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...

44. Transportation Complications

(Archangel's Amazing Adventures, Section 6, Chapter 1: Transportation Complications)

"Did we come at a bad time?" Commander La Flaga asked as every eye on the bridge tracked the moving torpedo toward the immobile ship.

"Torpedo impact, five seconds, four, three, two — " Sai's countdown was cut short by a massive light-blue flash that emanated from the target ship. The entire target ship was encompassed by the flash, as well as the unknown ship and the Archangel.

With the transit from normal space to wormhole space, the crews of the three ships were mostly knocked unconscious. During the transit, the targeted ship, the Ikazuchi, took the matter into its own survival plan, and decided that the two ships nearby — the pirate ship and the unidentified newcomer — would make excellent mass additions to its old frame. A quick acceleration on the part of the Ikazuchi and it was able to approach the pirate ship to 'connect' to it with crystallized energy lattices. A second burst of power and the combined pirate-Ikazuchi ship was in place to try to take over the unknown warship as well.

The engine system on the Ikazuchi — the Pragma Paxis — reached out to the Archangel with the energy crystal lattice that it had used on the pirate ship, and with the Archangel unable to maneuver, it had no problem taking hold on the ship. Unlike the Pirate ship, though, the Paxis had a problem in trying to get into the Archangel — the Gundanium armor was not a material it knew how to deal with, and after several tries the old energy being Paxis realized it could not brute-force the armor on the unusual (and completely foreign) warship. It did not try the obvious entry point, the multiple thermonuclear engine cells, since that would result in an engine explosion as soon as the foreign crew lit off their thrusters to escape.

With the direct method out of the question, and with the wormhole approaching collapse due to distances involved, Paxis determined that its only option for the separate ship was a long-unused Seed Protocol — the method by which the transdimensional energy being could 'reproduce' itself into another hull. It was a gamble on the other ship, that it would have the ability to nurture the new Paxis with energy and purpose, but a worthwhile gamble. Such a hardened ship was not simply a 'castaway', it was doing something when it landed near the Pirate-versus-Tarrak battle.

Again the Paxis reached out to the ship, but this time not to try to subsume it. A single crystallized-energy lattice reached to the back of the Bridge superstructure, specifically to the Helldart launcher, and two more reached out to the sensor domes on the top of the tail binders for the large Warship. The missile launcher was inordinately difficult to breach, but not impossible — the armor hatches over the missile silos were the weakest armor on the ship. The sensor domes on the binders proved dead simple to dislodge and allow a crystalline push into the ship's hull.

For several minutes, the crystalline lattice reached down into the foreign ship and throughout the inside of the hull, which was more conventional laminate and steel construction and thus easier to work with. Worming its way around the crew was a bit difficult — the Warship was heavily staffed, but not to an impossible degree. The arrangement of critical systems was entirely logical to the Paxis after seeing decades of Human ship designs, with weapons around the periphery, hangar space forward, most controls on the bridge, and the engine / power systems toward the rear. Paxis took its time integrating the lattice into the critical systems, with particular focus on the home for the new Pragma Seed — the overlarge and inefficient fusion reactor system that powered the ship and provided its major thrust.

After the three ships dropped out of the wormhole, Paxis finished up preparing the Seed in the new engine housing, and did some exploring in the hangar area. Inside a cargo bay that had been converted to a machine shop by the crew, a very unusual energy source in the rear bulkhead caught its attention — some kind of crude transdimensional device? When Paxis reached into the Jump Engine box that had melded itself into the frame of the Archangel, it inadvertently tripped the Jump Engine with a near-zero synchronization rate between the ship and local space.

The resulting Jump caused the ships to move slightly less than 65 kilometers from their origination location, hardly a fart in the wind comparative to the jump engine's normal distance handled. On the other hand, the resultant near-zero-synchronization jump caused what the Crusaders jokingly referred to as a 'Manhattan Jump', so named for the weird spatial and transdimensional distortions caused by the Manhattan Project's Naval Magnetic Systems venture. The three ships had not moved far, but the unsecured and non-structural components of the ships were jumbled between the Ikazuchi-Pirate combo ship and the Archangel. What little connection the Paxis had to the Archangel was shattered and the two ships simply hovered parallel, now separate in hardware but closely linked in living energy.

The system shock caused by this unsynchronized jump also caused the highly-unexpected death of an interloper on the Archangel, a being unseen and unheard but intermittently sensed by the Rune Gods from time to time. It would be some time before his body would be found…

-x-x-x-

(45 minutes after the ships jumped)

"Ug-uh, what the hell brick hit me this time?" Tolle asked nobody in particular.

After he squinted against the significant pain in his head, Tolle started taking stock of his surroundings. The location was easy enough to understand — some kind of cavernous hold, exposed trusses in the ceilings, a pair of working flood lights, nothing special structurally. The walls appeared to be mostly steel or some similar composite, again nothing special. It was the floor that was different, with some kind of pulsing, moving crystal all over the place and starting to climb the walls.

After he looked far enough down, it became fairly evident why he could not properly control his legs. Both legs were broken, his left leg folded at an impossible angle under him, his right leg simply folded 90 degrees outside. Oddly enough, neither broken limb was painful, but both were tingling and some degree of numbness was already set in.

"Fuck," Tolle groused after a few seconds, when the enormity of his problem set in. Without his legs, he was defenseless — anyone could do anything to him if they found him in this position, even skull-fuck him if so inclined. His pistol was in his holster, but any attempt to move the leg enough to get to it resulted in a nauseating wave of pain, so he gave up on that quickly enough.

"Guess I'm not going anywhere. Here's to hoping," he said to nobody in particular, mostly just to hear his own voice to verify he wasn't going insane.

"Ohmygod! Ohmygod! Where are we?" Some unrecognized lady asked from the darkness to Tolle's left.

"I don't know! I don't know! All I can see is darkness and crystal around me!" a second lady answered.

Don't find me, honey, don't find me, Tolle thought aloud.

"There! Someone's here!" the first lady shouted.

Fuck, Tolle groused inside his head, but still did not say a word.

"It's Barnett!" the second lady shouted.

Who the hell is Barnett, and why is she on the Archangel, Tolle asked himself. Nope, not remembering a Barnett anywhere in the crew, past or present. Okay, why do we have mystery visitors on the ship? And where the fuck in the ship am I? Tolle looked around again, and came to the conclusion that he did not recognize the area of the ship.

"Barnett! Wake up!" the first lady shouted somewhere in the darkness off Tolle's eleven o'clock position.

"I'm awake, I'm awake, stop yelling already," a third and somewhat more serious voice asked. "Where are we?"

"We don't know, miss Barnett, we thought you might?"

"We should be in the men's ship? I think?" Barnett answered. "I don't remember what happened last. Come on, let's find our craft and get out of here."

Tolle listened to the ladies walk left to right in front of him for some 100 yards, unseen and unheard beyond that. The cutoff of sound came as a bit of a start, possibly due to a door closing somewhere, but Tolle didn't recognize the sound of the door.

"Wonderful. In a hurry going nowhere now," Tolle grumped to himself.

-x-x-x-

(1 hour after failed jump)

When she awoke, it was to a thin sheen of blood on the armrest of her command couch. It did not take her long to figure out where from, a small but rather bloody cut just above her hairline did it, though the bleeding stopped quickly enough with a bit of pressure and a handkerchief.

Captain Ramius quickly discovered that she was the only person on the bridge. Which made no sense, given that the whole bridge staff was on the bridge at the time of the jump, and Commander La Flaga was on the bridge as well. "The hell is going on?" Murrue asked the bridge monitor dead ahead of her.

The growler phone rang twice, to which Murrue picked up. "Bridge," she answered with some strain to voice.

"Captain! Damn good you're with us," Yzak said.

"Where are you, Yzak? What's your status?" Murrue asked immediately.

"I'm down in engineering right now, and I have no clue how I got here. My status is officially weirded the fuck out. We've got problems of the kind you only see in bad sci-fi, and they're all over the freaking place."

"What's going on? Something wrong?" Murrue asked.

"I can't say for sure if this is good or bad, but the main fusion engine and secondary have been enveloped by some kind of crystal. It's blue and glowing and it's definitely creeping me out."

"Copy, are you in danger from it right now?" Captain Ramius asked.

"No, it's not doing anything so far as I can tell, except maybe breaking down and reassembling the engine?" Yzak guessed (not incorrectly).

"Understood. Not much we can do about it right now. Make your way to the armory, find any stray crewmembers, and draw arms. I've sent your data assistant device the unlock code," