The heated edge of the Schwert Geweh's Beam Blade tore straight into the Blitz Gundam's cockpit, and in terror, the unit's pilot… a young boy… he couldn't do much more than scream in anguish as he felt his body being vaporised by the weapon.
Sparks flew as the Anti-Ship Sword ground against the abdomen of the Blitz Gundam, with the unit itself stepping backwards unsteadily as its pilot found himself being singed by the Beam edge of the Schwert Geweh. His pilot uniform was slowly but surely burning off as the weapon remained jammed into his unit's cockpit, with some parts of it having melted onto his skin as the Beam edge came closer to his body, intensifying the sensation and causing him incredible pain as he felt himself being cooked alive.
Screaming in terror as he felt the life fade from his eyes, the child barely noted the voice of his friend screaming desperately over the heavily damaged comm-links of his Mobile Suit, and likewise, he barely took note of the enemy unit, the Strike Gundam, stepping back in abject horror as its pilot realized just what they had done. The cockpit optic-to-cockpit cameras had forcefully deactivated by then due to excessive damage, effectively leaving the Blitz's pilot blinded as he lived through the last few seconds of his life.
"A-Athrun… I…" began the dying child as tears welled up in his eyes, and though he knew that his friend… Athrun Zala… he knew that he would not be able to hear this… but even so… a small smile found its way onto the boy's face as he spoke his last words to his fellow ZAFT pilot. He refused to sound saddened, even in his final moments… and for Athrun's sake, the pilot forced a small, anguished and pained smile to form on his face as he spoke with strained assurance. "I… I'm sorry… please… run…"
"NICOL!" bellowed Athrun Zala through the Blitz Gundam's comm-links as the power core of the unit began to fail, with his voice glitching horribly as he attempted to cry out to his friend to little avail. Behind the Blitz, Athrun Zala's Mobile Suit, the Aegis Gundam, attempted to take a step forwards in an effort to perhaps rescue its fellow Gundam, only for it to stagger and drop to one knee due to a lack of power, and likewise, the Strike was unable to act as its pilot remained in a stupified state of shock.
A warning quickly appeared on the Mobile Suit's flickering cockpit monitor as the unit's Ultracompact Energy Battery was destabilized by the Schwert Geweh's Beam edge, and as the milliseconds ticked by, alarms began to go off in the unit's cockpit as it flashed red, indicating that its power core was beginning to overload.
And upon acknowledging that… the Blitz Gundam's pilot felt himself resigning to his fate as he realized that… this was it.
This was the end… this was his end…
"Be careful… Nicol."
"M-Mother…" lamented the child as he recalled the last words that his mother had shared with him before this mission. "I-I… I'm sorry… p-please… take care of everyone… Y-Yzak… De-Dearka… t-take care of the rest of the team… p-please… and… A-Athrun…
"P-Please… take care of my piano…"
And right as those words left Nicol Amalfi's mouth… the Blitz Gundam's power core destabilized and exploded, with the nuclear explosion of the unit's power core taking both the Gundam and Nicol with it all the while.
As the unit went up in a massive blast of fire and smoke, ZAFT Ace Pilot Athrun Zala screamed the name of his lost comrade in anguish as his grief reached a boiling point, and likewise, the pilot of the Strike still found himself unable to comprehend the fact that he had… murdered a child that was just trying to protect a friend…
He had murdered Nicol Amalfi…
…
…
…
And yet… it seemed as though Nicol Amalfi's fate would not end here… for… something else… someone else found it prudent to… switch things up for a change as they watched everything unfold whilst remaining virtually unseen by the naked eye.
Mere milliseconds before the Blitz's power core could detonate, something… strange began to happen with the unit's systems. Symbols began to pop up on the otherwise powerless cockpit monitors of the Gundam, even as it was being sliced into by the Schwert Geweh, and if Nicol had bothered to pay attention, he would have noticed that they were… Wingdings, a language that was lost to time… one that was obsolete in the Cosmic Era…
And seconds later, the ZAFT pilot's vision suddenly went dark, though he was not dead… not just yet, at least… as he eventually found himself floating in the abyss. His vision remained dark for only God knows how long as he remained in the abyss… and there he stayed for quite some time… unconscious and blissfully ignorant of a strange looking entity that shared the space with him.
The entity floated close to Nicol's body and examined him closely. Rubbing at its chin, it extended a hand out towards Amalfi's still form, and right as its hand was about to make contact with his chest, the entity's hand sunk straight into it. This came as no surprise to it, however, as the entity was used to being unable to interact with those that were still bound to reality.
What did come as a shock to it, however… was how Nicol Amalfi's entire body had turned red right as its hand had phased through his chest. The entity widened what remained of its eyes as it removed its hand from the ZAFT pilot's chest and stared at his glowing red body with a mixture of shock and awe, not because of the appearance of the red aura around the pilot's body, mind you. Their shock came more from just how… intense the aura was. It was so powerful that it's glow threatened to blind the entity!
And seconds later… those feelings only intensified when a small, red heart floated out of Nicol's chest… a small, red heart… a SOUL that glowed with nearly three times the intensity of the other one's… and as with the red aura that once encased its host, its glow was almost enough to blind the entity as it raised an arm up to shield what remained of its eyes from the brilliant red glimmer.
'Incredible…' thought the entity as it rubbed what remained of its chin and backed away. As it did so, the red heart… Nicol Amalfi's SOUL, reentered his chest, having determined that it did not need to ACT at the moment, much to the entity's relief as it chuckled a tad. This was exceeding all of the entity's expectations… 'Yes… this will do quite well, Nicol Amalfi. You will make a fine replacement to that poor child.'
And with that final thought, the entity's malformed face allowed a small smirk to form on it as it waved a hand off to the side, and in an instant… Nicol's body began to fall downwards through the abyss, with the entity politely waving goodbye to it as he fell.
Nicol simply fell at that point, with his body becoming too far off to be seen by the entity after a handful of seconds. And yet, he didn't stop falling. He kept on going…
He kept on falling…
He kept on falling…
He kept on falling…
He kept on falling…
And he only stopped his descent when the boy's body fell atop a small grove of golden flowers, cushioning his impact as he laid down atop it, unconscious, as the unseen entity, from the world between worlds, chuckled to itself and watched as events unfolded.
Yes… Nicol would not die today, the entity reckoned, be it from the fall onto the golden flowers or from the swing of the Schwert Geweh, for he was too… DETERMINED to be allowed to die so soon…
Greetings!
I am Stryker, the writer who impulsively writes every last thing that comes to his mind, and recently Undertale has been brought to mind, and as such, I acted on impulse and wrote about it! The easy route would've been to write an Iron Blooded Orphans crossover… but that would be too repetitive for me, and as such, welcome to my very first (and possibly only) Gundam SEED fanfiction!
Starring Nicol Amalfi in place of Frisk and a reimagined story with a Coordinator at the helm, I truly hope that you will all enjoy this journey as much as I enjoy writing it!
Clarification: I've never watched Gundam SEED. I only know of its story through the game SD Gundam G Generations Crossrays, which is a good game btw. Because of this, some details might be incorrect in regards to various future flashback segments for Nicol, and if it irks you, I sincerely apologise.
Regardless! I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and see you all next time!