conjured up.
"I don't think so..." Rey said hesitantly. "From what we saw, the only good way he had of disposing of it was through use of his Anti-matter weapons. And using those on Earth would cause untold environmental damage. And Noah loves the environment. He won't damage it if he has any choice in the matter."
"Well, at least that's one thing we don't have to worry about then." Durandel said with a sigh of relief.
"Sort of." Rey hedged, once more cutting Gil off from a brief moment of satisfaction. "He probably won't chance using them where they could strike the ground, but as anti-air and anti-orbit weapons, he would definitely use them. I'd thought to put a squadron of Nazca's and Agamemnon's in geo-synch orbit and have them pound the shit out of him, at least as an annoyance tactic, but then I realized that our ships are just plain more vulnerable than his, and we currently lack another Mirrorblade System. The amount of damage we would inflict would not be worth losing as many ships and crews as we would."
"Damn it, isn't there anything he hasn't accounted for!? I feel like I've been played from the beginning! Like I'm just a rat wandering lost in a maze he set up for me!" Durandel groused.
"We have to do something illogical. He's a very intellect and logic driven person, or at least he tries to be. He'll have plans for anything that anyone reasonable would do. So we need to do something unreasonable." Rey said slowly. "Something like just sitting back and letting him make his little sailing trip, at least for the meanwhile."
"We can't do that, Rey. The public is in a frenzy. If we just sit back and watch, we'll all be impeached, and maybe lynched." Durandel rubbed at his forehead again, feeling a migraine coming on.
"I don't mean just sit back and do nothing. I meant don't fight him. Don't impede him. Don't get in his way. Don't even get near him, not with any sort of threatening force. He wants us to fight him. He NEEDS us to fight him, because if he doesn't break our resolve in some way, he knows we will eventually beat him. Sending anything less than everything we have at the Great Endeavor is probably doomed to failure. Failure we cannot afford. So instead of going on the attack, we focus our efforts elsewhere. We return to the peacetime mission of the military forces. Disaster relief and public security... not from outside threats, but from internal problems. And in the meanwhile we have time to evaluate our options more fully, let our troops recover some, let the public outrage inflame our morale, and maybe even come up with a few last ditch technical surprises to tip the balance in our favor. He is not invincible, especially if we don't fight him on his terms." Rey continued, getting more excited as he rolled on.
"You may be on to something here, Rey. Good job." Durandel complimented his son, his leonine eyes shining as he turned the germ of an idea over and over in his mind, and found himself agreeing that it made good sense. It would definitely cut down on the screaming tirades from the Secretary-General, and he was heartily sick of those already. He'd make a world leader out of Rey yet, if this was any indication. "Speaking of disaster relief..." Durandel turned to a vid-screen and opened a channel. The picture, when it resolved, showed a white and clean sterile labratory, deep in a secured bunker in the Atlantic Federation, the old island of England. Figures clad in bulky silver and white full body containment suits shuffled slowly around, peering through thick faceplates at glass canisters of faintly green tinged air, or specimens of plant and animal life, and eve two seperately sealed and covered gurney's with comatose human bodies on them. One of the researchers looked up at the wall and waved awkwardly at the SecDef, before waddling over to attach a wire cord from his helmet to a sterile wall jack.
"Mr. Secretary, I was waiting for you to call." The scientist's voice was somewhat hoarse and raspy, as if he was out of breath. Or perhaps a chain smoker. Or maybe, given how he was shuffling his feet and twitching his arms, just terribly excited.
"Dr. Braun, please tell me you have good news. We could really use some good news right now." Durandel replied politely. He turned to Rey. "Rey, this is Doctor Emilio Braun, formerly of the Eurasian Federation Biological Weapon's Research and Disposal Deperatment. Which never officially existed, of course. Since Biological and Chemical weapons are, of course, banned."
"And we all know what banned meant to Blue Cosmos." Dr. Braun said, almost cheerfully. "You might as well have painted a big "use this, it's really horrible" sign on those kinds of weapons. But I digress. I'm not sure if the news I have is good news, Mr. Secretary, but I do have news. Of course its all still very early on... even the earliest subjects have only been contaminated for about half a day by now, but that in itself tells us quite a lot! Whatever this is, it is not a fast acting agent. This is a good thing, in many respects. It means that light exposure could most likely be treated in the field, or at least prevented from reaching symptoms, with proper medical care. Believe me, the fast acting agents really can send a chill down your spine... some of them can kill you before you realize you're dead. This, thankfully, is not one of those."
"What kind of... agent... is it?" Rey asked.
"That I do not know, Mr. Knight-Commander. In many ways it behaves like a virus or bacterial plague, but it is also not alive. Yet it does seem to have some sort of life cycle... at the very least it can reproduce. Its very intriguing! Very exciting! We may be looking at something entirely new here. The possibilities could be phenomenal!" Dr. Braun could not hide the glee in his voice.
"Be that as it may, Doctor, we are looking for solid facts at the moment." Durandel steered the conversation back to the topic at hand. "We need to know what this... Green Stuff... does. We need to know what the signs of infection are. We need to know how long it takes to infect someone. What's the point of no return? Is there a cure? What can we do to prevent or limit the damage it does? Tens of thousands of innocent people have already been exposed, Doctor. Their lives could depend on what you can find out." Durandel made sure to stress the bit about tens of thousands of innocents. Hell, he probably should have said hundreds of thousands, if not millions. The Great Endeavor had not landed near any major population centers, but it was fast approaching the Eastern Seaboard of old Canada and the United States, and that was very densely populated. The Green clouds had already passed overhead in those locations, but had not yet drifted down to ground level, though people were watching the sky with great trepidation, despite the fact that the greenish mist was invisible in the pre-dawn dark.
"Well, I'll see what I can do." Dr. Braun sounded suddenly less gleeful. "I can tell you though, since this is something entirely new, something unprecedented, a quick response is... unlikely. We just don't understand the fundamental properties of this Green Stuff. We're still calling it Green Stuff, and we're the expert eggheads! We've looked at the inert samples from the PLANTS, and confirmed that they are the same as the activated samples from Earth, but that was not really a surprise. As for your questions... well, we're running into more unexplained things than we are explainable things. From what we've been able to discover, this Green Stuff attacks the genetic code of whatever it infects. And it can infect anything with a genetic code, from the smallest microbe on up to humans and the largest of animals and plants. It does not discriminate. I've never encountered something that virulent, that it affects literally every living thing it touches, even viruses!" Dr. Braun let that sink in, or not, for a few moments before continuing on.
"As for what we've seen of our human patients, the earliest signs of onset are dehydration, hunger, weakness and lack of energy. Of course, many people feel symptoms like those for thousands of reasons, so it may be very difficult to initially tell when someone has been infected. As the infection progresses, the symptoms will excaberate, to the point where the host will eventually be unable to maintain consciousness. And now is when things start getting serious. Both our patients recently entered the coma state, about two hours ago, give or take twenty minutes. It was more or less uniform in timing, but since they had both been exposed at the same time, that is not strange. As far as we can yet tell, stage two of the infection involves shutting down the host's auto-immune system... the part of your body that actively fights against infections. You could say it tears down the castle before attacking the town. Quite a dastardly tactic, if I do say so myself. Dr. Braun sounded faintly admiring, despite his words. "At the same time, the infection begins to attack the host's genetic code. We are still monitoring this stage, and we will let you know what we discover. At the moment though, as long as our subjects stay fed and hydrated, and hopefully sterile, they look to be in no danger of expiration."
"It's not deadly?" Durandel asked, brow furrowed in a frown.
"Oh no, it is highly deadly, Mr. Secretary. Anything that shuts down the auto-immune system is very life threatening. But only in a situation where your weakened body could be exposed to the cornucopia of pathogens, viruses, bacteria and other harmful life forms that surround us as we go about our daily lives. Here, in a contained environment, in a sterile lab, while hooked to life support machinery, those sorts of risks are not present, and so, at least so far as we have seen, that reduces the deadliness factor considerably. Of course, providing similar conditions in the field is going to be rather difficult." Dr. Braun's voice faltered somewhat as he made that rather astute and completely obvious observation. "However, I am not convinced that its purpose is to be deadly at all."
"What do you mean? It shuts down our immune system! How is that not intended to be deadly!?" Durandel replied, in shocked disbelief.
"Indeed, there is that." Dr. Braun allowed. "However, it takes more than five hours to do so. There is no need to take so long. Furthermore, its a rather... hit and miss method of mass death, in my professional opinion. A nerve or blood based toxin would do the job much more efficiently and easily, not to mention quickly. It is almost like the auto-immune suppression is a mere side effect. We just don't know at this juncture, I'm afraid. We will report events as they occur, but we are dealing with the very first cases here, Mr. Secretary. It's all unknown ahead."
"What about its effects on life other than human?" Rey asked, pointing over Dr. Braun's shoulder at some of the other specimen cases.
"Er, yes. Those." Dr. Braun hedged. "Let me refer you to someone more expert in that field. Magnus, if you would come assist me in rendering our findings to the good Secretary of Defense?" Another scientist shuffled over after a few moments, shorter and stockier than Dr. Braun, though it was hard to tell in the anti-contamination suits, clutching a large markerboard in his gloved hands. "Mr. Secretary, this is Magnus Oansson, doctor in Terrestrial Biology, from the Univeristy of Northern Europe."
"Dr. Oansson." Durandel inclined his head politely. "What do you have to say on this Green Stuff."
"I fucking hate it." Dr. Oansson growled, sounding even raspier than Dr. Braun. "Its breaking every fucking rule in the fucking book. Turning my entire world upside down and backwards. And call me Magnus. I get enough of that doctor shit back at school."
"I don't suppose you'd care to expand on that heartfelt though somewhat bland report, Magnus?" Rey prodded.
Magnus sighed, heaving his shoulders so heavily it was actually visible even through the bulky suit. "I'll be able to send you some video in a few hours, but this is a basic summary of what I've found out so far. Besides the fact that whatever this Green Stuff is, is breaking every rule of cross species contamination in the book... what affects a goddamn tree should NOT also affect a goddamn MONKEY... it is also eating up the entire encyclopedia of Evolutionary Biology and shitting it all over the fucking floor! I spent five years of my life practically fucking memorizing those volumes and now its all fucking useless to me!" Magnus muttered some more imprecations under his breath, too quiet for his helmet mic to pick up. He collected himself at last, and once more stared, morosely, at the SecDef on the wall screen.
"Its like this, Mr. Secretary. So far, nine out of ten of non-human exposures have resulted in the hosts dying from large scale bodily system failures in the ten or so hours immediately following exposure. I guess you could liken it to a car running out of fuel... and then exploding. They basically dessicate themselves to death... lack of nutrients in equals lack of energy to the body, plus a systemic drain of the hosts's stored bio-energy, resulting in organs just plain shutting down across the board, for lack of fuel. Still working out why the host's stored bio-fuel, including fats and most forms of stable sugars, is burned up so rapidly, because it doesn't happen in all cases. But the cases it does happen in... flatlines. Or withers, in the case of plants and fungi. If this same ratio holds true in the outside world, we could be looking at a near ninety percent loss of biodiversity across the entire FUCKING WORLD! And that, Mr. Secretary, is about as bad as bad news gets. Like, we all die off in a matter of months because there aren't enough plants converting carbon dioxide to oxygen bad. Which is what I want to say the situation is. But I just can't. Not yet."
"Why not?" Durandel asked, struggling to accept the enormity of what Magnus was saying. The Earth would die!? Well, not the Earth, but life on Earth... would die!? In a matter of months! From asphxiation!? It was impossible!
"Because of the one in ten that is surviving, Mr. Secretary. Not just surviving, but in the case of the plants and fungi anyway, but thriving! Thriving like I've never seen anything thrive before. We have them in special beds that are constantly pumped full of nutrients, to ensure their survival in this sterile environment, and the surviving organisms are just soaking up those resources like... like a sponge soaks water! Except these sponges don't seem to get waterlogged! And it's no wonder why... all that energy is being constantly used! Used to evolve. Its... its like nothing I've ever seen before! There's a rosebush that has gone through more than fifty generations of bulbing and sprouting in the last three hours! And there aren't even any insects in here to pollinate! It should not be possible, but the bush has ALREADY EVOLVED to the point of not needing insects to pollinate! It has adapted itself to this sterile environment in nearly REAL TIME!" Magnus waved his arms over his head in a mixture of anger and shock. "The law's of science as I know them say it cannot be done! It has just been fucking done!"
"What does this mean though?" Durandel pressed, not really making much of what had Magnus so excited.
"Mr. Secretary, I understand you are a geneticist of some note." Magnus said darkly. "Let me tell you this, maybe it will get across better what I am trying to say. This rosebush... it's genes are being manipulated in real time. And it's because of this Green Stuff. This Green Stuff is forcing this plant to evolve at an impossible rate, using up an insane amount of resources, pushing it towards some goal I can't fathom, adapting itself to its environment as it goes! It is changing it's genetic code on a fundamental level. This is no longer a rosebush, though it does bear superficial resemblances to one. It is something new. A new species, evolved out of the old. Hypercompetitive, hyperadaptable, resource efficient like you wouldn't believe, even as it pillages all the nutrients from the soil around it, perhaps preventing competition from other evolving organisms... its starting to choke out the other surviving specimens in the same plot. And here is the truly scary part... it's following a plan. It's targeting those furthest along in their own evolutions first, even though they are not the ones physically closest to it."
"Are you saying the rosebush is becoming sentient!?" Rey scoffed at the absurd idea.
"I'm saying, boy, that I don't know what's going on. And I am frightened by that. So should you be. Plants competing with other plants is nothing new... its a fact of life. They have a whole chemical war going on every day underneath the noses of us animals that we can barely even detect. But its never directed. Its not planned. It functions with the rules of cause and effect. A plant only kills its competitors if there is not enough resources to go around. Here, in a nearly unlimited resource environment, there is no reason for the aggressiveness of the biological warfare we see. Yet it is even more virulent than it is in the wild. And far more directed. That's all I'm saying. And the bush is still evolving, all at the same time. Should we be worried? Yes and no. I don't think oxygen is going to be a problem, even with ninety percent losses of biodiversity. What is going to be a problem is the ten percent of plants and fungi that are left over." Magnus said hoarsely. "And who knows what the fuck is going to happen with the animals. Or perhaps more importantly, with us. If the rosebush is evolving..."
"This is very disquieting news. I think we should keep this quiet for the moment." Durandel said after a long few seconds of deliberation. Rey had hinted Noah could manipulate genes after the fact of birth, since he had cured Rey's own genetic disease. But to think he could do something like that on a large scale... it didn't seem possible! Much less across all species of animals and plants and fungi... all life on Earth! It was simply too staggeringly big to take in, especially all at once! "People are already panicking. Telling them we might have something that causes unknown rapid evolution... mutation by any other word... is only going to send people into a demented hysteria! Civil order would break down in a matter of hours."
"We have to evacuate people as quickly as possible!" Rey stood bolt upright from his chair, his stomach sinking even as he did so, because he realized even as he said those words what a monumental task it would be. An impossible task. Evacuate entire cities? Entire nations? Entire cultures? The logistics would be beyond a nightmare... it would be hell on Earth! Civil order would be the least of their problems! An even more sickening thought occured to him though, striking like a lightning bolt of pure despair. "He's going to cover the entire Earth! This Green Stuff is self reproducing. It will spread on its own. And it will spread faster with him making more of it every second! Even if we stopped him right now, it might already be too late to stop the spread!"
"We will need to evacuate the Earth." Durandel said softly. There was a long moment of silence.
"W-w-what did you say, Mr. Secretary?" Dr. Braun stammered. "E-evacuate... evacuate the Earth!? That's absurd! There are sixteen billion people living on Earth!"
"Yes." Durandel sighed and closed his eyes, feeling like his entire soul had been drained from his body. "We will only be able to save a few. But that doesn't mean we should just give up! We will save as many as we possibly can, or more! The PLANTS, working under emergency conditions, should be able to get Epoch, Millenium and Centennial Cities at least minimally capable of supporting life in a month or so. We can support fifteen million people, maybe as many as thirty million if we pack them in like sardines, on each of those nine cities. The other cities should be able to accept another thirty to forty million refugees amongst them. The rest will have to come to the Moon."
"But... food! Water! Medical supplies! All of those come from Earth! Except for certain heavy and military industries, the Moon has no manufacturing capability, and even less food production ability!" Rey protested.
"I know!" Durandel hissed back at him. "I know Rey, I know. We shall have to take as much from the Earth as we can, while also removing as many people as possible. Damned if we do, damned far worse if we don't. Its like that old saying. If we go, there will be trouble. If we stay, it will be doubled. We have to go. No matter what we do, billions of people are probably going to die horrible deaths, and there is not a single damned thing anyone can do to stop it now. Not even Noah, not that he would. But this still does not mean that he has won! The Brotherhood will be made to pay for this! Noah will be made to pay for this, though the agonies one man can suffer are insufficient in the extreme to compensate for this wound he has inflicted upon all of humanity!" Durandel clenched his fists and gritted his teeth loudly enough to be audible. He was about to go on in that vein, quite overwhelmed with rage at the moment, regardless of the uneasy audience of scientists, when a knock on the door of the briefing room distracted him. "What is it!?"
"Uhm, well, sir... I have a report from the outskirts of Copernicus City, Mr. Secretary, sir." The messenger reported through the door intercomm. "There is a, uhm, a problem."
"What now?" Rey groaned. "Well, at least whatever it is, CAN'T be any worse than what's happening to Earth..." he muttered to himself under his breath. He adjusted his volume and called back through the door comm. "What sort of problem!? We are currently engaged in a strategy session of the highest importance. If this is not life or death for a large number of people, it can wait!"
"It's... uh... it's a Blue problem." The messenger reported, conscious of the many listening ears. No need to start a panic. Well, there was every need, but it wouldn't help. Ah hell, why sugercoat it? "Apparently some of that Blue Stuff that, uh, decimated the Armada... made it to the lunar surface. We currently have it contained... we think... but every attempt we have made to destroy it has failed. Spectacularly. Its only made the problem worse, actually. We're kind of at our wits end here. We were hoping you knew what to do." He was going to continue on in that nervous vein, conscious now of the eyes and ears all directed at him from the offices around the SecDef's strategy room, when the door to that room hissed open and the Knight-Commander of the Solar Knights stuck his head out, an expression of furious disbelief stamped on his young features.
"What did you just say!?" Rey demanded, his voice actually cracking a bit.
"There's a patch of Blue Stuff about fifty kilometers outside of Copernicus City's western edge. Some escape boat landed there after the battle, and, well, must have been contaminated. The boat's gone now... fell apart into Blue Stuff... and the patch is growing. More slowly now that we've stopped trying to destroy it, but definitely growing. We don't know what to do. What DO we do?"
"We pray for a miracle." Durandel's voice echoed out to them from inside the dimly lit room, like a groan escaping a tomb. "Because right now we need all the help God can give us."
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"What're you looking at, buzzard?" Dylan asked, his tone a mixture between weariness and needling, as he stepped out onto one of the many sealed observation decks that ringed the circumference of the Great Endeavor. It was about as far from the main hub of quarters and control rooms and hanger and factory facilities as it was possible to go while remaining aboard the SATMARS. That meant it was quiet. Empty. You could hear someone coming from a long way away, if they weren't being stealthy. And the corridors leading to the various observation decks were uniformly straight for much of their lengths, like branches reaching out from a trunk, so with careful positioning and good eyesight, someone already on the deck could see other people coming from more than a hundred meters out. All in all, about as perfect a place for a surripetious meeting as could be found aboard the Brotherhood's fortress. Not that it was truly perfect... as far as anyone knew, there was no place on the Great Endeavor that was not within Noah's purview. However, this was as good as it got, and Noah had not been seen much of late, spending his time closeted in his Atrium, moping about as he waited for his sleeping beauty to wake up.
Randolf, for one, was hoping that the bastard was waiting in vain. It would serve him right, after all the shit he'd put everyone else through, especially Randolf himself! Kids... they always thought the world revolved around them! It wasn't until they gambled and lost something truly important that they really started to figure out that the world was a harsh, uncaring place, that had no place for wild, impossible dreams. Randolf folded his arms back across his chest, not even bothering to hide the fact that he was taking a hand off a sidearm, and turned back to staring out the transparent armor window that ran the length of the deck. The view, he did have to admit, was spectacular, in a "just before doomsday" sort of way. Every few seconds the floor would vibrate a little as the Great Endeavor lumbered another step forward, like some collossal land crab, but other than that barely dectable shiver, it was like he was just standing in a stationary building, more than forty five story's above the ground. In the far distance he could sea the glimmer of the Atlantic ocean, and the near distance was packed with the sky clawing architecture of modern day city sprawls, growing closer at what felt like a snail's pace but was actually a steady 10km/hr.
"I'm surprised you actually had the balls to show up, Dylan. Then again, I suppose this sort of thing is your stock and trade, so how could you not be here?" Randolf sneered, fingering the scrap of paper in his pocket that he had found lying on his chest when he woke up that morning. He shivered, slightly, knowing that someone had managed to break into his room, while he was in it, albeit sleeping and, without waking him in the slightest, place a note upon his chest and then leave again! And he was a Coordinator! And even for a Coordinator his hearing was sharpened to a razor edge, because of the loss of sensitivity in his eyes! The note had instructed Randolf to be at this observation deck at a certain time and place, for a "meeting of concerned minds". Apparently the "Great Prophet" wasn't quite as popular as he deluded himself into thinking. Randolf smirked bitterly. Well, that was what happened when you went around acting like you were god all the time, and making people dance like puppets, even hurting themselves, even killing themselves, just on a whim! It was about time some people got together to do something about it!
"This is not treachery. This is just a few people talking about something that concerns them." Dylan retorted. "Trust me, as you say, I am the expert. If this were full blown treason, we'd already have a plan. This is just a precursor stage." Dylan paused a few beats. "I take it you got a note too then? I'd be damn interested to know how whoever it was got into my room with me in it and none the wiser!"
"That'll have to stay a trade secret for the moment." A somewhat muffled voice replied from off to the side and behind both of them, causing them to whirl, Randolf's hand going to his gun, Dylan stepping back and preparing to flee, though, on second thought, there was nowhere safe to really run. Neither of them saw any figure to put the voice too... not until a section of wall panelling was pushed outward and to the side and Ashino wriggled out through the crack in the bulkhead thus made like some sort of muscular cavern worm. The wall panel snapped back into place and as hard as Dylan stared, he could not discern where the seam was that had allowed Ashino to pry it away from the adjacent panel. "Though I can assure you, there are quite a few more ways in and out of spaces aboard a ship than merely doors." Ashino added, perhaps a trifle smugly. "Especially if you're a bit on the short and flexible side."
"How long have you been back there!?" Randolf demanded. He did not like Ashino. Not very much at all. A little bit of research on his part had turned up some of Ashino's past, and it had not been pleasant reading. The little redheaded bastard was a BCPU... some sort of partial cyborg or something, designed by Blue Cosmos to exterminate Coordinators on the field of battle! As if that wasn't bad enough, but Ashino had even given Randolf grief personally... he'd been one of the three ambushers that had decimated Randolf's unit in the desert outside Gibralter those years ago, that had ended up with his life and his soul in tatters, and had directly contributed to his current predicament as an accomplice to a madman! Ashino was one of the men directly responsible for the shambles Randolf's life had become! And now he was one of Noah's new favored Apostles... called a partner even! Like he was equal, and not subject to commands! Randolf was half looking forward to seeing Noah take the starch out of the little punk with his damned mind tricks! His other half was just sickened, remembering very well what it was like to be under the influence of those same mind tricks!
"I was back there before you got here, Mr. Randolf. It would hardly do for me to call a meeting and then be the last one to show up, right?" Ashino replied with a slight shrug. "I wouldn't want anyone to try and set up an ambush for me, now would I? Not that we are, really, doing anything wrong... this is just a meeting of Apostles. But trust seems to be in short supply around the Brotherhood these days. At least those of us not swallowed by the mainstream religious mania." Ashino stared into Randolf's polarized sunglasses for a few heartbeats. "And you may keep your hand on your weapon if it comforts you, but if you try to draw it in my presence, I will show you no mercy, Coordinator." Ashino infused the last word with more than a smattering of disgust. Maybe it was just his old conditioning acting back up again, but his time aboard the Great Endeavor was really inflaming his dislike of Coordinators quite a bit.
"So what is the purpose of this meeting then? Are we just gonna sit around, hold hands, sing kumbaya and commiserate about how the world is going to hell because of us?" Dylan asked, slowly settling back into a relaxed state. Or at least as relaxed as he could manage these days. He'd really felt, of late, like there was a gun pointed at the back of his head pretty much all the time. It wasn't a feeling he enjoyed.
"Basically, but let's hold off until the final member gets here." Ashino answered. They waited in uneasy silence for about five more minutes, before nonstealthy footsteps from the passageway drew the eyes of Randolf and Dylan, and another faint smile from Ashino. He hadn't been entirely sure the last invitee was going to show up, given his peculiar circumstances... brainwashing, of a sort so powerful even Ashino was impressed, and he'd been worked on by the master brainwasher himself in his time! But apparently there was some part of this Shinn Asuka who hadn't been entirely subsumed into the chattel of Noah. Or so Ashino strongly hoped. Randolf and Dylan were one thing, but if he could get Shinn onto his side, he would truly have a power bloc capable of crippling the Brotherhood, if Noah didn't fufill his promises, which was starting to look like the far more likely conclusion of late.
Shinn entered the observation deck and blinked a few times, somewhat blearily, his eyes adjusting to the bright morning sunlight outside, versus the artifical illumination inside the Great Endeavor. His head was feeling really wooly, and he was still tired and achy as all hell, especially in his right arm, which felt like it had been sliced off and then hurriedly reattached! He didn't remember much of the end of the battle in space... lots of heat and red and blood and painful memories, but it was all mixed up into a confusing mental slurry that he couldn't, for the life of him, sort out. For that matter, he wasn't sure why the right arm in question was cocooned in bandages and salves, from just below the shoulder all the way down to his wrist, the wrap both stiff and flexible, keeping his arm mostly straight but allowing enough bend in his joints so that it wasn't a major handicap. Obviously he'd suffered some sort of battlefield injury... but he just didn't remember how or when! And whenever he tried to concentrate on remembering, his head started aching like red hot pins were being shoved into his brain!
"You invited HIM?" Randolf scoffed. "What's the point? He's just a lackey."
"We're all just lackey's, ya buzzard." Dylan pointed out, though he was somewhat perturbed at Shinn's presence as well. If any of them could be said to be actually loyal to Noah, the newest Apsotle was definitely it! "And not even particularly successful ones, in your and my case."
"His track record isn't exactly perfect either. Just look at what happened to him!" Randolf retorted.
"At least I actually stood up to my opponent, rather than getting rolled and tagged like a deer on a range!" Shinn spat back. "At least I think I did anyway. Everything's so hazy recently."
"None of us has much to be proud about, concerning that last battle." Ashino interrupted, before a pointless argument could occur. "We lost a Gundam, and all of our mass production forces."
"The mass production forces are a goddamn joke! Even with highly advanced technology, they barely break even against the rank and file of the USN!" Randolf scoffed again.
"Whereas you have a Gundam, and you can only beat those selfsame rank and file." Ashino answered calmly. "Any time you encounter an actual Gundam, you get your ass roundly kicked. You may have been a ZAFT commander at one point in your life, but now you're just a pathetic, bitter wreck of a man. But I don't entirely blame you for that. It's not all your own doing. Mostly yours, but not all."
"What would a manufactured product like YOU know about it?" Randolf grumbled, though he could not find it in himself to deny Ashino's accusation either. He was a wreck, and he knew it. A ruin, a spectre of what he once was. Haunted... how fucking apt it was! "I didn't see you destroying any Gundams. Hell, you helped destroy ours!"
"What would a "normal" person like yourself know about what is between us "manufactured products"?" Ashino countered cooly. "Cray and I were due a reckoning a long time before that. And as for destroying Gundams, perhaps not, but I did disable both the Dawn Goddess and the Phoenix King. I took both Cagalli Zala-Attha and Athrun Zala out of the fight for at least a few hours, if not days, before Noah rendered all our efforts moot and void!" Ashino let that hang in the air for a moment. "But we aren't here to accost each other over our accomplishments, or lack thereof, on the recent battlefield."
"I repeat then, why are we here?" Dylan asked, staring nervously out the window at the cities inching closer. He could see helicoptors and jets flying all over the sky, mostly fleeing away from the path of the Great Endeavor, and he knew that for every jet and helicoptor, there had to be a hundred cars and a thousand people on foot! "I don't really know about the rest of you, but I don't think I can watch us just walk over those cities. They're full of people!"
"That didn't stop you from selling out JOSH-A!" Randolf snipped.
"Lest you forget, buzzard, I sold out BOTH sides on that one, though not quite intentionally! I knew JOSH-A was a deathtrap! I gave that information to Le Cresuete! How the hell was I supposed to know he was a genocidal maniac, and wouldn't warn his own side!?" Dylan responded with a weary shake of his head. "Listen, I know I'm fucking scum, alright? But just walking over a fully populated city in this gigantic death machine, spraying who knows what the fuck sort of green shit all over the place... that gets me queasy, all fucking right? I don't recall signing on for mass genocide!"
"And that's why I've called this meeting." Ashino spoke up. "By all accounts, we have accomplished the Brotherhood's mission. The Great Endeavor has reached Earth. Noah's so called recreation is occuring as we speak. And yet from where we stand, right here, what do we see? I don't know about the rest of you, but the only angels I can see looking down with pleasure upon this spectacle are the ones holding scythes!" Ashino swept his arm at the horizon to horizon cityscape they were approaching. "How many people out there, do you think? Fifty million? Five hundred million? A billion? The eastern seaboard of North America is one of the most heavily populated regions on Earth. It could easily be more than a billion people out there. All of whom are in a mass panic right now, as a gigantic war machine directly out of their nightmares bears down upon them, filling the air with a sparkling green gas like a farmer spraying pesticide, effects unknown! Even if this Green Stuff, this Green EDEN, I think it is called, is some sort of miracle product that grants immortality and eternal youth, which I highly doubt, hundreds of thousands if not millions are still going to die in the panic to get away from us."
"If they would listen to the Great Prophet, then such tragedy could be avoided." Shinn recited, almost dully. He shook his heads and chewed his lip a few times, as if surprised at what he had said. "It does... seem a little callous though." He added, a second or two later, eyes downcast.
"My god, maybe your brain isn't a total mush after all." Randolf muttered. "I agree. We do appear perched on the edge of a calamity. But what can we do about it? Are you only now realizing that Noah Borander is, simply put, an egotistical madman bent on remaking the world in his own image, regardless of how many things he has to break to do it? Believe me, that is not news to me. I wish it was, almost. But it isn't!"
"Noah Borander is a visionary!" Shinn insisted. "He is going to recreate the world!"
"Insane is insane, no matter what sort of pretty words you use to dress it up." Randolf retorted scathingly. "And unfortunately his madness is the sort that stains everything around it with its taint. Just look at the four of us! Swept up by promises of wealth or revenge or whatever it is our hearts desired, and now here we stand, witnesses to the end of the world as we know it... by our own filthy hands!" Randolf stared down at the hands in question, as if they were caked with gore.
"Here we do stand. But that doesn't make us helpless." Ashino told them. "Regardless of the sins of the past..."
"No. There is no regardless." Dylan interrupted. "I hate to agree with the fucking buzzard, but he's got a fucking point. Even if we cut and run, right now, this very instant, it could only end one way. In us dying pointlessly. Either at Noah's hands. Or the USN's. We may have helped DESTROY the human race! They aren't even going to bother with a trial now! If we're lucky they'll shoot us on sight. If we aren't, they'll shoot us someplace nonvital, haul us in for "special questioning" and keep tightening the screws until there's nothing left but a bloody shit-stain on a chair! And even the questioning will be pointless, because, face it, we know jack DICK about what's going on right now! Sins of the past? There is no past now! The present is the only thing that matters, and we CAUSED the present!"
"There's no need to run." Shinn looked at the other three strangely. "All we need to do is keep supporting the Great Prophet, fighting and preferrably defeating the wicked USN and any others that try to disrupt his great plan, and we will all ascend to the ranks of the angels. He has said it himself countless times. All we have to do is trust him, and he will guide us there."
"Will you shut the fuck up and listen to yourself!?" Randolf shouted. "You used to be part of the USN! You're a fucking Solar Knight! One of their goddamn officers! You used to be our enemy! And now you're spouting off like Noah breast fed you himself! Its really fucking sad! I don't know what he did to you, to put you so deep in his thrall, but frankly, it scares the shit out of me!"
"I was never part of the USN." Shinn spat in an icy tone. "The USN took everything from me when they invaded Orb. My mother. My father. My little sister. My friends. Everything. They almost killed me before the Great Prophet came about to save us!"
"Man, I don't know what the fuck you're saying now!" Dylan snorted in disbelief. "The USN, invading Orb? Yeah fucking right! Durandel probably would have LIKED too, given how well he and former Chief Representative Zala-Attha got along, but Orb has all the fucking Gundams! They got a damned soft voice sometimes, but they carry a big fucking stick! Nobody messes with Orb these days, not since the Isolation! What sort of fucked up alternate history shows have you been watching?"
"It HAPPENED to me! I remember it! How can you say it never happened!? All the human rights violations... the beatings... the forced labor... the mass graves... you can't tell me they kept all that a secret!?" Shinn was flabbergasted.
"Take it from an expert. What you remember isn't always what is true." Ashino recommended with a bitter smile. "I can honestly tell you, one hundred percent truthfully, that I don't remember my family. Not even slightly. I could walk by them on the street and the only way I would recognize them is if I'd recently seen a picture of them, and even then I'd have to trust the picture wasn't a lie. It has HAPPENED to me before! But does that mean I never had a family? Of course not."
"You don't understand! I REMEMBER it! I see Mayu getting crushed and torn apart under those tank treads every night before I fall asleep!" Shinn insisted, almost frothing at the mouth.
"You remember something. Whether or not it happened is another story. It sounds to me like you may have had a very traumatic experience sometime in your past. A talented brainwasher could easily build upon and modify that into quite the motivation compulsion." Ashino mused. "But of course you won't believe anything we say. That is the point of brainwashing... to make someone unthinkingly loyal."
"It's starting to sound to me like YOU three are the ones that have been brainwashed! I don't know how the USN managed to get to you, but don't worry, the Great Prophet is merciful to those less fortunate. He will be able to fix you." Shinn replied with a fierce grin.
"I've seen how he fixes people." Randolf said softly. "If it comes down to that, I'm going to eat a hot lead breakfast, if I can at all help it. Bad enough that he takes my pride and my life... he shouldn't get my soul as well!"
"That's another thing!" Dylan spoke up, unusually talkative, perhaps because of the mostly sympathetic... or at least understanding... audience. "You two haven't seen it..." He waved his hand at Shinn and Ashino. "But let me assure you, he's anything BUT merciful when you piss him off. He made Mary cut off her own fucking fingers and sear the wounds closed with a glowing hot coal! And he made her like it!" Dylan gritted his teeth in unaccustomed fury. "And then he fucking abandoned her to Orb without a second fucking thought! Who knows what they're doing to her to try and get information about the Brotherhood out of her!? Humane treatment, my ass, she's a fucking terrorist officer! She's killed Orb civilians while working for the Brotherhood! They're a forward thinking country, but they get real hostile when you start fucking with their civvies... all countries are like that!" Dylan huffed and puffed for a moment. "We don't mean shit to him anymore! We're just parts! If we break, oh well, at least he got some good use out of us, right? If ever he did need us, now he certainly fucking doesn't! She fucking loves him with all her heart and he's just going to let her rot in prison!"
"Sounds to me like she's not the only one who loves with all their heart." Randolf commented snidely. "Never would have expected you to grow a conscience, Dylan."
"Fuck off. It ain't like that. She's a good girl, is all I'm saying. She and I didn't get along any better than you and I do. She don't deserve being discarded like a used condom and forgotten about! Merciful to those who are less fortunate? Rewards to those who serve him well? Mary would die for that smug bastard if she had the chance, and he acts like she was never fucking around! Where's the mercy and rewards there? It ain't right. It just ain't right! Maybe I'm a fucking hypocrite for calling HIM a treasonous bastard, but I guess it takes one to know one, right!?"
"Welcome to day one of life as a BCPU." Ashino said, cracking a grim smile. "We are just parts, to be discarded when we wear out or our owner loses interest. As long as we do what we're told, and don't cause any major problems, he doesn't care about us, at all. We don't mean anything to him. He simply doesn't care anymore. He has other, apparently bigger concerns than his four Gundam Pilots, and their job satisfaction. Never mind that we could be plotting his death. That we could all try and sell out to the USN at any time. He simply does not care. Any promises he may have once made, mean nothing to him now. He won't tell us that to our faces, but we are now, basically, surplus inventory. Handy to have around, but not vital. And there will come a time when the surplus inventory has to be... scrapped."
"I will for one have nothing to do with any plots against the Great Prophet!" Shinn insisted vehemently. "He's the one good thing to come about in this dark age, and you want to talk about killing him just because we can't understand his divine plans and concerns? He is watching over the birth of the very first new angel! What could possibly be more important than that right now!?"
"He's pining over his sick girlfriend. It's nothing special or magical. Birth of a new angel... rubbish! He's just so head over heels infatuated with her a simple fever or cold gets blown all out of proportion and now its the next coming of the messiah reborn! I am heartily fucking SICK of this religious bullshit!" Randolf said caustically. "You young people and your lusty thoughts... its a plague on humanity, I tell you!"
"You perverted older guys are a real blessing in contrast, I assume?" Dylan countered wryly. "Don't think I don't know about your Lacus Clyne OCD. You wanna call it protecting her, sure, whatever... I call it a sixty year old man stalking a girl four decades his junior, because he couldn't get enough of banging her goddamned mom and now he wants to try out the daughter!"
"That is a heinous lie! Elaine and I... how did you even KNOW about that!?" Randolf hissed, his face going even whiter than its burn scarred norm.
"This may be a surprise to you, Mr. super smart former ZAFT commander, but you aren't the only guy who likes to check in on the background of his so called friends. I know all about you and Elaine Clyne. Nasty, terrible thing, that car accident-suicide. Guilt really sucks, don't it? I make my living by finding out secrets and selling them to other people! Come on, did you really think I wouldn't dig up a bunch of dirt on a cantankerous old buzzard like you? Everyone has skeletons in their closets, its all a matter of finding the right closet!"
"I have nothing but the noblest of intentions towards Ms. Clyne! Now, that ungodly leech that calls himself her lover, that is another story altogether! I will find a way to crush that bastard Yamato into the dirt and leave him broken and worthless for what he's done to her!" Randolf insisted. "And you, Dylan... if you speak one more slanderous word I will perforate your skull!"
