Archangel's Amazing Adventures

by CSS Stravag

Mass Crossover fic. Chapter 51 UP! Powerful magic draws the Archangel and the ZAFT Creuset Team into a world of magic and intrigue like nothing imagined by the straight-laced CE residents. Their battles on Cephiro are only the beginning of their nightmarish journey as they give Odysseus a run for his money in the 'bizarre trip home' category...

29. Nuclear Nightmare

(Archangel's Amazing Adventures One-Shot Chapter 01: Nuclear Nightmare)

"Oh my God," Miriallia gasps, watching the half of a PLANT begin entry of the Earth's atmosphere. "It's—and—Captain?"

"No, Miriallia, even our Lohengrins are not capable of causing enough damage to that." The 'enough' part really meant 'enough to make it break up in the atmosphere and burn up', which did not require 100 percent destruction on the Archangel's part. And still they couldn't do it. "Helm, take us forward to the Junius remains. Miriallia, focus, see if you can hear anyone out there."

"No, Captain, I can't," Miriallia replies. "I—why did this happen? What—our families—why?"

"Looks like we made it back, all right, just well after someone ended the war for us," Chandratta notes sourly.

"Captain, look at the planet; where North America is supposed to be," Mu requests.

"Oh, my God," Murrue gasps. Where North America had been, there was now a very large crater, or at least what they could see of it. The atmosphere was hazy from dust particulate in the upper reaches. "It's...nothing left..." The destruction was not limited to just North America, though: South America had at least one impact zone and part of Brazil appeared to be flooded; an impact in Central America had erased everything south of Mexico and north of Peru off the map, replacing it with a water-filled crater. Africa could just be barely seen from all the dust particulate, but what they saw looked like it had escaped damage for the time being. Asia would be the next to be seen, and Murrue had the feeling that she would not like what she saw.

"When they hit, they are capable of rearranging the face of the world," Mu says.

"Kuzzey, anything?"

"No, Captain, not a trace of anything out there except a few communication satellites." Which itself was an oddity, since ZAFT made a point to smash in the communications satellites at the beginning of the war...only to render them obsolete courtesy of the N-Jammers.

Murrue picks up the growler phone. "Yzak Joule, Athrun Zala, Kira Yamato, please report to the bridge."

Three minutes later, all three of the requested pilots were on the bridge. "I won't chew anyone out for where we landed, no sense in arguing about it now."

"Thank you for that, Cap'n," Yzak replies immediately. "So, what's up that you want all three of us here?"

"We can't hear any electronic noise except a few comm satellites, probably the last of the commercial communications birds. I was wondering if you'd be willing to get inside them and see when they were last used and how they were last used?"

"Easy," Kira replies. "All right, guys, how we breaking this one down?" Kira asks while climbing up to the empty radio station chair.

"I'll do frequencies, Yzak does strings (1), Kira can start crunching the encryption."

"Way ahead of you," Yzak replies. "Got several good cuts already, though I'm not sure what they are from."

"Feed me," Kira requests. In moments he had the necessary data chunks, and applied the Archangel's beefy quantum computer to the task of busting the string open. "Oh, wow, done already. Looks like that was a basic-encrypted SYN packet."

"SYN? Perfect, if it is real; we can use it to spoof our way into the network," Yzak says smugly.

"Setting it up now, slug me the data, Kira," Athrun requests. Moments later; "Oh, yes, clear-text to the address and password. Let's see if I can make the Archangel's radio look like a sat node." With some creative manipulating of the carrier frequency and node designations, Athrun began the process of trying to get in.

"Conn, helm, we are thirty minutes away from Junius Seven at this rate," Newman reports, having to dodge around a lot more debris this time than he remembered he had to last time through.

Newman's comment was the only thing that broke the silence in the room other than Yzak, Kira and Athrun's hacking work. Truth to tell, everyone else was rather stunned at how fast the three were working to get inside the communications satellites. Other than the sound of the keyboards, the three passing directions back and forth was the only sound in the bridge. It lasted the better part of ten minutes, before: "Bingo, we're in," Yzak half-shouts proudly, given that it was he who finally got inside the system. "Whoa, these are laser-communication relay satellites, not normal radio-frequency sats."

"Excellent, looking into it now," Kira says, more-or-less disregarding Yzak's latter comment.

"I'll check the buffers (2), you see if you can get inside the sat's permanent storage," Athrun tells Kira.

"I'll head down the network path, check into another satellite," Yzak adds in a moment later.

The rapid-fire typing continued unabated as each roamed around the innards of the satellites, trying to find some explanation of what went wrong. Occasionally one of them would stop and mutter a curse or something else, having heard something that was heartrending but not necessarily informative. "Man, it sucks hearing someone's last phone call as they die from radiation poisoning," Yzak bemoans after hearing the fourth such call. "And none of them say why."

"I know," Kira sympathizes.

"Guys, I got something. Hold on."

"What is it?"

"A very optimistic satellite tech. Observe," and Athrun slugs the movie file he happened across to the main monitor.

The picture was of a large, multi-terminal control room, somewhat poorly lit, with most of the desks empty. After a few moments, a sickly-looking bald guy sits down in front of the camera. "I don't have much time left to live, so I need to be fast. Most of my co-workers at the Eurasian Satellite Relay are dead already, the rest, well," and he glances back to one lady who also looked stricken, but was just sitting a row behind him staring off into the distance while drinking a beer. "Both sides lost. The war escalated. JOSH-A, Panama, Boaz, Jachin Due, bad to worse to insane to apocalyptic. It ended a day ago with both sides using their weapons of mass destruction on each other. We don't know how much of the PLANTs survived, but we don't think any of them lived. For sure a lot of the PLANTs are now headed for Earth in pieces, and the first should impact us in about three hours. What the radiation from ZAFT's superweapon doesn't kill, the rest of us will be killed by the impacts of the colony remnants."

As he paused to breathe and rest, his exertions wearing on him, the lady in the background half-crushed the beer can, threw it off-camera, picked a pistol up off the desk, and before anyone on the bridge could even begin to gasp she shot herself just behind the jaw hinge. The sound of the gunshot caused the guy to jump slightly, but he did not look at her remains even as they made a grotesque thumping sound in hitting the floor after sliding out of the chair.

"Humanity has paid the price for their arrogance. None of us gave a shit, and yet we're all dead, if not now then within the week. I can only hope I'll get a good chance at seeing them all in hell so I can beat the shit out of them daily. We never...never...deserved this..." the satellite technician finally collapses onto his keyboard, killing the video file.

"Conn, Sensors, that colony half is about to strike the planet. Estimated impact location...Madrid, Spain," Sai reports almost mechanically; Murrue could easily tell he was trying to avoid breaking down.

"Roger; I'm not going to watch it," Murrue says deadpan.

-x-x-x-

(25 minutes later; 8 October CE 71, over the remnants of Junius Seven)

"This is the 'wrong' scale cranked up well past 11," Yzak gripes. He was back in the Duel, and in his element as he was out in space and maneuvering around to try and find anything, something more that knew what the hell was going on. There were distress beacons here and there, but the two life boats picked up were simply grave markers for here died someone lucky enough to get away...and suffocate in the days thereafter.

"I know what you mean," Athrun says. They had watched another colony chunk drop to the planet below, this one landing in the Indian Ocean off the southeast coast of India. The tidal wave was even visible from space, it was that bad.

"Duel, Control, we have a possible live one at your three o'clock, low. Stand by for further."

"Roger that," Yzak replies.

Further instructions took 30 seconds to come. "Duel, Aegis, Control, confirmed live personnel in a machine that looks a lot like the Strike with an attached Moebius Zero painted orange. I have uploaded the coordinates to your machine. Please recover and bring to the ship."

"Duel rogers your last, moving now." Yzak was moving in that direction before she gave the orders, since he knew it was going to come down to picking him or her up. "Athrun, you have the location?"

"Roger that," Athrun replies. "You check high, I'll go low."

"Got it," he replies immediately. "Control, Duel, entered the area, beginning search now. Stand by for updates."

Searching the requested area only took a minute. "Control, Aegis, have eyes on MS, and man is it beat to hell. Beginning recovery procedure."

"Roger that, Aegis."

Athrun maneuvered his Gundam to position where he could reach out and grab the lifeless arm of the machine with his right, then began making small thrusts to begin moving it away from approaching debris. With that accomplished, Athrun converted the Aegis to mobile armor form, spreading the claws of the Aegis and grappling it, which was the easiest way for Athrun to transport anything large in space.

"Duel, Control, Aegis has one-man-grab on the recovered MS, I'm out of the loop. Anything you want me to do in this vicinity?"

"Negative, nothing specific, continue searching the area for any other signs of remaining life."

"Roger that, Control. Duel is out."

Athrun did not have a huge distance to transit to get to the Archangel, as the ship had maneuvered close for easier pickup. Getting his Gundam down the catapult deck without causing excessive damage to the machine that really did look like a simplified Strike was another story, however.

-x-

"It's Earth Alliance, all right, the rescue systems are exactly the same as the Strike and the Buster. Hold on." Murdoch connects a power pack to the external comms connector to charge it; the designs anticipated a system running out of power, so the designers were kind enough to give external access crews a location to separately power the intercom. "Hey, pilot, you still alive in there?"

The response was not long in coming: "Hell yeah I'm still alive! Can you get me out of here? I don't care if you shoot me afterwards, I'm just getting bloody tired of this cramped, stoved-in cockpit!"

"Hold on, we'll get you out. Move your command couch as far back as possible," Murdoch orders. "Natalya, can you pry this hatch open without killing the poor guy inside?"

"Aff, Master Chief Petty Officer," she replies immediately as she takes up a large titanium prybar. She drove the hooligan end into the small gap between the hatch and the cockpit frame, then pushed toward the machine to wedge it open. It gave, slightly, but not enough to promise salvation. "Two more! Pytor, take up that pipe and join the fray!" she half-orders, since they were technically the same rank at this time.

"Aff," Pytor replies as two other hearty technicians join the effort as well. "On three, everyone drive your backs into it! One, two, THREE!" All four of those involved let fly a guttural shout as four prying objects and the gravity on the ship conspired to loose the cockpit hatch. After a moment of straining, the hatch slams down into the deck around the midsection of the MS, revealing the innards of the cockpit to them.

Murdoch was the first to peek inside. "You all right, pilot? Need a medic?"

"No, just sitting here, contemplating my pistol." The pilot had removed his helmet when he heard voices from outside, an indication that the cracked frame of his cockpit was letting air in.

"C'mon out, then, we'll get you fixed up with a meal and something resembling amenities," Murdoch offers. The pilot was a bit wary, but after thinking about it did exit his cockpit, sidearm low but still in hand. Outside the almost-completely-dead MS, he could see the totality of where he was and what else was in the hangar.

"What...what the hell is this? What unit are you with? What kind of machines are those, Master Chief Petty Officer?" the officer asks after a long moment of silence, looking at the various machines in the hangar—a hangar that could easily transport sixteen machines in repair cubes and at least that many in open space tie-downs.

"We're an independent unit, made up of about six different groups, maybe a little more," Murdoch replies. "I won't try explaining it, the whole thing is just plain mind-blowing. Best you talk to the Captain about it, she can probably give the best short-hand version of us all."

"I'll settle for the explanation first, if you don't object, Chief," and that moment Murdoch thought he recognized the pilot, but could not put his finger on who immediately.

" 'Kay." Murdoch pulls a radio from a holster. "Bridge from hangar deck, come back."

"Go for bridge," Miriallia replies.

"The rescued pilot would like the full G-2 on what happened to us, sounds like (2)." Murdoch managed to keep his voice even about the subject.

"Commander Badgiruel's paperwork would probably be the best bet for that," Miriallia declares. "Still, the Commander will meet you two down in the mess hall. The Captain says hold off on repairs to his MS, we may have more recoveries to bring in and secure."

"Roger that," Murdoch grumps. "Moving to mess hall now." The radio went back in the holster, which the pilot deftly noted was not a standard-issue Earth Alliance holster or belt...nor was the pistol and magazines he carried standard-issue Earth Alliance, either, despite the architecture of the ship being very similar to the Agamemnon-class ships he had sortied from a week prior. Consciously, he put his pistol away and strapped the holster down; he did not think he was at hazard of being attacked on this ship, just weirded out.

On his way through the pilot's lounge, he encountered four veritable kids sitting around and apparently waiting for deploy orders. Three of them were girls, laying about in gray uniforms with what was obviously the silhouette of the Archangel-class ships on their armpatch, but each of them had a different symbol below it, a picture of a very ornate sword as far as he could tell; the blue hair of one of them didn't much phase him, some things like that were becoming strangely common outside Coordinators as far as he could tell. The fourth was a guy in an Earth Alliance pilot's suit, who was snoring quite loudly while hanging practically upside down over the back of the couch in the lounge. He did take time to note the presence of a ZAFT pilot's helmet, a red one (which he knew was for their elite or politically-elite pilots), with some kind of memorial plaque hanging over it, attached to the wall space above the bank of lockers. He didn't question it, figuring the gesture some kind of battle trophy, given the burn marks on it.

On their way through the halls, they passed a goodly collection of the ship's crew, and in each case the pilot took note of the armpatches on their otherwise standard uniforms: the large Archangel patch with a smaller patch below it: two symbols he didn't recognize on some, a green bird carrying a katana on one, the OMNI globe and accents on a few, and on others no symbol at all. He did not have much time to ponder the nature of such insignias before stepping into the cafeteria.

Since the ship was presumably at heightened stations and alert, there was not much going on in the cafeteria, at least by Archangel standards. A handful of crew were chowing down quick, either off-duty and not anticipating staying that way or before they returned to their stations. It took a few moments for Murdoch to realize where the Commander was: in the line to get a lunch load.

It didn't take the pilot long, either. "No way! No fucking way! You died at Alaska, along with the Archangel!" he says, clearly indicating Commander La Flaga.

"Uh, huh?" Mu grunts in response. "What do you mean?" Mu asks as he brings three lunches to a clear table. Murdoch was not hesitant to grab a seat, though the pilot was for a few moments.

"This is fucking unreal." Still, the pilot took a seat after being offered one as well as the best-smelling hot-cooked meal he had seen since departing the moon, A meal was a meal was a meal, when everything was said and done. "Damn, something's not right here, either the Earth Alliance lied about you dying or you didn't die and they only thought you bought it at Alaska."

"Okay, start from step one," Mu requests. "First, you're Eurasian, right? What unit?"

"I was part of the Operation Elvis fleet, the attack on Boaz and the PLANTs. Name's Morgan Chevalier, and you are Mu La Flaga, right?"

"Mad Dog Morgan," Murdoch grumps. "No wonder you looked and sounded familiar," he tacks on for good measure.

"Yeah, that's me," he replies gruffly.

"Yeah, I'm Lieutenant Commander Mu La Flaga, formerly of the 8th Fleet."

"So, tell me, how did you get out of Alaska alive? All the forces assigned to guard JOSH-A were annihilated by ZAFT, as we heard." Morgan's shock at that seemed paled compared to other things of late, and they could tell.

"Uh, you serious?" Mu asks. "The Archangel never made it to Alaska."

"No way, the EA brass was very specific about you arriving in Alaska a few days prior to the ZAFT assault on JOSH-A."

"Okay, okay, something is not adding up here. Please give me a run-down on what you heard happened."

"The Archangel left Orb and went north to Alaska, chased by a ZAFT special forces team the whole way—the captured G Weapons. The one Earth Alliance machine was shot down, pilot killed in action, but the ship continued on. ZAFT attacked JOSH-A a few days later, and the whole defending force—including the Archangel—was annihilated to the last man by the assault. ZAFT supposedly lost most of their assaulting personnel in the attack, and were extremely furious with the casualties so they assaulted Panama two days later to keep the EA from capitalizing on their losses."

"Oh man, absolute disaster," Mu declares, meaning more things than one.

"So, how'd you guys snake them and the brass?" Mad Dog Morgan asks in response.

"Well, based on what you just told me, Morgan, I think we both are and are not the Archangel you are talking about."

After Morgan got over the shock of the fact that this was the Archangel, only not the Archangel supposedly destroyed in Alaska, Mu settled down and told him the whole story, with visual reinforcement in the holograph projector and his halberd to drive the point home. Explaining things took well over two hours, a gallon of coffee, ad-libs from a dozen other personnel that came and went, and some holoprojector recordings of the battles they underwent...and of course the obligatory Immortal Warrior episode that was definitely not something shown in Earth Alliance territory, since the episode in question referenced one of the planets that Mu said they had been on, Romulus.

For his part, Morgan thought that what happened was batshit crazy, though there was no denying the halberd Mu had was as magical as its origin. That alone went a long way to convincing Morgan that not all was bullshit or batshit.

-x-x-x-

(8 June CE 71, 1030 hours (2 hours after recovering Morgan Chevalier))

"This one, never seen the like," Murdoch declares as the Aegis places the almost-pristine Mobile Suit in an empty hangar cubicle. "You recognize it, Morgan?" Murdoch asks.

"Oh yeah, this one was on nobody's side but its own, and it had some fellows. Tried stopping both the EA and ZAFT, it succeeded partially but not much more than that. I thought it was caught in the second blast of the ZAFT superweapon. How it survived at all is beyond me."

"It's big, that's for sure," Nicol says. The box on its back made it look even larger than expected, as well as the odd hemispherical extensions coming from the sides of the box, but on that Nicol could not guess what they were for except to look impressive.

The machine in question was...big. It also had a cross-resemblance to both Earth Alliance and ZAFT aesthetics, and most telling of all was the X-20L designation on its helmet crest, which put it in the wrong designation system to be Earth Alliance—EA machines were classified as 100-Series (Basic frames), 200-Series (Specialized frames) or 300-Series (Transforming frames) as Morgan pointed out fairly. "20L matches close to what our intel boys came up with as ZAFT's new model machines: X09A Justice, X10A Freedom, X11A Regenerate, X13A Providence. Providence...that one was freaking bad. It tore through our forces, only stopped by this machine and the renegade ZAFT ship Eternal. Damn pity, really, hindsight...god, if only we'd paid attention to that little girl, maybe this would have ended before going all-out nuclear."

"Here," Murdoch punches in an activation code that Yzak had written down, an override code that ZAFT had in all their machines to access the cockpit from outside. It took a moment, but the hatch did indeed pop open to reveal the contents of the cockpit.

"Whoa," Nicol grunts. "Blue?"

"Something up?" Murdoch asks. What he was referring to was the pilot suit, of course.

"Green is common, red is elite, but what are the blue suits about?" Nicol asks.

"You don't know?" Murdoch asks for clarification, and gets the same answer as expected. "Morgan?" he asks a moment later.

"Not a clue. That is a ZAFT pilot suit, right?"

"Right," Nicol replies. "Just...there's too much wrong for this to be a ZAFT machine, I think. The symbol, the pilot suit coloring, what it was doing, I don't think it was ZAFT."

"Sure as hell was not Earth Alliance, I watched it sink the Doolittle, Kitty Hawk, Nellis, Thermopylae and the Dominion on its own." His tone betrayed that he considered one of the most horrifying things he had ever seen. Murdoch mostly agreed with it, watching five ships go down in flames would have to be less than pleasant, but...

"Badass machine, I guess," Murdoch declares.

"Badass pilot, more likely," Morgan adds after a moment. "Shall we?"

"Yeah," Murdoch joins Morgan in removing the female pilot (deceased) from the cockpit of the machine. She had been gripping the sides of her helmet, and to add to the creepiness had died with her eyes wide open in clear shock at whatever had happened to her.

"How is it going?" A lady's voice asks from outside the cockpit.

"Captain, we're just beginning to ponder this machine we picked up. Though, what should we do with, well," his sentence trails off.

"Burial in space," Murrue orders. "Intern her in a metal container, we will use the linear catapult to send it off."

"Aye, Captain," Murdoch declares.

"One thing, though, have Fuu check her for identification. Maybe that will help us identify where the machine came from." Even though the pilot appeared to be a classic pettanko (3), there was still enough there for Murrue to tell it was a lady without looking in the faceplate, and she was not going to have the guys see to that.

"Will do, Captain;" Murdoch looks past the Captain. "Tony, Gomer, c'mere," he orders immediately thereafter.

"Yessir!" The two requested Mechanics took over seeing to the body, allowing Captain Ramius, Murdoch, Nicol, and Morgan Chevalier to return to the machine in question.

"Kinda too bad we can't do anything for her," Murdoch grumbles. "She'd know best what the hell was going on, and why everything went to shit in a hurry."

"Can't be helped," Murrue replies. Thus far, she did not know of anyone who could un-kill the dead. She had little doubt that somewhere, somehow, she might find someone with that skill, but for now that was not a possible.

"Whoa, new machine," Kira was heard to say as he approaches the catwalks. "And that encounter suit was the pilot, right?"

"Was," Murdoch replies. "We're just getting ready to check it, you want to give us a hand?"

"Sure," Kira replies.

"And how many are we going to involve in this?" Colonel Morgan asks nobody in particular.

"Relax, Colonel," Murrue requests. "Kira is the guy who took over the Strike, reprogrammed it from scratch while fighting a GINN with having never used a Mobile Suit before in his life, and used it to clobber ZAFT's elite Le Creuset Team again and again and again. If anyone can divine the secrets of an unfamiliar machine, it would be Kira."

"Whoa." It had never cropped up that he was the pilot of the Strike, to which Morgan's Dagger was the mass-production version of the Strike, hardpoints for the mission packs and all. "You're telling me that this guy," to which Morgan was stretching things but didn't want to offend him by calling him 'kid', "Is the infamous pilot that positively mulched whole teams of ZAFT forces with just one machine?"

"And brought down the next best thing to a Goddess in the skies above Cephiro, and aided in turning a whole Clan Galaxy into scrap, salvage and poorly-organized remnants, and brought a Magitek Empire to its knees at the controls of an omnimech with twice the firepower of a Mobile Suit and the survivability of five. Yes, Colonel, he's probably one of the major reasons why this ship is still alive. And I don't think there is a person on the ship that doesn't trust him implicitly."

As Nicol had been recounting Kira's various feats, Kira had climbed into the cockpit with a slight shudder for the morbid feeling of taking over a Mobile Suit that someone died in. Unlike the typical guy, who would have started pressing buttons to power up the machine, Kira started looking for the pilot's manual first, which turned out to be a prescient move on his part. With enough digging, he found it behind the command couch, along with her personal effects. A lot of them. At least a quarter ton's worth of them. Untangling the pilot manual from a small-figure bra was not something he would soon forget, but not something he really wanted to remember, either.

"ZGMF-20FL Strike Freedom Mass Production Type, Long-Term Deployment Variant" Kira reads off the manual cover.

"ZGMF, definitely ZAFT," Nicol notes.

"Whoa, holy shit," Kira mumbles. "This thing weighs in at 75 tons fully loaded, is armed with two beam rifles, two rail guns, a hyper impulse beam cannon, two beam sabers, two beam shield generators, two 31mm CIWS, and has options to carry two heavy plasma cannons, a set of eight DRAGOONs, whatever those are, storage containers up to 25 tons, a Gate Generator, whatever the hell that is, or can be fitted with modular adapters to mount Silhouette, Striker, or Wizard packs."

"Makes your poor old Strike look grossly outdated," Nicol notes.

"Too bad this thing doesn't have a tactical doctrine section, it would be nice to see what it's intended to be used for," Murrue grumps, figuring that given what Kira had just read off it had about a dozen possible uses.

"It does," Kira replies. " 'Strike Freedom Mass Production units are designed explicitly to engage enemy Mobile Suits and Gundams at a variety of ranges with a wide array of capabilities, with secondary purposes of engaging enemy Warships and ground forces. When outfitted with various mission equipment or extended weapon sets, the Strike Freedom Mass Production Type can fulfill any number of tasks the equipment allows for in addition to its primary functions.' So quote the manual," Kira reads off from the pages he was perusing.

"A Gundam killer, is it?" Murdoch asks with a chuckle.

"It achieved its goal all right. This one machine easily massacred over a hundred Mobile Suits and at least a dozen warships from both sides. Fucking unstoppable."

"Uh, Colonel, be warned: we have personnel on this ship who slap people hard enough to loosen teeth for foul language. None here, but," Murrue cautions.

"Uh, I'll keep that in mind," Morgan replies dubiously.

"What'll it be, Captain?" Kira asks while flipping page after page through the manual. "Should I fire it up and take it out for a test drive?"

"I want it inspected before I trust anyone's life to it," Murrue orders. "Murdoch, plan on getting the 105 Dagger rebuilt and ready for deploy as well. Morgan, you said the remnant ZAFT and Earth Alliance forces are still hunting each other?"

"Yeah, dodging them is how I ended up out here in the debris zone." And why he had been scavenging killed ships for food, water, oxygen and power to survive.

"Willing to stay with us for a few?" Murrue asks plaintively.

"It would be a pleasure," he replies. No more hunting for supplies, and they ain't on anyone's side, he thinks irreverently.

It was his thoughts that sealed his place with the ship. "Welcome to the Archangel Team."

-x-x-x-

(8 June CE71, 2100 hours)

(In transit to the PLANTs)

"Conn, Sensors, we have contacts dead ahead," Sai says.

"Classify them, please," Murrue requests.

"One colony, appears to have been moved from L4, two ships unknown class, four Earth Alliance ships of Drake and Nelson classes."

"Helm, continue on course. Miriallia, can you tell anything?" Murrue asks.

"Not yet, just a feeling of unease," Miriallia replies.

"Well, that makes me uneasy," the Captain grumps. "All pilots to ready stations at this time, do not launch until combat is imminent."

"Conn, Comms, incoming from the Earth Alliance ships," Kuzzey declares.

"My screen," Murrue orders before turning the volume up to be heard by the whole bridge.

"This is Captain Irian of the Earth Alliance warship Mumbai, unidentified ship cease your advance and state your intentions immediately. Fail to comply and you will be fired upon. This is your only warning."

"Captain Irian, this is Captain Murrue Ramius of the Archangel Team warship Archangel, we will cease advance immediately if you will explain what is the present situation, over," she replies moments before the ships closed enough to establish visual link. "Newman, reverse thrust, all stop."

"Archangel? The Archangel was sunk at Alaska, and your silhouette is too large to be an Archangel-class ship, Captain. Identify yourself immediately or we will fire upon you."

"Captain Irian, this is the Archangel, hull designation Lima-Charlie-Alpha-Mike-Zero-One-Xray-Alpha. We have had to make some rather extensive modifications to our silhouette and arsenal due to extreme circumstances, but you can rest assured the ship is the same ship the Earth Alliance commissioned and constructed in Heliopolis. Now, if you do not believe me on that account, I cannot stop you from firing on my ship, but you damn well better make that first shot count or I will send you to hell immediately thereafter. Do you copy, Captain Irian?"

"Captain, if that ship CO is Wesley Irian, he's ascended scum, he's looking for an excuse to kill someone," Newman informs her. Murrue glanced at him but said nothing.

"Conn, sensors, shuttle launch from the colony," Sai blurts out. "Estimated destination...L4 colony group."

"Conn, Comms, Earth Alliance fleet is ordering shuttle to surrender and heave to—"

"Conn, sensors, one of the Drakes fired on the shuttle!" The main screen showed the line of tracers lance out from the large anti-MS rotary cannon on the ship, one pass, two passes, and the ship broke into several distinct pieces.

"Captain Irian, I demand an explanation for firing on an unarmed civilian shuttle!" Murrue shouts at him.

"You sympathize with the Coordinator scum that killed off our blue planet, killed almost everyone in the Earth Sphere? You are an Earth Alliance officer, Murrue Ramius, and you will follow orders! All Earth Alliance ships are to eradicate the remaining Coordinators by any means necessary, do you copy, Captain Ramius?"

"Chandratta!" Murrue half-shouts.

"Way ahead of you, Captain," he replies maliciously, his typing already fast at work to activate the arsenal of the Archangel.

"Conn, ECM, laser designators tracking our ship!" Sai shouts in a half-panic.

"Control, launch everything! Prioritize for space battle, launch Aegis, launch Duel. Full assault," Murrue orders in clear fury.

"Gottfried turrets loose, all tracking systems active, laser designator lock on; valid solution to Irian's ship, Captain," Chandratta tells her.

"They fired!" Sai shouts, then cringes. The beams only took a second to streak the relatively short distance to the Archangel, but even when striking a known weak point of the armor (the launch bay hatch), they did not blow through. The lack of significant damage itself was testament to how far the Archangel had come in three years.

"Gottfried cannons, fire!" Murrue half-shouts. Her attack took the same second to cross back, but the difference in application was severe. Her four beams chopped clear into the Nelson-class and cooked off the ammo bunker for the vertical-launch missile silos, chopping the ship roughly in half in front of the conning tower.

"Gottfrieds recharging, estimate 45 seconds, shall I deploy Valiants?"

"Yes, immediately," Murrue replies over the shuddering and loud metallic impact of the catapults launching the Duel and Aegis out into space. The surviving Nelson and one Drake had launched missiles at the Archangel, but the oft-maligned Igelstellungs tore through the missiles with frightening ease. Not one missile struck the ship.

"Aegis and Duel are engaging the outside Drake, ma'am," which had been the one to fire on the fleeing shuttle.

"Valiants, missiles on the middle Drake. Chandratta, Gottfrieds on the Nelson when charged."

The Archangel's next attack set, missiles and Valiants to one, the Gottfrieds to the other, turned out to be the last insult to break their morale. Chandratta missed with one Valiant slug, but not the other or the missiles; the Drake so struck remained intact but was out of action. The final Nelson took both sets of beams from the Gottfrieds, destroying its engine block and the whole forward section of the ship from the missile launchers to the bow, rendering it disabled.

And no surviving Earth Alliance ship had a crew competent enough to pull an attack off like that, or so the remaining Drake figured. The ship launched three white flares and immediately offered surrender on open channels.

"Surrender? After killing civilians like that?" Athrun asks in reply. "Like hell!" The Aegis lands on the foredeck of the Drake, looking in the front window. "Explain your misdeeds to Saint Peter here in a few minutes, genocidal scum."

Nobody was really surprised the Aegis reached up to the bridge front windows, gripped tight with its massive hand, and twist-wrenched the front windows completely off the conning tower, venting the bridge to space. A few were trying to get to the door to escape deeper into the ship, but those poor souls were simply sucked out into space and suffered faster decompression. After a few moments of pause, the Aegis jumped clear of the ship, transformed into the mobile armor mode, and fired a single blast of Scylla to finish the job.

"Athrun," Kira begins, but stops before going any farther.

"Huh?" The Aegis transforms back to mobile suit form, then looks to Kira in the new Strike Freedom MP.

"I think I should say something, anything, about doing that, but," he says quietly.

"But what?" Athrun asks almost accusatory.

"I won't say anything. You're right, in the end. They shouldn't be killing people like that." Even still, the tone of Kira's voice was extremely grim, evidence that he thought his own position morally ambiguous, much less the rest of the team.

"Colony C4-146, this is Archangel, are you all right?" Kuzzey requests on radio.

"Archangel, this is Colony Control, we're all dead. The Earth Alliance suits have infiltrated the colony and are killing everyone. There's not much we can do to stop them. Just...just get the remaining survivors here and get them to Mars. Step over our dead bodies if you have to, just get the remnant to safety, please. There's nothing left for them—" the crackling sound presaged that the radio had been destroyed, presumably along with the user.

"Aegis, Duel, Strike Freedom, Buster, 105 Dagger, enter and clear the colony. Rune Gods, remain on station and eliminate any Earth Alliance genocidal maggots that try fleeing." If Murrue could sound any colder, how was lost on the ship's crew and pilots.

"With pleasure, Captain," Athrun replies just as coldly. "Aegis has point. Dynamic entry, Strike Freedom, Aegis, Duel, 105, Buster, that order. Kill them all and count the bodies."

-x-x-x-

(9 June CE 71, 0630 hours)

(Maius 2 PLANT colony)

"It's like a freaking graveyard," Yzak comments on the open-channel radio. A few of the PLANTs maintained their position even with being bombed out by nuclear weapons. Most did not, and the bulk of the deceased colonies were headed for Earth or already there. Three PLANTs were all that remained intact, though in a veritable cemetery of the deceased colonies.

"Is this...what war really looks like?" Hikaru asks; her Rune God was looking around, watching for debris and observing the colonies.

"No, Hikaru, this is genocide," Kira replies darkly. "The killing of whole groups of people, almost everyone."

"Omnicide, technically, since damn near everyone was killed off, no discrimination as to side or creed," Athrun clarifies. "We can enter through this harbor entrance. I'll get out to activate the lift controls."

"All right, everyone pile on the harbor lift." Yzak suits his own actions to his words, something quickly followed by the other Gundams, the Rune Gods, and even the newcomer Morgan Chevalier.

"Can these things handle all of our units?" Morgan asks. There was no question as to where he stood now, the only thing he lacked was a uniform to match the rest of the team. Especially after using his Gunbarrel Striker to kill almost half of the EA Strike Daggers in C4-146 singlehandedly.

"Yeah, easily, we used to run a dozen GINNs up and down these lifts at a time," Yzak notes. "Granted, each of our machines except maybe the 105 Dagger are a bit heavier than a GINN, but the principle holds."

Athrun parked his Gundam on the lift, picked up the Rorynex SMG, and made sure the safety was on before popping the hatch. Outside, it only took a few moments to cover the distance to the control room access hatch, and on the inside of the hatch a dead lady greeted him. His sharp gasp drew attention on the radios, but Athrun reassured everyone that there was no threat. Inside the lock, two hallways stalled his transit to the control room, one hall filled with dead people that had been obviously killed by shotgun, and another with just parts of bodies and congealed blood drops floating in the weightless atmosphere.

"I'm in, give me a moment to set up the lock transits," Athrun works quickly to set up timing close enough to the fastest the lock could manage. A minute later: "Set and ready; in ten seconds, you'll start moving. I'll meet you inside and pick my Gundam up there."

"Roger that, watch your can, Zala."

"Always," Athrun adjusts his sling back to combat carry position and heads out into the corridors.

The whole dock area resounded to the movements of the lock doors and the crawling of the lift toward the interior of the colony. As he moved along toward the interior, he did so passing by body after body after body of people killed by small arms fire. The experience sickened him; every time he reached out and touched a body, he could see the last moments of their life, and many of the time he heard the hatred slogans of the Blue Cosmos.

And then, he encountered what he knew he would find, and dreaded all the same. Someone near his age, a lady likely no older than seventeen, roughly stripped naked and with her throat cut. He didn't have to touch her, even approaching within three meters was enough that he could see what happened. Horridly gang-raped by Earth Alliance officers in her last moments, then her throat slashed and left to choke on her own blood, her death took several minutes of amplifying emotions and pains, until the blackness of death took over. The pain, the fear, the anguish, overcame him before he could move a meter past her dead body, and he stopped moving, just sobbing uncontrollably from her leftover emotions.

"Athrun! Are you all right? Respond!" Yzak fairly shouts at him.

"I—no—I—I'm not all right, Yzak, I—damnit!" he shouts, his own frustration finally overcoming the leftover agony. "God damned Blue Cosmos! This is fucking horrid! I can see—every time I touch or pass a dead body, I see their last moments, the worse and more emotional their death, the more of it I feel. And I just passed a rape-to-murder victim." Athrun pauses to draw in a breath through a ragged sob. "A victim—freaking teenager not even as old as we are. Throat cut. She took four minutes to die after the slice, and before that...God help them, help them all, please..."

The radio channel was silent for over a minute. "Are you—no, can you move, Athrun? I know you're not all right, but can you continue?" Yzak asks calmly.

"I'll continue on in a minute. If you get in, secure the landing and wait for me, please."

"Should I come and get you?" Kira asks.

"No, no, I can move, just give me a moment to stop hyperventilating and sobbing." It took Athrun the minute and an extra before he could regain enough composure to continue moving. "Zala is moving now. I should be topside in about two minutes."

"Roger that, we are still one lock short of the surface."

"Entry Team, Captain Ramius, Commander La Flaga and I are retracing Zala's steps to enter the facility with the Elementals. We...copied his last few. This is not the Earth Alliance we signed up to protect, in more ways than one."

"No qualms about killing them all?" Yzak asks.

"None, none at all," Murrue replies.

"Kill them all, count the bodies, file the paperwork," Morgan Chevalier replies. "The day they fired nukes at the PLANTs, they stopped being human."

"Can do," Tolle says. "Sad to say, but, well, this is just horridly unforgivable." The thought of someone his or more appropriately Miriallia's age being raped was too much. He surmised that the person who tried doing that to Mir, succeed or fail, he would kill them as quickly as possible with as many weapons at hand as was possible.

"Is this really how people want to spend their last days? Violating others in cruel ways?" Fuu asks.

"It takes a sick mind to force the end on humanity like this, Fuu, and Blue Cosmos is in no way of their right mind," Murrue explains. "I expect inside here we will find more depredations, and those not just by the Earth Alliance."

"Yeah," Athrun replies coldly. He had just passed a dead female Earth Alliance officer that had been shot mortally enough to keep her from doing anything while she died, then was groped very roughly by her assailant until she passed out. "It goes both ways."

"Duel reporting, we're in open air at this time. No enemy Mobile Suits inside the colony, going in on foot to investigate further."

-x-x-x-

(9 June CE 71, 0725 hours)

(Maius 2 PLANT colony)

Yzak figured the AKM sufficiently different from the Earth Alliance or ZAFT assault rifles that mistaking them for ZAFT or EA would be hard unless the person was hopelessly delusional. There was a possibility of that, but not much of one in his opinion. Most of the crazies were likely to have already killed themselves off by now, leaving those few desperate souls in the facility. Although he had to admit that under the right (wrong) circumstances desperate could very well equal crazy.

"Is this how Hiroshima looked after the first bomb?" Umi asks nobody in particular while searching through the remains for survivors.

"Maybe," Yzak replies. He knew what she was referring to, even though 'ancient' history was not often or properly taught in the PLANTs. Something he figured he would work very hard to correct, to prevent the mistakes of the past from repeating again. "Not enough destruction, really, but it's probably similar."

Yzak looked over his shoulder to where the Gundams were standing, guarded over by the 105 Dagger. Morgan volunteered to remain on station as rapid-response support, given that his uniform was assured to draw attention and fire from the locals. The Archangel Team personnel could get away with being on foot in his opinion: the large Archangel Team emblem was so far removed from ZAFT or EA artwork that someone would have to be blind—or fanatical—to mistake it. "It'll be all right, his is the only machine in the colony, isn't it?"

"Should be," Yzak replies to Umi. "Still, can't shake the feeling that I'd rather be in it than on foot, though."

"Uh, Yzak, movement at two o'clock," Umi says as she stops nearby a prominent pile of concrete and twisted steel girder. There may be a lack of Mobile Suits active in the colony, but the dead Strike Daggers and new ZAFT models was evidence enough that there had been a huge amount of fighting inside. The fighting had reduced roughly 40 percent of the structures inside to rubble, and damaged practically all the rest.

"Down," Yzak orders, suiting actions to words as he crouches down behind the pile, then begins cautiously edging around the far-side end of the rubble pile to see what was going on. "Two adults and five kids, picking their way through the rubble."

"Can't be bad, can it?" Umi tries to stand up, but Yzak fairly drags her down by her skirt armor. "What?"

"The guy is carrying a pair of pistols and a sub-machinegun like I used to have. It can be bad, very bad," he tells her in a low, directed whisper.

"'Kay," she replies, keeping her head and body well below the top edge of the debris.

"C'mon, we'll stop here for a few, then head to the harbor and try to find a way out of here," the guy is heard to say. "We have to get to Copernicus or the colony that is taking people to Mars, or we'll die here of starvation," he tells the lady.

"You! You there!" a distant voice shouts, obviously in a rough manner.

"Oh, no! They found us!" the lady wails.

Umi saw the guy peek up cautiously, raise his sub-machinegun, and fire off two short bursts before it jammed open. He never had a chance to clear the jam, though, as before he could duck down a three-round burst of 30-caliber rifle rounds tore his head and face apart. Given where he was standing, the extremely loud shriek of the lady was inevitable, as she would have either seen the mess of what remained of his head or would now be covered by the remnants. Yzak could see her practically clawing at her face and clothes, trying to remove the gore that now covered her, but it was in vain. Stuff like that did not come out of its own volition. Unfortunately, Yzak had learned the hard way over the years of traveling with the Archangel that blood was a very hard stain to remove.

"Heh heh, this one looks interesting," one of the assailants says as he approaches. The blue beret and rough clothes bespoke of people less concerned about their appearance than else; the state of repair of their gear told Yzak these were not regular troops, which made them Blue Cosmos.

"Yeah, I think I could bone this one before we knife her," another of the BC pricks comments.

"You know the regs, though, kids get killed first." An assault rifle came up; Umi's jaw dropped before a single round was fired.

The kid that was shot, five years at best, more likely four in Umi's estimation, went down screaming with her leg bleeding massively. At a range of maybe five meters, the shooter completely missed a fatal shot, whether on purpose or not was anyone's guess. It infuriated Umi enough that she gripped and shouldered her Thompson, preparing to jump up and spray all four of them.

Prepared, but never did. Something happened that kept her from moving, something she intellectually knew could happen, but had never seen in real life before. The shooter locked eyes with her for a brief moment before the front-left of his face exploded outward from the transit of an incoming rifle slug. His body was partway to collapsing before the loud, flat crack of the firing rifle was heard.

"Wha—OH SHIT!" one of the other BC terrorists shouts before his chest was torn up, body armor and all, to the sound of a Rorynex SMG. Yzak hauled Umi back toward the center of the rubble pile they were hiding in, to prevent her from being seen by anyone. The Duel pilot saw a burst of the said SMG rounds walk across a debris piece to his left, each round leaving rather significant craters in the concrete edifice even by Rorynex standards. The damage was almost akin to very weak grenade launcher rounds.

"Oh man, who are these fuckers?" the nearer of the two remaining BC terrorists shouts. He ducks around the side of the rubble he was shielding behind, rattling off several single rounds of assault rifle at whoever was shooting at him. The barrage was answered by a burst of Rorynex that tore his left arm completely off his body and knocked him down; the shock from the attack had literally overwhelmed and killed him on the way to the ground, as his unblinking eyes attested.

"Oh, GOD!" The fourth and last of the BC drops his weapon, running and jumping away from the enemy shooters, trying desperately to flee.

Umi figured herself in some form of vividly horrid dream or an action movie of some grotesque kind, but had to remind herself that it was real in the end. A person, dressed head to toe in white combat fatigues and even white tactical body armor, vaulted over the rubble that the BC terrorists died nearby, then sprang up with a Rorynex SMG shouldered and aimed toward the last of the terrorists. The soldier's first burst resembled nothing so much as a loud tearing sound, followed by a series of single rounds from another shooter that had not cleared over the rubble. The second and final burst came from the lady again, and after two seconds, she safed and released her weapon to hang on its tactical sling.

"Damn, got a kid," a young guy says. Umi had been smart to cover hear ears during the shooting, and could hear reasonably well courtesy of it.

I will deal with it, the lady replies wordlessly; Umi immediately recognized it as telepathy even though Miriallia or the Captain normally spoke to her audibly. The leaves of Spring's eternal vitality shall bestow upon these wounded their eternal Sylvan Healing Restoration, they all hear from the lady as her outstretched left hand begins glowing green. Then, when she finishes telepathically chanting the spell, glowing green leaves could be seen flitting through the air and falling to the ground; Umi could just barely see the wounded kid as several of the leaves fall upon him, the green energy of the spell sealing and cleaning up the wounds and internal trauma.

"Who...who are you?" the lady asks.

"We are Crusaders, ma'am, we're here to save who is still alive and evacuate the survivors," the obvious guy declares.

Wow, neat magic spell, Umi thinks, finally realizing that she had also been touched by some of the leaves and felt instantly better physically and mentally.

"That thought didn't match a normal 'local'," the male Crusader declares.

Oh crap, we've been— she begins thinking, but doesn't complete the thought.

Behind the debris, weapons safed and above your heads, stand up slow. I will not ask a second time, the lady orders them telepathically.

"Do it," Yzak orders. His AKM was the first above his head, followed shortly by Umi's Thompson, then both stand up slowly.

Indeed, not 'locals' just on dint of their arsenal, the lady says to all present telepathically. Who are you? I do not recognize your unit symbol, much less a unit that has a Coordinator paired with a schoolgirl in magic armor.

Before either could answer: "No fucking way! That's a 28-A1 Thompson sub-machine gun! Can I buy that off you?" the guy asks.

"Fair warning, man, she slaps people for foul language," Yzak jerks his head at Umi, who by all accounts right now was too scared to slap anyone. That didn't even faze the guy in question, who had dropped his aimpoint.

Why am I not surprised he asked that? The lady asks nobody in particular. Port-arms, please, it appears you are no more an enemy in these grounds than we are. Come on out, if you feel up to it.

"Anyone that kills terrorists is on my list for free beers," Yzak says, despite the fact that in most places he was illogically not allowed to do the purchasing or drinking.

"This...this is just horrid conduct, even for the end of the world," Umi says, the first to take the leap of faith and step out from behind the rubble. She had slung her weapon over her right shoulder, as had Yzak. "I'm Umi Ryuuzaki, Magic Knight in the Archangel Team, a wandering mercenary unit."

"Yzak Joule, Gundam pilot in the same unit."

"Harald Reeven, support infantry, Crusaders 6944 Rapid-Reaction Support Regiment," the guy says.

Enya Tolose, Mana Support Wizard, also of the Crusaders but of a different posting, the lady tells them.

To Umi, something about the lady seemed seriously off. She could tell she was not lying in the slightest, but something about her did not seem human. Still...

"Team 72, command, come back," the guy's radio blares before anything else could be said.

"Go for 72," he replies.

" 'Miko' would like to request the two members of the Archangel Team you encountered to come to the memorial site, she has something to discuss with them involving what is happening with their ship."

"Roger that, out," the guy replaces the radio.

"You expect us to trust that?" Yzak asks fairly. He had skipped over the obvious question of 'how the hell did their command section already know we were here' to the immediate conspiracy theory.

"No, not really," Harald replies just as fairly. "Your call, I ain't gonna drag you over there. I'm here to get the civvies out of here before they start dying of exposure and dehydration or other problems. I wholeheartedly recommend you do talk to her, though. When people in her position have something to say, the wisest listen long and hard, lest they never understand what is happening, or what needs to be done."

"Thank you," Umi answers for the two. "Come on, Yzak, we'll listen," she fairly orders of him before she begins hauling him unceremoniously in the direction the lady indicated. Yzak did not resist, giving into his curiosity on the subject.

-x-x-x-

(9 June CE 71, 0735 hours)

(Maius 2 PLANT colony)

"Damn," Nicol mutters before standing up from the dead body of a young teenager. She had been shot as Nicol and Fuu watched her frantically trying to flee, and Nicol had seen to the shooter with a pair of three-round bursts of AKM, but their healing magic wasn't fast enough to save her. Not for want of trying, but a chest shot is a hard thing to overcome if you can't immediately respond to it.

"Huh?" Fuu asks, looking toward an approaching sound. "Oh, no..."

"Oh man," Nicol says in almost a moan.

"You! Hands up!" the ZAFT infantry orders; Nicol counted what he could see, and the total was over seven, not something he expected he would walk away from if shooting started.

"We surrender, do not shoot!" Nicol half-shouts after raising his arms.

"Close up." With that simple order, the ZAFT soldiers slowly move forward, three of them never taking their sights off Nicol and Fuu, while the remainder checked around the area to make sure it was not an ambush or there were no other threats. It was around halfway in their approach before their commanding officer stopped. "No way, Nicol?"

"Heine?" Nicol asks in response, finally recognizing the voice he thought was his old academy classmate. "Wow, you did survive the blatant end. Guess not all of the good die young," he concludes as Heine steps forward of the Infantry.

"Yeah, it's me, I heard you were killed in the south Pac by the Earth Alliance prototype mobile suit before Alaska. Man, what happened?" he asks as he approaches. "And...who's the lady?"

"Both of the above are a very long story. Very long story. But—"

"Green Team, Blue Team, you on?" the voice on the other side of the radio was definitely Yzak.

"Go for green," Nicol requests immediately on the radio.

"Hey, we encountered some very unusual persons, Crusaders they call themselves, they say they may know something about W-T-F is going on with our ship. Meeting place is the park at 62 Street and Harmony Court. Recommend you drop by and listen in, worst it could be is a waste of time."

"Roger that, I have a long hike to get there from my present location. Don't wait for me unless you have to," Nicol replies after a moment of consideration. "Command, Green Team, did you copy Blue Team's last?"

"Roger that, Command is moving in that direction at this time."

"Red Team from Green Team, did you Copy Blue Team's last?"

"Green, Red, negative copy from Blue, we've been in and out of gunfights for the past three minutes. No casualties our side, civilians down and dead. Not much we can do for them, sad to say."

"Roger that," Nicol replies, pausing to cringe at the thought of yet more civilian deaths. "At the park at intersection 62 and Harmony there is possible personnel that may know W-T-F is going on with the ship. Blue Team advises possible good intel, not likely jerking us around. We'll get the cliff notes regardless, your call as to whether or not you hear it firsthand."

The sound of a Rorynex barks out from close-by, a haunting, tearing sound due to the gun's high cyclic rate of fire (well in excess of 1200 rounds per minute). Immediately all the ZAFT infantry hunch up and examine their surroundings more thoroughly, though nothing comes of it; there was no shooter in sight. The sound of a frantic, extremely scared runner was unmistakable, however, and approaching from the rear of the Infantry was someone running extremely fast. She jumped clear of the rubble causeway and skidded to a stop practically at Nicol's feet.

"Huh? What are you running from?" Nicol asks before two of the Infantry knock her down and restrain her. The only thing he could recognize of her was an Earth Alliance enlisted uniform, and at a rough guess of her age was maybe twenty, nothing much else in the immediate seconds afterwards.

"You have to RUN!" she shouts. "A machine of war is coming! Run!" she entreats.

"What?"

"Nicol!" Fuu shouts, looking toward where she had come from. A massive four-legged machine about four meters tall had stomped its way over the debris she had strained to clear, and immediately Nicol could see the truth in her statement. There was no doubt this machine was designed expressly for warfare, though after a pace forward it apparently realized that the quarry it was chasing was fleeing no more, and approached slowly. The whole thing resembled nothing so much as a huge tiger fashioned of armor, actuator, and advanced composites.

"Oh, good God," Nicol moans. He didn't even know where to begin on attacking such a monstrosity. The sight of the turret on its top with a large cannon of some kind, a rotary machine gun, and a side-mounted Rorynex only made things worse in his mind.

It stopped at fifteen meters, not moving, nor was the turret moving or pointing at anyone in particular. "Do you want to take possession of that scumdog you are restraining, or should I?" Surprisingly, the lady's voice sounded perfectly human, except for being retransmitted by amplified speakers..

"Is that thing piloted?" Fuu puts words to Nicol's inner dread. "Like an Elemental?"

"What did she do to you?" Heine asks the machine.

"Not what it did to me; one scrawny wench like her cannot carry the firepower needed to damage my armor. What she did to a ZAFT soldier her teammates captured was beyond deplorable, though, thus my chase."

"What did she do so bad to warrant you killing her friends and chase her to the point of collapse?" Heine asks in a very accusatory fashion.

"She reverse-raped a ZAFT soldier, then when she was through having her 'fun' with him she cut his crank off and started stomping on his balls. That is when I opened fire. Any questions?" Nicol figured that two could play the game of condescension, and she was so far holding her own against Heine.

"That's fucking sick," the one female ZAFT soldier in their group moans.

"As I said, we can take possession of her and deal with her as is appropriate, or you can see to her in the fashion you see fit. It is your decision."

"We will hold onto her," Heine replies automatically; he could guess what their solution to her continued life was, and did not want to see it done that way.

"Very well, you will need this for evidence purpose. Not safe for the kids, rest assured." A small fragment of the outermost layer of the armor pops off the unit and lands practically at Heine's feet. "Video of my boresight cameras at the time of the crime all the way to here. Please deal with her as needed." The armor takes a step backwards, making to turn around and heads away from the unit, but—

"WAIT!" Fuu shouts.

"Huh? What is it, Magic user?" the armor asks in response, not even having turned halfway away.

"Who are you, and why are you here?"

"We are Crusaders. Our duty is to defend and save lives or die trying. We fight the terrorist scum like you now hold captive, in the hopes that we can save enough to make a difference. If you seek a way out of the colony, transient (4), evac and relocation is being set up through the safe zone centered on 62 and Harmony. Go there, and you will be taken to a transport to Mars or to an alternate-dimension ZAFT."

"What the hell?" one of the Infantry asks. "Where do you get off?"

"Where do I get off?" the pilot of the armor asks indignantly. "Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, ZAFT elitist pissant ground-pounder! If you want to die in this half-dead colony, that is your prerogative and not my problem, nor is it the problem of those around you. Do not screw your comrades by way of your own death-wish, regardless of who has earned it, clear?" The armor continues its turn away from the groups, though they all clearly heard: "Fucking ZAFT pukes, even in death they think themselves superior to everyone..."

"We're headed out, Heine," Nicol declares. He was deliberately ignoring the fact that the theoretical pilot of the armor was right, ZAFT was elitist and had problems seeing past it.

"We'll follow," Heine says immediately. "I want to know what the hell is going on here. This whole thing is bad, but these Crusaders are something totally different."

-x-x-x-

(10 minutes earlier: 9 June CE 71, 0725 hours)

(Maius 2 PLANT colony)

The sound of a scream immediately caused Athrun, Kira and Hikaru to move in the direction even more quickly. The trail of dead and violated bodies was evidence enough that the few remaining persons in this colony were getting a very raw deal, and the trio of Red Team had come to the unstated conclusion that this depravity needed to end. How it had lasted this long, though, Athrun was not sure. He would have figured that the insane people would have killed each other off already, leaving just the raw survivors, but he also reminded himself that being a survivor caused problems like this...the cycle ended up feeding itself.

The trio moved separate from each other, ensuring they never approached close enough for a grenade to kill more than one of them at a time. As they cleared every piece of demolished building, they stopped to cover and observe their surroundings, a quick check to make sure they were not walking into a trap. When satisfied, the next of them would leapfrog forward, cover, and when assured clear would signal for the next to move.

For two minutes they pushed forward, until: "There!" Hikaru makes the mistake of half-shouting, immediately drawing attention to herself. "EEP!" she shouts in extreme fright as more than six assault rifles were leveled at her and the enemies started shooting. Behind a broken slab of wall concrete she was not going to take a hit, but the sound and feeling of being shot at was less than pleasant to her.

Hikaru immediately recognized the off-timbre bark of Kira's AKM, firing short bursts of three rounds at the Blue Cosmos terrorists. She was not sure who got hits, if anyone, but she could see Kira drop back down below the level of cover he was firing over, a gash on the side of his face and no shortage of muttering visible if not audible.

Most of the fire had shifted away from her position, so she ducked around the cover quickly and loosed a pair of quick bursts herself. One missed high and wide, another clipped a guy in the body-armored shoulder and chest. The Tungsten-core armor piercing rounds did the trick beyond standard ammo, however, where normal military 'ball' (full metal jacket) ammo would have stopped on the body armor and only caused impact trauma, the TCAP punched right through the Kevlar / ballistic nylon combination material, punched through his body, and was finally stopped in the back layers of his body armor. Hikaru quickly ducked back to make sure she was out of the line of fire when the enraged teammates of the newly deceased dwelled in on her with short bursts.

Their constant switching of targets from Hikaru (in the center) to Kira (on the left) gave Athrun a perfect opportunity on the right. Whereas Hikaru and Kira both had limiting terrain to deal with between the shooters and themselves, meaning that one of them could not rip a long burst and kill them all, Athrun had just exactly luxury. And he had opted for the perfect weapon for just such a task.

Kira had glanced out to determine how likely he was to get shot if he tried leap-frogging forward, just in time to see one of the most horrid things he had seen since the invasion of the Southern Continent. Athrun had positioned himself and let loose a braced twenty-round burst of M60 into the enemy's left flank. What was so horrid about it was how simple killing the five remaining enemies was: they had bunched up behind cover, never realizing Athrun was out there, and the .308-caliber TCAP ammo he was using literally chopped through several of them with each round. Of the five remaining enemies, only one survived. If one would consider having an arm and part of your chest mulched by armor-piercing ammunition 'survived' in the slightest.

All three of the Red Team stood up and swept forward as one, weapons trained and ready to eliminate any other opposition in the area. The last of the terrorists had dropped his weapon and bolted away, toward the center of the colony area. Kira immediately dropped to one knee and put sights on, but stopped shy of pulling the trigger himself. His sights hovered just over what looked like an Elemental, but it looked severely different from the Elementals that the Archangel had in its possession. Namely, it lacked missile launchers and the primary weapon was larger than the standard Small Laser.

"What the fuck is that thing?" Athrun puts words to Kira's fears as the monstrosity steps forward, toward the running enemy who had fallen forward and busted his leg on some oddly-shaped debris. As Kira watched on in veritable horror, the 'Elemental', that lacked missile packs and replaced them with some kind of large machine cannon over its left shoulder stopped in front of the downed enemy. The left arm flexed the wicked battle claw it mounted, then the weapon underneath the wrist let loose a spray of needler flechettes (Kira had seen a needler rifle in action on Twycross, and it was not pleasant in the least) to and penetrate the body armor of the victim. Even worse, these flechettes were burning in the same manner as white phosphorous, lending him an excruciating amount of pain for a few moments before the trauma overtook him and knocked him unconscious from shock. As the 'Elemental' walked past it, the body itself was consumed in a small fire as an incendiary chemical in the flechettes was released to begin burning all over the impact area.

"Jesus H. Christ, what the—" Kira begins but is cut off by Athrun:

"Is that thing on our side?"

"Are they on our side?" Hikaru was referring to the infantry dressed in white who were stacked (5) on the armor's rear, using it as cover as the armor marched forward.

A machine gun answered the question, though not one of the infantry or the battle armor that was approaching. A squad of Earth Alliance remnants had flanked the armor and the infantry to the right, firing on it from about thirty meters from behind marginal cover. The armor drew the bulk of the fire, but the infantry behind it were not completely spared the enemy's ministrations. Two of the five went down, though one got back up with what appeared to be little if any injury, the other was bleeding messily from a shot to the jaw.

Kira, immediately assuming the soldiers in white were not enemies, took aim at the Earth Alliance remnant and let loose with what was left of his magazine. Athrun, despite being unsure what the hell was going on, did the same with his M-60, though he could not rip a heavy burst as he did earlier due to nothing to brace on. Hikaru was the last to join in on expedient of having to reload from her prior actions. The infantry who were not affected by the gunfire chimed in as Athrun did, the Rorynex sub-machine guns accompanied by the three anachronistic weapons of Red Team and what appeared to be a rapid-fire coilgun and a heavy railgun in their ranks.

The crowning achievement of the return fire, though, had to be the battle armor. Kira had deduced it carried three weapons, a machine cannon of some kind, the needler it had used earlier, and the primary weapon on its right arm being a laser weapon unrecognized prior. He was not disappointed in any of the above, though in the end he was more impressed than his initial guesses. The Needler let fly ten rounds every five seconds, nothing spectacular, though as each flechette impacted on the solid debris in the area it broke apart and spread the flammable material inside far and wide; in ten seconds, the whole area the Earth Alliance occupied was on fire, lending flames to their deaths. The machine cannon also turned out to be a magnetic weapon, a railgun with sufficient power to tear arms and heads off as well as rapid-fire capability to fire eight rounds in ten seconds. The final nail in the coffin was the main weapon, which put out a cobalt blue multi-section beam that practically vaporized the head, shoulders, arms and breasts of an Earth Alliance Lieutenant Commander in one shot. What was left of her body joined the rest of her squad in the chemically-induced inferno, with not one survivor to their name, and not one kill among the white-garbed troops to justify their deaths.

Check for survivors among the civilians! Move it up! The fact that Kira, Athrun, and Hikaru heard it inside their minds was creepy: not only were they very well armed, they were also telepathic.

"You kids all right?" One of the infantry in white asks. His Rorynex was still combat-slung, but his hands were off it; he was kneading the place on his arm where the bullet struck the sleeve of the ballistic armor jacket, which was probably still sore from just the impact.

"Yeah, we're all right, but who are you?" Kira asks. The symbol on their uniform, what appeared to be a four-pointed shuriken, did not strike him as something that made sense for...well, none of it made sense to him, much less the symbol.

"We are Crusaders, we're trying to save what few civilians are left here. You?"

"We're...lost, severely lost," Kira replies after a moment.

"Well, behind the sights of that antique assault rifle you are not lost at all. Thanks for the assist," the trooper inside the Battle Armor notes. "Command, Hellraiser 7 reporting sector cleared of all Earth Alliance terrorist scumdogs. Requesting vector to the front," the three hear over the external speakers on the armor.

"Stand by," their command element replies. "Hellraiser 7, Command, there is no front. Colony is secured at this time, 'Miko' reports no Earth Alliance survivors that have not been captured. You are authorized RTB at this time, and 'Miko' requests—"

"Red Team from Green Team, did you Copy Blue Team's last?"

"Green, Red, negative copy from Blue, we've been in and out of gunfights for the past three minutes. No casualties our side, civilians down and dead. Not much we can do for them, sad to say," Athrun replies to the first thing he had heard from the radio in a while.

"Roger that," Nicol acknowledges, pausing for a few moments. "At the park at intersection 62 and Harmony there is possible personnel that may know W-T-F is going on with the ship. Blue Team advises possible good intel, not likely jerking us around. We'll get the cliff notes regardless, your call as to whether or not you hear it firsthand."

"Roger that, Red is out," Athrun replies.

"62 and Harmony is the direction we are headed." Hikaru gasps when she sees that the speaker in question was obviously nonhuman: the long, pointy ears gave it away. "Follow close, I will explain some of what is going on in transit."

-x-x-x-

(9 June CE 71, 0755 hours)

(Maius 2 PLANT colony)

(62nd street and Harmony Court, Harmony Memorial Park)

For Murrue, the whole experience had been surreal in and of itself. Apparently she had wandered into area already secured by these Crusaders, who were seeing to the civilians and trying to pick through the rubble to collect a few possession of the rescued, so they would not be leaving their homes empty-handed. Not all the structures had been laid to waste, though, and for some finding was not the problem, but collecting was. The PLANTs had never really worked on a possible evacuation plan and drilling, thus the civilians were not very well prepared for these events. Finding ways to carry the necessities was quickly becoming a learn-as-you-go skill for most of them.

The Crusaders simply waved Murrue, Mu, and Tolle onward, occasionally redirecting them around a hazardous area or giving them more specific directions to get closer to the command center. They arrived just ahead of Green team, but behind Blue and Red, both of which were still shaking off jitters from their combat encounters.

"Archangel team, right?" a rather harried staff officer asks.

"Yeah," Murrue replies.

"Over there, at the memorial site," he gestures them on before beginning to direct a gaggle of civilians toward their respective destinations.

"Best we move," Mu says quietly, suiting his walk to his words and moving toward the towering Gundam ahead of them.

Where the Crusaders were not seeing to injured persons or directing family members to each other for sometimes tearful reunions, they were doing the more mundane things one would associate with military personnel on the ground of a disaster area. In one direction, Murrue could see several battle armor units that were wildly different (and quite a bit larger) than Elementals sifting through debris carefully, so as to try and rescue anyone trapped underneath. In another direction, a smallish tank-transport vehicle had unfolded itself into a full medical MASH unit with what she could guess was six different medical wards and a central facility all its own. In yet a third direction, an older soldier (gauging by his beard and physical appearance) was instructing a group of kids ranging from five years old to fifteen on how to open and heat the food contained in an MRE pack using a bottle of water and the included heater pack.

There were five Gundams total stationed on the road overlooking the park. four of them were normal-size machines, including one Strike Gundam that was colored far different from normal (who would use a pink Gundam, Mu wanted to know) but four unrecognizable machines. The fifth machine was also of a type that Mu did not recognize, a fact compounded by the size of it: the machine in question was easily sixty meters tall, compared to the 18 to 20 meters of its company. The scale of the machine was absolutely awesome to him; the four barrels of Vulcan cannon on the machine had to be at least half a meter in barrel caliber, all the way to the feet that had to be large enough in footprint to flatten the torso of a GINN if it stepped on one, just as one example of the sheer size of it.

"Commander," Yzak greets them.

"I take it you're wondering what that big machine is for, right?" Athrun asks as the Commander continues to stare.

"Yeah," Mu replies hurriedly after looking back to ground level.

"It's hers," and Athrun points to a lady in an officer's uniform similar to the Earth Alliance uniforms, except for the unusual symbol and the obvious armaments that did not match anything Earth Alliance. Despite the uniform, Murrue figured the said person smaller and likely younger than she was. Other than the shoulder-length mouse-brown hair and lighter set of body armor, there was nothing really notable about her.

"Captain, you all right?" Nicol asks from behind.

"Yeah, it's just...this is getting...is this really our home?"

"I don't know, but given what I've heard, I don't think so. There is just too much different about it, even given what happened supposedly after we disappeared," Nicol says.

It is done, the mental voice of the lady in front of them speaks telepathically. Soldiers of ZAFT, pilots and Magic Knights of the Archangel Team, please come close. I have much to tell you of what has happened, and what shall happen.

"No arguing with that," Yzak says. The group clusters closer to better hear her.

"There is a tale in some areas of Existence, a tale of a ship that defeated the odds and stopped a war," the lady officer begins. Much as Murrue guessed, she was both smaller and younger than she was, but Murrue knew this was no gauge of competency. "Yet, as with all tales in Existence, there are an infinite amount of paths and outcomes to this tale, and what happens in one place changes in another, sometimes with improved outcomes, sometimes with disastrous consequences."

"You're either speaking about the fleet of Odysseus or something else. Which is it?" Heine asks.

The lady smiles back, almost serenely. "You can rest assured, this story is not relegated to the Mediterranean Sea, pilot," she replies. "I speak of the Archangel, its journey and trials, its defection in one history and its destruction in another. Listen, today, for I tell you what happened to the Archangel here, not what happened to the Archangel there," and her indication was to Captain Ramius, whom had joined the front rank of listeners along with Commander La Flaga.

"What do you mean by 'here' and 'there'? Need you be so cryptic?" Heine asks a little more forcefully.

"For such a skilled and bright ZAFT elite pilot, you lack the conception to step past the narrow history that you know, especially when failing to consider that when crossing parallel dimensions any quirk and alteration of history is possible," the tallest of her escort pilots answers a bit sharply to Heine. Again, Hikaru was rather shocked that the speaker in question was not human, he had to be Elven or something due to the pointy ears.

"If you will bear with me for a moment, pilot, 'here' and 'there' shall be adequately explained. We all know enough of the transit of the Archangel: Heliopolis, Artemis, Junius Seven, the Eighth Fleet, the deserts of North Africa, the Indian Ocean, Orb, hounded from one end of the Earth Sphere to the other, and yet you never gave up hope, you kept moving and fighting. When you left Orb, you knew that Athrun Zala was waiting for you, Kira Yamato, and you knew there would be one or more battles, did you not?"

"I did," Kira replies. Such seemed so far away as to have been nothing more than a dream in those years past, yet he knew better.

"And this is where the 'here' and 'there' diverge. I shall tell you a tale that could have been, Captain Ramius, were it not for the events just north of Orb that drew you into an elsewhere even we Crusaders tread lightly."

"Is that, er," Murrue's sentence trails off, unsure what she wanted to ask for the most part.

"Proper?" Murrue nods to the lady. "Were you to cross dimension with an aimpoint before your departure of Orb, parked it in the ocean and watched the events develop, you would learn the same thing and there are few beings in Existence who can stop you from doing it. There are even less beings in Existence who actively care if you learn what could be, and those who do are under severe threat of dismemberment, dishonor, exile, or even annihilation should they interfere. You are safe on that account, as am I," she declares calmly.

"That's good to know," Yzak grumbles. "Wouldn't do to have a God or something stomp on us for being in the way of their master plans or something."

"The paths of the two Archangels diverge on this linchpin point, the first battle above the Pacific. In your path, you were summoned to Cephiro to do, well, for lack of an artful phrase, what had to be done. The Archangel of here, however, had nothing to interrupt the battle. On an uncharted, unnamed atoll north and slightly east of Orb, Athrun's Gundam Aegis was downed, drained of power and only barely able to move, unable to defend itself meaningfully. In the chaos of the battle, the Duel and the Buster were defeated and deep-sixed, as was the Blitz, but the last was not completely downed. In a desperation move to save the Aegis, Nicol Amalfi charged the Strike down with only a lancer dart held in hand. Kira reacted, cutting down the Blitz with the anti-ship sword. Nicol Amalfi was killed in action that day."

Nicol said nothing, simply clenching his jaw hard enough to grate teeth; it was Fuu, Hikaru, Athrun, Yzak, Mu, and Kira that gasped at such a revelation, as horrid and unthinkable as it was now.

"Such is the breaks of war, the pendulum that swings one direction today will swing back the other way tomorrow. Days later, the Archangel would again be caught in battle, this time by an infuriated Zala Team who held nothing back. The Archangel was knocked down onto another island, the Duel defeated, the Buster captured intact, and a raging battle between the Aegis and Strike. And here the pendulum crests: in the final desperate attempt to stop Kira from killing any more of his friends, Athrun Zala strikes down the Skygrasper piloted by Tolle Koenig, entraps the Strike with his Aegis, sets a ten-second timer on the self-destruct and evacuates his Gundam. Athrun escaped only barely. Kira was rendered unconscious by the blast. In the ensuing minutes after the battle, the reserve oxygen supply in the cockpit of the Strike vents and ignites by a spark from the damaged consoles. Kira Yamato, killed in action, Tolle Koenig, killed in action."

Kira simply looked aside and away, as had Athrun, but there was no shortage of muttering from the other Archangel Team personnel present.

"With the Buster recovered and on board the ship, its pilot in medical treatment, the Archangel trudged onward after having technically failed its mission, still determined to arrive at JOSH-A. The reception was cold at best; a practical court-martial was held by Blue Cosmos sympathizers for the crew, and in the end the only thing that changes is Flay Allster, Natarle Badgiruel and Mu La Flaga are transferred off the ship."

"And then Operation Spitbreak," Heine grouses.

"Yes," the lady officer answers. "The battle for Alaska. A setup; a bloody trap set by a complicit Earth Alliance on the cadging of the psychopath Le Creuset," she says calmly, which engendered jeers from the ZAFT personnel, some of whom considered him something of a hero even still. "Creuset set the invasion up for failure, by feeding the Earth Alliance details on the attack. When the main gate of the base was sundered and ZAFT units poured into the facility, JOSH-A was destroyed by a massive Cyclops Array Bomb set under the base. The Earth Alliance made it more inviting by stationing the Archangel as guard to the main gate. I doubt it takes much imagination to understand what happened next."

"Set up...all the garrison, killed off like that," Mu mutters. "The Archangel?"

A shake of her head was enough of an answer. "The Archangel was downed by a stray GINN who braved the Igelstellung batteries, closed on the ship, and sprayed the bridge down with 76mm machine gun rounds from point-blank range. What was not destroyed of the ship in that attack, and subsequent passes by heavier-armed units, was cooked off by the Cyclops. There were no survivors."

"And..." Yzak begins.

"You were included in that as well, Yzak Joule. After JOSH-A, the only surviving member of the Zala Team was Athrun himself, and only Badgiruel and Allster from the Archangel, as La Flaga was also caught in the blast."

"Sunday, bloody Sunday," Tolle says reverently though in a disgusted tone.

"More along the lines of 'The Price of a Mile' in my estimation," 'Miko' says. "And, it gets worse."

"How is that—oh, wait, I know, sorry," Yzak begins heatedly, then rescinds his own complaining.

"Much happened between the fall of JOSH-A and the blatant end, though. Panama, days later, ZAFT exacted their vengeance and caused a lot of casualties as well as destroyed the mass driver there. The Earth Alliance countered by assaulting Orb to take their mass driver, but did not succeed in taking it intact. A renewed offensive in Victoria succeeded in netting them a way to space, and from there things spiraled downhill. Ayers Rock in Australia was followed closely by Operation Elvis in space, where again Creuset knifed his own side in the kidney, this time by giving the Earth Alliance a device to counter the neutron jammer. Boaz was slagged down by a nuclear assault, followed by a direct attack on the PLANTs. ZAFT then retaliated with their own superweapon, the gamma-ray particle cannon called GENESIS. First one attack against the Earth Alliance fleet. A second, more powerful blast was fired against the Ptolemaeus Lunar Base, wiping it out and making the initial crater half deeper. At that time, more than half the PLANTs had been destroyed by nuclear attack, and Chairman Zala determined there was no recourse left but to turn Genesis on the planet below us."

"Good God," Yzak swears.

"A shot at full power centered on Japan instantly annihilated over 80 percent of the Eurasian Federation as well as a sizable portion of Oceania—including the Carpentaria base. No man alive believes Patrick Zala was a sane man when he dropped the hammer the last time. The spall kicked up has caused a low-grade nuclear winter effect, planet-wide the temperatures are up a degree on average just from the superheating caused by the GENESIS weapon. Worst of all, the radiation that had been injected into the ecosystem has caused widespread casualties. What few who survived that merciless ZAFT genocide strike are now being bombed by the leftovers of colonies dropping upon them from orbit. It is my estimate that by mid-day tomorrow there will be no meaningful life left on Terra."

"Nobody wins if everyone loses," Mu replies dejectedly.

"And...did Lacus Clyne make it out alive?" Athrun asks.

"No. The warship Eternal was sunk by the Providence, including several direct hits to the bridge. Nobody survived from that ship."

"Why tell us this? It's not like we can do anything about it now, we're already here," Tolle asks fairly.

"True," the lady replies. "I don't expect you to do anything about it, nor do I expect you to think you are required to do anything about it—certainly not by my request, much less by the request of anyone else. If there is any lesson here, it is that both sides are horrid, yet when the nukes fly, options are very limited at best, if any at all."

"So, you say that the best course would be to prevent it from going that far?" Nicol asks in reply.

"Again, that is your option. If, on your way home, you can stomach avoiding involvement, nobody would fault you in the slightest—such matters are literally a case of 'one mistake and you are dead'. Few Crusaders will try to prevent a rapidly-accelerating nuclear war from going critical mass, even less would expect you to try. Such choice is yours and yours alone. If, however, you do want to get involved, I wholeheartedly suggest you do so before the nuclear weapons fly. With your mobile compliment and literally unmatched ship, stopping a small unit of stripped-down nuclear-missile-carrying Moebius units should be of little difficulty to you. We tried. By the Gods we tried, but six units operating all over the battlefield are not enough to stop these things, and the way the Crusaders are stretched thin or worse, I was doing good to get the help of these support infantry in clearing and evacuating the last remaining bastions of humanity—and that completely without transport or support."

"Okay, one thing that keeps bothering me," Murrue begins, then hesitates a moment. "You keep implying we will be moving on, no questions asked. You do know that the first chance we had to control where we go in crossing dimensions was in taking several years to modify a teleporter to cross dimensions, right?"

"This I know," the lady declares. "The Strike Freedom Mass-Pro L-type you salvaged in the debris belt was the last part of my escort team, and, unfortunately, a rookie at that. Generally, when I tell people to get out of the way of the ZAFT superweapon, I say so for a reason, yet Tinae did not listen. A little late now to fix that problem, but it appears that the final protective measures on the EVPS-equipped Gundams work as advertised. She never got clear of the beam that struck Japan, but the Gundam was able to save itself at the cost of the pilot. I don't think I fully understand how it works, and I won't say to avoid misquoting, but it should be in the manual."

"Wait, wait a second, the machine saved itself over the life of the pilot?" Kira asks. "Why?"

The fact that Kira even asked caused a rather pained expression on all the present Crusaders' faces. After a quick sigh, she answered: "I won't go into the detail work, but for every machine we put in the field, we have nine pilot candidates waiting for a machine of their own. We manufacture our own, our patrons supply a huge amount of machines, yet it is not enough. We need all the machines we can get, and as much as I don't want to sound cold about it, the pilot can be replaced easier than the Gundam. It is the cold reality we Crusaders live, fighting a war nobody wants that few acknowledge even exists, underpaid, poorly equipped, and living day by day for the most part."

"Oh," that made a creepy sort of sense to Kira in that case.

"Back to the Captain's question, there was a box being carried by the Strike Freedom MP. Fairly nondescript except for two hemispherical external plates on it. Nothing big about it, that box is just a Gate Generator in a small box, used by small teams like mine to cross dimensions or move reinforcements around or something similar. Normally, I would ask for it back, but in the end I need it less than you do. Technically, I am required to ask for the Gundam itself back, but I think I can leave it in your hands and not get in too serious of trouble. Still, you feed that box enough power, say connect it to a Warship's engine, and the jump coils can move a Warship through dimensions, space and time. Follow?"

"Ah," Murrue acknowledges, realizing now she had in her possession a real way home, one that she could carry with and hopefully use as many times as needed to make sure she got there. "How do we thank you for such a gift? If you're that hard-up for equipment, isn't someone going to ask?"

"You don't, in point of fact we never really had this segment of the conversation. Officially, I will list it as being unaware you had possession of the Strike Freedom and its carried Gate Generator. I will also list the Strike Freedom as MIA, presumed destroyed in the blast from GENESIS. That defensive measure only works properly, say, two times of five? If you feel you must repay us somehow, please give the pilot a proper ZAFT burial in space; honor from her home nation in the end. The rest is in your hands."

"Unreal. Why are you doing this?" Heine asks.

"Because I face the odds, pilot, day, after day, after day. They have faced worse odds. The Archangel Team challenged a near-God on her own terms and won. They stifled the Jade Falcon Clan on Dustball, Romulus, Twycross, and even tore a chunk out of Clan Wolf's navy, either Clan of which could turn the entire Earth sphere at the height of this war to mulch. They crippled an Empire five times larger than themselves and their allies combined, on long-ball insane odds hinging on nothing more than the help of beings believed wanting to destroy all humanity. And let us not forget the swath they burned through some of ZAFT's best, all in attempt to simply get home. They have done far more in their short time together than should be rightfully asked of anyone in Existence. I would prefer to help others caught in same, or worse, situations than I whenever possible."

She centers back on the Archangel side of the people listening. "You have my thanks, Captain, for the assistance in rescuing the last few survivors. I only wish I could offer you a more assured and immediate way home, but..."

"It is more than I ever expected," Captain Ramius replies in kind.

"Do what you must. Safe journey home, Captain." her formal bow was reciprocated by the Archangel team to a man, and the crowd began moving toward their machines to leave the colony.

Except one. "Something wrong, Pilot Joule?" the lady asks.

"There are a couple things that just don't make sense to me," he begins.

"Ask, please," she replies.

"If you've never met us, how can you know what happened to us?"

"Your history follows you, much like your shadow; one of my enchanted relics can interpret that history, given enough time," she replies warily. "Next question?" she asks after Yzak hesitates.

"Why are you loading us that equipment, really? Especially when it will probably get you a court-martial?"

"Old habit of mine," she replies. "Bad old habit. Just can't stand to see good people being screwed by circumstance. So, whenever I get the chance, I fix it."

"Oh," Yzak replies. He figured that not all kindness was dead, but finding it was going to be in short supply.

...A thought she picked up on. "No, not all kindness is dead, just suppressed in the collectivist beliefs of progressive hate-mongers who cannot tolerate seeing people standing on their own and accomplishing more than said group. You will find kindness wherever you go, just in small amounts few and far between, drowned in seas of apathy and hatred. You have already seen this, the Jade Falcons in particular are guilty of doing the drowning."

"Wow, that was the last thing I expected to hear from anyone," Yzak says.

"As to court-martials for 'losing' 'precious equipment', rest easy. The amount of people who would challenge the judgment of a Transcendent Gundam and its pilot on these matters are practically zero. Others?" she asks, referring to questions.

"One last. Do you know where I messed up when setting up the jump from our last location to here?"

"Not you, Yzak. You had everything correct to the letter. Something else interfered with the transit. I do not know what, but I keep sensing a presence about your history, beings that are there and are not there, distorting time and space in ways hard to define. Hopefully, this Gate Pack can bypass that and get you home."

"Thank you. I'm not sure whose side you're on, or sure if I want to know, but the gesture of honor is welcomed." Figuring some gesture of respect was in order, he gave her the traditional ZAFT salute, which she returned in proper fashion. "You...know ZAFT's salute?"

"I work with the ZAFT from my base dimension frequently. Best you get moving before your comrades leave you behind, pilot," she replies.

Yzak spared her machine one last glance. Easily fifty meters tall, he estimated, maybe pushing sixty. Extremely large-framed, as a bodybuilder would be to a more leaned runner like the Gundams built by the Earth Alliance; something in the way it was structured made him feel as if the machine was built for hand-to-hand combat without weapons. If so, the large yellow studs on its upper body seemed more like something of beam weapons, counter to that engineered purpose, though the deep blue body sported more conventional weapons clusters like rotary machine cannons and missile silos. The shield it carried was obviously similar to the Trikeros shield of the Blitz, though the Lancer Darts it carried were not to scale for something three, four times the size of the Blitz—and far more numerous. All in all, Yzak knew just by quick appraisal that such a machine could turn even the Archangel from Hell into a smoking hulk easily. Transcendent Gundam, he thinks the name through, wondering why a machine would be considered 'transcendent' and how it would be beyond the normal definition of Existence, which is what the name implied.

Without further word, he was on the way.

-x-x-x-

(9 June CE 71, 1100 hours)

(Archangel, Hangar Area)

"Murdoch, can I have a moment?" Murrue begins.

"Sure, what's goin' on?" he asks in reply.

"We encountered the owner of the Strike Freedom. Two things: one, we give the pilot a ZAFT burial in space. Two, the box that it came in with, where did you put it?"

"One, can do, I think Athrun was planning on that anyway. Two, I moved it to my workshop, why?" he asks almost defensively.

"Well, supposedly that box is our ticket out of here and really home," Murrue replies.

"Whoa," Murdoch replies. "I think we need to get on it, then," he says, gesturing to the Captain to follow. As they approached the cargo bay Murdoch had converted to a workshop, Gomer was coming out of the room. "Hey, Gomer, how goes?"

"Weird crap, boss-man. That box you had me 'n' the boys drop in there, well, it looks like the ship ate half of it and fused it into the wall or something," he says. "Overnight, at that," he adds before wandering toward the Aegis with a repaired wiring harness.

"Oh, man," Murdoch groans before thumbing himself into the room. "Oh, yeah, that's what it looks like it did, even added a device status panel to the wall next to it," Murdoch weaves his way between the various benches and up to the half-of-a-box in the wall. "I'm guessing the rest of the box is on the other side of this bulkhead, which is...another cargo area, I think."

"Yeah, I think so," Murrue replies. "Panel says 'integrating control systems at 88 percent, rebuilding jump destination array at 64 percent, charging system at 100 percent, synchronizing to ship at 19 percent, synchronizing to environment at 41 percent. Jump capable, not advised at this time,' " she reads off the panel.

"Whoa, intelligent system," Murdoch says, looking over her shoulder at the panel in question. "Wonder what other tricks it has up its sleeve."

"Or the Strike Freedom, for that matter," Murrue replies. "Okay, we know its trying to work, so we'll let it do its thing. So, what else is going on down here?"

"C'mon, speaking of our new Gundam, I have something to show you that you'll probably like." Murdoch lets her out first, then follows her toward the Strike Freedom. "Huh? What the hell is this?"

"What is what?" Murrue asks, then realizes what he was looking at. "Whoa, what is that?"

"Looks like our good friend Strike Freedom is up to something," Murdoch says. "Look here—this is part of the armor plate off the left foot, a hexagonal section," Murdoch says, pointing to a 6-centimeter hex cavity on the outside of the armor plate of the nearby foot.

"What are these? It looks like some living gray goo of some kind." In point of fact, the hex plate was 'crawling' its way up the cascade of 'goo' to the top of the object—pile—whatever. When it got there, the layer of 'goo' began receding into the plate, as it expanded bit by bit until all that was left was a small pile underneath it, a process that took five minutes, with Murrue and Murdoch watching in dread fascination the whole time. With the 'plate' having taken in the whole mess of 'goo', it began sliding away from the object underneath it—what appeared to be a large stack of books. After landing on the ground, it began inching its way back to the Gundam in question.

"Reading material," Murdoch says, picking the books up. "Whoa, these are manuals about the Strike Freedom, instruction manuals, IPCs (6), schematics, FIMs (7), the works."

"Something's up, unless Kira asked for that," Murrue says, before pulling a radio. "Conn, Captain, please page Kira to he hangar."

"Roger that," Mu declares. Three seconds later: "Kira Yamato, please report to the hangar at first available," comes across the intercom.

"What was that, Murdoch?" Murrue asks, waving to the pile of books.

"It was a pile of junk leftover from the 105 Dagger rebuild, nothing spectacular. Burned-out wires and harnesses."

"I wonder what else we'd get if we piled junk in front of this thing," Murrue asks.

"Oh, did it finish up my books?" Kira asks.

"You knew about this?" Murrue asks.

"Yeah, it's a chatty thing," Kira says, looking up and down the Gundam in question. "One of the first things it told me was the material mass of junk we just accumulate can be recycled by this thing's 'internal repair systems' to make other materials and objects."

"We noticed," Murdoch says. "I take it the IPC, FIM and AMM are for the mechanics?"

"Yeah, the rest of the stuff is supplemental stuff for me to get used to the things this thing can do. And it's got a lot more to it than it says on the packaging, trust me," Kira declares.

"Makes me wonder exactly what we just got for the price of salvage time," Murrue comments drolly.

"A Swiss Army knife in a Gundam package," Kira says as he begins absentmindedly walking toward the lift up to the cockpit platform while reading through a manual.

"How much you know about the Gate Drive?" Murrue asks his still-walking-away form.

"Not enough, I'm reading up on it right now," Kira answers before activating the lift up to his cockpit.

"How much can this thing rebuild?" she asks, indicating the plate on the foot of the machine.

"Supposedly, a ton of material every 100 hours or so," Kira replies, still reading one of the books.

"Get him started on something, there is no distracting him," Murrue declares. "Him and Athrun."

"It could be worse," Murdoch says.

"How?" Murrue asks.

"At least they're on our side."

"Oh shit, don't say that, Murdoch, you'll jinx it and then we're really crap out of luck." She was silent for a moment. "I wonder what else he can make with that new-found capability of his..."

-x-x-x-

(9 June CE 71, 1900 hours)

(Archangel, Hot Springs)

"Hey, Mir," Umi greets the Combat Controller as said officer pushes through the bead curtains into the springs.

"Hey," she replies, nodding to the Magic Knights in the springs.

"How are you feeling, Miss Miriallia?" Fuu asks after she settles into the springs.

"Not good, not bad," Mir replies after a few moments. "I was too far away from the colony most of the time to hear the last...the last of their deaths. Thank whatever God is out there the Crusaders were mostly done cleaning up by the time we arrived."

"From what I heard, we missed most of the action in Januarius 10, the one remaining survivor over that way. They apparently showed up right in the middle of an Earth Alliance Battalion that was trying to, erm, 'purify' the colony was how he said it." Hikaru shudders at the thought of what that entailed, given the relatively 'low-intensity' operations they came across in Maius.

"This is what...the war at your home entailed?" Umi asks.

"It wasn't this bad, but like the Transcendent Pilot said, the only thing standing between life and widespread death in the end would be the Archangel and a handful of others."

"I'll never doubt other people's problems again, after having stepped over more dead bodies than a national fencing match would have in spectators and competitors," Umi declares sadly, having come to the realization whereby her apathy was not helping other people—it was allowing less than honorable people kill innocents wholesale.

"The problem isn't with you, Umi, it's with others," Miriallia says calmly. "If everyone got along, this would never have happened. Blue Cosmos is the worst-ever case of green with envy: they hate Coordinators, hate what they can be, and then they decide that other people—Coordinators—don't have the right to live because of that. I just don't know how to stop it."

"I don't think it can be stopped," Hikaru says. "Not without killing them all and counting the bodies, right?" Everything she was hearing on the subject of 'killing them all' (mostly from the mechanics, but also from Yzak) mentioned 'counting the bodies' was a critical step in the process: involved parties wanted to make sure there were no leftovers, after all.

"The longer we let you stay with the mechanics, the more you start acting like them," Umi gripes.

"It could be worse," Miriallia declares.

"What?" she asks in clear shock.

"At least she isn't saying the F-bomb without reserve, like some of the mechanics," a revelation that drew groans from everyone in the room.

"No, that's just pointless," Hikaru counters. "Save that for really bad things, I think."

"How about never?" Umi asks in response.

"Well, maybe, I dunno," Hikaru replies, deliberately hedging her position on the subject. She was learning such concepts as 'flexibility of invective' and 'multi-use words' and 'triple entendre' very well, as a lot of the mechanics would admit. Such was practically a requirement of being a technician.

"Anyway, what's next for the ship?" Fuu asks of Miriallia as some sounds out in the robing room indicate someone was about to join them.

"Next? We're heading to the moon, some of the bases that hopefully were not wiped out, like Arzachel and Lorentz—maybe there are survivors there we can recover—and the Copernicus City, which we hope remained neutral." There wasn't much hope in her voice, and everyone else caught on.

"Is this—is this rape and pillage really what people want?" Fuu asks after a moment of silence.

"I think the few who survive these things are just driven to it, except the really good ones. They knew the end was here for them, they wouldn't live long, so they started taking it out on others; doing what they could to feel good and forget the problems until it finally took them. The Crusaders put a hole in most of that, though. People thought it was the end, and here come the white knights to break up the end-of-the-world party."

"And those guys don't take 'F-O' for an answer," Hikaru says. "I'd hate to have to face them, but I just wish I knew what they were up to, really."

"Yeah, I don't think they told us the whole story," Fuu grumps.

"They didn't tell us more than a third of it. Yzak says he heard some pretty rough stuff from them, overheard it, about a massive 'Darkness' offensive tying them up or something."

"Sounds conspiratorial," Miriallia says.

"Probably doesn't have anything to do with us, and if that's the case, I don't want to know," Terra says as she pushes through the bead curtain. "One thing I learned the hard way after the fall of the Empire, borrowing trouble hurts if you aren't good enough to do it right the first time," to which any of the room occupants did not begrudge her the lesson. Her upper left arm still bore the scar of the flame saber that was used against her, and though she won, she spent a week in the hospital, on the edge the whole time after taking on those hoods. On the other hand, the Commando Team had 'disposed' of their criminal order in one bloody night, so they were not a threat to anyone any more. It also went a long way to cementing the Archangel Team's position as the baddest soldiers on planet, especially as far as the criminal elements were concerned.

"True, but..." Umi begins, then falters as Terra slips into the springs and settles in. She was the oldest in the room by a margin, but being 21 did not make her as old as the Captain or Commander Badgiruel had been.

"We're not super-soldiers," Miriallia confirms. "We have severe limits, and once you hit that limit, people start dying. And I hear every one of them," the last she barely muttered, but everyone still heard it.

"I keep forgetting that, sorry," Umi apologizes.

"While we're on the subject of hearing thoughts, erm, well, er..." Hikaru falters, clearly embarrassed by whatever she couldn't spit out.

"Let me guess," Miriallia begins; "Tolle and myself?"

"Uh, yeah," Hikaru replies.

"Yeah," Miriallia replies. "I've heard more than a few times what happens. It's just, well, addictive."

"Addictive," Umi echoes, slightly disgusted at such a thought.

"Yeah, and it's great relaxation, and Tolle likes it, and—why do you all look like you're about to skewer me?"

"It's incredibly difficult to sleep while feeling you and Tolle, erm, sleeping together," Fuu notes artfully, but without any trace of anger on the matter.

"But, well, you're probably under the most stress of us all, and as you just said you get to hear it when the worst happens, so some of us can look the other way." That Hikaru said it was no surprise to anyone when someone decided to derail the frustration-venting.

"And you, Umi?" Miriallia asks calmly. She knew this was coming, just not how bad.

"I guess I don't care, but I would like to ask you to tone it back a little, like once or twice a week max, please?"

Miriallia looks to Terra. "No comment, it doesn't affect me," she replies, and for good measure: her quarters were in with the enlisted, and had nothing to do with the officers and pilots.

"It's times like these I'm glad this isn't a normal hot spring," Umi says, reaching behind her to the bulkhead between the male side and the female side.

"The Captain specifically ordered the engineers that put the springs in to do a ten-centimeter armor plate between the two sides. They could only do a four-centimeter hull plate, but it still works. No 'modesty screens' here so peeping toms can get in," Miriallia says with a clear dose of approval. Everyone present knew that bamboo fences, artsy screens, duck blinds, or similar were not an effective way to keep peepers out, but four centimeters of battleship-grade armor would.

"So, who's over there, and are they trying to listen?" Umi asks after a moment.

"Hold on," Miriallia concentrates. "Oh, just Tolle."

"Just Tolle?" Umi asks in response.

"Oh, give me a break, Umi," Mir gripes. "What do you expect me to say?"

"C'mon, dish some details," Umi prods her ribcage with a finger.

"That's wrong!" Hikaru bemoans. "If she don't want to, she don't have to! Leave off, Umi," she concludes.

"No fun," Umi replies. "C'mon, Mir..."

"What about you?" Hikaru asks fairly. "Have you decided if you want to kill or date Yzak yet?"

Fuu and Terra start giggling at Umi's instant furious blushing, though it was Miriallia's comment that got the whole sauna laughing: "The truth hurts, doesn't it?"

"I surrender," Umi declares. "I'm still undecided, but leaning more toward kill him by strangulation, especially with his renewed foul mouth. You?"

"We haven't decided what we want to do yet," Miriallia replies. "We want to go home, any way you cut it, but the greatest problem is between then and now. Nobody knows what tomorrow holds. Nobody knows if we'll even survive tomorrow. It wouldn't be fair to him to ask him to do anything serious, but..."

Her comment brought a creepy silence to the room. "She's right. She's incredibly right," Fuu acknowledges.

"Then we have to make our own future," Umi says determinedly. "Regardless how long it takes us to get home."

-x-x-x-

(9 June CE 71, 1900 hours)

(Copernicus City)

"Is it legal to call this a city?" Tolle asks sardonically. The why was fairly obvious: through the dome of Copernicus, they could see the battle damage of fighting Mobile Suits.

"In about the same way it is legal to call a tortoise a 'speed demon'," Yzak replies sharply.

"I don't trust this place," Mu says. He was out and about on the ground with the Timber Wolf, which handled surprisingly well on the lunar surface. "We enter and clear in MS, and if it isn't too bad we go it on foot from there."

"It will be urban terrain. Make sure you don't get flanked, or this could end very very badly," Athrun reminds them. "Aegis has point."

"Roger, Aegis point, Timber Wolf, Duel, Strike Freedom. Buster at the back," Mu orders immediately.

"Roger that," Tolle replies stoically; he was getting used to be assigned the rearguard detail.

The lift into town was designed for fairly large freight shuttles, meaning the Mobile Suits easily fit on it without issue. Headed down below, the customary four locks were passed into the lower reaches of the starport for Copernicus. Once inside the starport cargo terminals, they were technically inside the city with only token barriers between—the kind that Worker MS opened without reserve.

The facility opened up to Battery Park—a landmark and monument to the city and to one of the first stable, permanent colonies of man beyond the atmosphere of Earth. Immediately, the Gundams spread out so that one well-placed shot could not kill them all, and began looking around. "Unsurprising. Mostly dead," Yzak quips.

"Be that as it may, the Captain wants us to look around. Shall we get to it?"

"Warhawk is following your lead," Nicol replies. The Warhawk was actually usable on the Moon, but not in the zero-G environs of space.

"Strike Freedom moving out with Aegis; I have point."

"Duel and 105 Dagger moving to right flank; Duel has point," Yzak says.

"Buster moving with Omnimechs; I have the rearguard."

Yzak moved five blocks south of the entry point, then turned west and headed toward the center of town where the amphitheater and the government buildings were. It was illogical that people would still look to government for the answers when it was government that caused this shit to happen, but he knew people would be congregating in that area. If there was anyone left, that is.

"Strike Freedom reporting. I'm not finding any signs of life in the colony."

"Timber Wolf acknowledges. I'm not finding anything, either."

"105 reporting, clear scope. Nothing in here, I think, except shadows and dust."

"Creepy, how the dead pile like that," Tolle bemoans the fate of a bunch of civilians ranging from age four to well past sixty.

"It always happens like this," Athrun declares. "All this, predicted by minds both more sane and darker than we ever will be, and we fulfill their prophecies with our insane, depraved nature. We built our own destruction, and we have nobody to blame but our own arrogant, megalomaniac selves."

"How do you figure?" Colonel Morgan asks after a moment.

"We build ways to kill each other wholesale, Mobile Suits, Omnimechs, nuclear and chemical weapons, and in such there is nobody but ourselves to blame for our own failings. We could stand around and bemoan the tragedy of their deaths, yet it would not change the fact that we are our own Grim Reapers here. If there is a Hell in Existence, without a doubt we are the gatekeepers, the reapers, and the primary residents thereof."

Morgan Chevalier chuckles grimly after a moment of silence. "You're right. Sadly, you are right. Are you sure you're only 18? You hold wisdom that most people I've ever known would never fully understand."

"Last I added it up, yeah, only eighteen," Athrun replies.

"So now what?" Mu asks. "It's a little late to abolish human nature."

"Is it?" Athrun asks. "Is this really what we are?"

"At our core, yes," Kira replies. "By nature's programming, humans are selfish, violent, desperate and depraved beings. It takes a lot to overcome those tendencies, and this just proves we're only one catastrophe from reverting back to our intended programming."

"Then what's the fix?" Nicol asks.

"Simple. Kill the people that generate catastrophes like GENESIS and the nuclear assault on colonies. Or anything else that could wipe out whole planets of people." If Yzak could sound any colder, how was lost on the rest of the group.

"Oh good God," Mu groans.

"What?" Kira asks.

"I'm at the government buildings, people. It does not look like there is anything left here."

"Oh," Nicol moans. "Yzak, we need you up here."

Yzak's Gundam enters the area from farther south, yet he could still see the same thing. "This...this is fucking sick."

"Killed them all and violated the bodies. You are vindicated, Athrun," Mad Dog Morgan says.

In the small park in front of the capital building, hundreds of people had been lined up in rows, stripped naked, and shot fatally, their bodies left in grotesque positions. There were the odd bodies here and there that were out of alignment, though the fact that they were still clothed told enough tale that they were the executioners. The deceased were strung up and down the stairs into the capital, filled the roads nearby, even parts of bodies could be seen from the ground.

"I don't know if there are any Gods in existence any more; after seeing this." Yzak had his head in his hands, staring at the floor of his Gundam as his heart sundered itself from pure trauma of seeing people stripped and executed so callously. "If there is one, please please protect these deceased, see to their souls in safety and life anew. Please, if there is any God out there, just...just help them as you can."

It is done, Soldier. It is done. The mental voice was non-directional, coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once. It sounded nothing like the three Rune Gods or anyone that Yzak had ever heard before.

"Did...you just hear that?" Kira asks.

"Yeah," Mu says. "There is nothing for us here. Return to the ship."

-x-x-x-

(12 June CE 71, 1000 hours)

(Maius 2 PLANT)

(62nd street and Harmony Court, Harmony Memorial Park)

In the distance, seen barely through the shell of the colony, a flare of green heralded the departure of the Archangel from this dimension, headed only on its own course. Ever would it move toward whatever fate it had been handed at the conception of its history, and for the Executor standing at the memorial, he knew not that fate. He only knew what his subordinate had told him: that fate would be brutal, uncompromising, bloody, lengthy, and dire, yet far from impossible. Coming from said subordinate, that was a better proclamation than most, who were just plain doomed.

Nobody remained. The last of the civilians were aboard the converted transport colony, headed to Mars to build a new life way from the cursed lands of Terra. The Crusaders had returned to their home, to their war with the 'Darkness' that could never be defined, nor defeated. As the Transcendant Gundam pilot had said, all meaningful life had indeed been squelched on the planet below. Nobody remained in the earth sphere, except one trans-dimensional soldier.

The invisibility faded, revealing the heavy armor of a dedicated close-quarters fighter. The pure white coloring schema was itself almost offensive in the bleak remnants of a shattered civilization, yet he did not flinch nor change its color. Instead, he removed his helmet, to see the memorial the Crusaders had fashioned for the deceased and the damned.

The memorial itself was a large onyx slab, with a simple turn of phrase to commemorate those who died here. "Herein lies the damned of the hatred of others, slaughtered senselessly for purity unattainable, left to rot for all eternity in the sins of the arrogant few. June, year 71 of the Cosmic Era." And on a line below, he read further: "May Existence keep and protect their souls forever." Below that were engraved two symbols: one, the four-point dagger-star of the Crusaders; the other, the symbol of the Archangel Team, the silhouette of the Archangel viewed from above, with the six feathered wings of an Archangel surrounding it.

The Executor held his hand to his face, to observe a moment of respectful silence for the deceased.

"I am no God. Never have I encountered a Christian, Muslim, or Hebrew God, and I have tried to find them like no other being in Existence. I have killed Gods, I have become more than the Gods to prevent their mistakes forevermore, in deference to the masses they would crush on a whim. Yet fool am I to believe that humanity can itself survive its own failings every time. The best I can do is to redirect the souls of the deceased to another dimension, another life where they would never experience this horror again."

The Executor reaches out to the monument, but stops mere centimeters from touching it, fighting back his own sobs at having witnessed what he had seen, what he had done, and especially the accumulated deaths of this one dimension. After a few moments his helmet clatters to the ground; he gave up fighting it and collapsed to his knees, never touching the monument. "DAMN IT! DAMN IT ALL!" He shouts at the ground below his arms and face. "Nothing changes. Nothing. Ever. Changes. If not the same place, the same result. And the innocent are always damned by it all."

It was an hour before he moved any more than his sobbing, the emotions of the billions of dead overcoming what defense and hardening he had from hundreds of thousands of years of being a soldier like no other. Billions killed, without any real cause except two groups hated each other. Some days the matter really came out to be just that simple but no less bloody.

Eventually, he did fight it off, and stood up. "It is done, Yzak Joule. It is done. And, someday long from now, someday we shall all congregate on the fields of Elysium as is fated us all, and we shall never have to see, know, or do these kinds of horrors unto ourselves ever again. Some day, Yzak. Some day long from now."

With that final sentiment, the Will Transendent Executor put on his helmet, locked the seals down, and disappeared into another dimension and yet another battlefield. Never did his duty change, just the location.

---

Author's Chapter Afterword:

This is itself the sum of my theories on the end of the world, scaled down by about 70 percent. The real deal would look a lot bloodier, but thankfully we won't have to see that in our lifetimes...hopefully. I tried to present this section is as realistic and level a fashion as I could, but a lot of it turned out rougher than I intended. This was the first 'linchpin' chapter I had planned out for the story, and there will be several more all the way up to the end of the story. It continues, long and hard does it continue, and you can expect that before the shooting is over everyone will bleed long and hard for it.

That being said, the Archangel has new people and new equipment along for the ride. A good thing, as the Archangel can't seem to keep its hands on pilots from day to day. The Strike Freedom, though, it's got some issues that will come up in chapters to come, it will turn out to be quite the mixed blessing. Hey, I don't give anyone anything for free, and that includes the Jump Gate system. Oh yes, expect more problems from there.

The Crusaders, well, they're hard to explain. I think I'll save that for their other appearances in other stories; any of you whom are native readers of some of the remainder of my stories might see some similarities, but I advise you not to read too far into those quirks. There are reasons I do everything, but keep in mind that everything has deeper significance unless you can demonstrate otherwise. I'll leave it at that for now. Any of you who are native Gundam fans can probably guess what the base unit of the Transcendent Gundam was long ago, though :P

The last part, the Executor visiting the memorial of a dead world, and the reference made by the Transcendent Gundam pilot, leaves you to wonder who or what is interfering with the Archangel moving around, is it not?

I leave the answers of these mysteries to you.

Next up: The Archangel goes from one lost war to a possibly losing one, but one no less violent than any other they have been subject to. Who will God allow to survive?

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Review Replies:

Oh, helluva reviews for this one, helluva reviews! Much thank you to all whom have dropped me a line!

FraserMage: I hope this clears up the confusion.

Deathzealot: So close, but not quite there. Excellent guess, however. As to Natarle, she will be up next in a side story of the AAA, but that is a bit of a ways off. Her replacement, though, I have not settled on one.

Strata-Assassin: Continuing from your Beta notes, I'm going to leave whether or not Heine stayed with the Archangel Team as a guess for you for now. Sorry for the drama, but it is standard policy here. One thing I would like to mention, though: as I left them above, the use of God, Gods, and similar is considered a proper name (especially in the case of the non-pluralized God), and warrants the capitalization. Especially given the backstory of the Executors, it is definitely a proper name, though often as derogatory as the F-bomb.

One-Village-Idiot: How badly screwed? NEVER ask me that, comrade, I will find ways to make it worse when challenged like that :) Hope this one comes up to your expectations.

Barricade: Oh, my, where to start? Well, let me begin by saying that the Kira 'Jesus' Yamato that we all know from late GS and GSD died aborning, killed off in the skies above Cephiro when he couldn't find a way to settle Princess Emeraude without killing her. He may have the Strike Freedom now, but he is not doing a stand-in for Jesus. And you can rest assured that turn of phrase has more than one meaning. As to the Queen that had been petrified, this goes back to my backstory and continuing theories on magic. Petrification like that can be undone, but there is a timeframe based on how long the subject has been stoned and how powerful the caster is; exceed that timeframe, and it will not work. Given the length of time, not even the Master Executor / Will Transcendant that showed up in this chapter could have undone her petrification, and that Executor well exceeds the power of all three Rune Gods combined.

Akasui: Okay, you're the third that has assumed this was the beginning of GSD. Seriously, am I the only one that thinks of such problems as the Earth Alliance unchecked being able to convert more colonies into dangerous falling objects? Regardless, Terra will find herself a place in the story in a very unusual niche in time to come. Actually, the Archangel physically is large enough to put a jump core in it, in terms of sheer mass, but the ship was never engineered for one. Jumpships can be below 200,000 tons, the Archangel as of right now is 380,000 tons, and the largest Jumpships possible are 1,000,000 tons. It just was never engineered for the job you ask of it :P The Rune Gods normally hang around in their own little corner of Existence (nobody knows where) until needed by events surrounding the Magic Knights.

EtienneOfTheWestWind: I think it is a combination of both your stated tacks that really applies. Not much in the way of picked up extras, but then again most of the notables died and the bulk of the remaining are on their way to Mars right now (putting that in writing just felt weird). Details left to your imagination at the moment.

Knives91: I just didn't properly illustrate that point in prose, my bad. It still happened, for what it was worth.

Nim Maj: That idea is just mind-blowing. 2 Cagalli in the same location....erm, holy shit. The raw tomboy power of such an ocurrence might cause the whole of Existence to implode, which would not do well for my other stories...

al103: You are the only one who guessed the happenstance of this chapter right off the bat. I can only hope the prose matches your expectations.

Knightwolf1875: Now you're asking for flat freaking crazy with Negima or Nanoha. I like that. Still and all, I must say that all possibles are considered classified TS/SAR, because I like dragging out the suspense and indetermination on where they'll end up screwed next. The dice are my friend and all that...

THANK YOU ALL for the assistance and the reviews. Every review is another drop of Unleaded Nightmare Fuel for the Archangel, even if they don't know what's going to happen to them in the long run. Keep 'em coming!

---

The Gripe Sheet:

Hey, this is what the Beta work is for :P Sorry for the cliffhanger at the end of the last chapter, I couldn't help but do it that way.

Once more, props due to Strata-Assassin for doing the beta work and cleaning up my precarious butchering of the English language.

---

Footnotes:

(1): Strings in this case refers to blocks or lines of characters.

(2): G-2 refers to Military Intelligence, but is also usable as slang for stories, trivia, or quick facts.

(3): Flat chested.

(4): Transient in this use refers to a wanderer or traveler.

(5): Stacked means to line up behind or nearby an object, usually in preparation to enter a door, but also to cover behind an object so you don't get your arse shot off.

(6): Illustrated Parts Catalog, used (normally) for ordering replacement parts, but since the machine is cut off from Crusader supply lines it will just have to serve as schematics for the parts.

(7): Fault Isolation Manual, used primarily to track down pesky bugs that seem to keep cropping up with no obvious cause or reason to crop up.