"No one will be doing anything of the sort." Ashino cut in. "Being at each other's throats only serves Noah at the moment. You don't have to like each other... I certainly don't like any of you... I would scrape you off my boot with a knife if I found you there... but like it or not, since Noah has no care for us, we four are the only possible allies we currently have."
"I am no ally to anyone but the Great Prophet." Shinn said frostily. "Don't think I will waste any time in informing him of your rebellious mutterings either!"
"Good fucking luck." Dylan muttered. "Nobody but nobody gets into the Atrium but him and his girlfriend. If he doesn't want to talk... and he really doesn't seem to want to talk... there is quite simply nothing you or anyone else on this ship can do to get him to talk."
"All the same, I'd prefer not to risk it." Randolf decided, and drew his sidearm, a standard hypervelocity 5.6mm Martius Industries pistol, the most common sidearm in the ZAFT armory. "If you're not going to join us, then I'm afraid you somewhat automatically become against us. He may have been able to reattach your arm... I shall be very much more surprised if he can piece together a new working brain for you!" Randolf leveled the pistol at Shinn, who was standing about ten feet away. Or who had been standing ten feet away anyway, but Shinn, though still somewhat bleary from his recent stay in the medical ward, was neither stupid nor slow when it came down to life threatening situations, even with his head so damned foggy, and he was already moving even as Randolf was drawing his pistol and completing his threat. Randolf got off one shot, which was like a thunderclap, though the bullet itself made only a zipping hiss followed by a series of light metallic "plinks" and "pings" as it ricocheted down the access hallway, having missed Shinn by a good two feet.
Before Randolf could swing his aim down and fire again, Shinn was next to him, throwing forward his right shoulder and arm into a cross body block that slammed the bigger and heavier Coordinator backwards with all the force and momentum at Shinn's disposal. He felt his shoulder pop for a moment, and his arm screamed in pain under the bandages, but he gritted his teeth and fought through it. Randolf slammed into the armored crystal glass of the observation window hard enough to drive the breath from his body. He'd been trained in the ZAFT military arts, and was in phenomenal shape for a Coordinator his age, but Shinn was a redcoat elite, and a motivated one, plus forty years and more his junior. Perhaps if the fight could have been brought down to experience and pure size, Randolf would have had a chance. As it was, speed was the greatest determining factor, and Shinn had that in spades, at least compared to Randolf.
Randolf was still recovering from the brutal body block when Shinn's left hand grabbed his gun wrist and twisted it awkwardly to the side and upwards, even as Shinn's right leg swept around and kicked Randolf in the back of the knee's, chopping his legs out from under him. Randolf collapsed sideways and fell flat on his back, redriving the breath from him and leaving him stunned for a half second. During which time Shinn ripped the pistol from his grasp, spun it around, caught it by the barrel and slammed the butt down on Randolf's forehead, gashing his scalp and knocking him into a semi-conscious daze. Shinn flipped the gun back around and slipped his finger through the trigger guard, pressing the muzzle against Randolf's face, right between his flickering half closed eyes. Shinn was just tightening down on the trigger when the world exploded in a flash of white pain and then everything faded to blackness before he could figure out what was going on.
Ashino curled his hand back into a loose fist, from the spearing fingers blade form he'd just used to deliver a precision blow to the back of Shinn's head, just where the skull met the vertebrae of the spine. It wasn't a chop, which was made with the side of the hand, but actually a concentrated spear of fingers impacting tip first, imparting an extreme amount of force to a very small area. If he'd put his full strength into the blow, he could have easily split Shinn's skull in half and shoved his hand out through the back of his face, but that wasn't the point here. Shinn collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, gun tumbling from loose fingers to clatter on the deck as he sprawled face first down onto Randolf, who barely grunted, still lost in a land of swirling stars and choking mists. "It doesn't matter what Noah knows or doesn't know about how we feel. He doesn't care, remember? Go ahead and tell him, Shinn. He'll just smile and shrug and say he'll take care of it when the time comes." Ashino pointed out with a sigh. He turned to look at Dylan, who was backing away with hands raised defensively.
"Why don't you handle the rather boisterous Mr. Randolf. You two seem to have such a great rapport already." Ashino commented sarcastically, as he bent down and lifted Shinn up like he was picking up a bag of sugar, collecting Randolf's pistol at the same time. "I'm going to take this unfortunate young man back to the medical ward. He just had his arm reattached, he really should know better than to go around exerting himself so much."
"Um. Yeah." Dylan hesitantly agreed. "Are you sure it's going to be okay to let him live? I mean, he's hardcore brainwashed. He's not going to wake up happy."
"He's not going to wake up for a good four to five hours either, so hopefully he'll have calmed down some by then. And killing him would be one of the few things garaunteed to bring down Noah's full and merciless attention upon us. Shinn is Noah's golden boy, right now, remember. He's the only one doing things right, in Noah's estimation. If we kill him, we will be striking directly at Noah's power in an overt way. That puts us in the same category as the USN. And he will gleefully squash us. But if all we do is grumble and moan and plot... well, he considers himself so far ahead in the game that he can afford to let us get away with that sort of stuff, because he doesn't want to waste time or resources punishing us. He think's he's invincible, and that, Mr. Dylan, is the only thing keeping us alive right now. We can't do anything to change his feelings." Ashino instructed with a predatory smile. "Pride goeth before the fall. Its a rule I'll be glad to teach Noah one day soon."
"What about... them?" Dylan asked quietly, nodding his head at the window and the city beyond.
Ashino's smile died away at once. "If you're a religious man at all, I'd suggest you start praying for a miracle. If you're like me, you grit your teeth, shut your eyes, and walk headlong into the wind, just like always."
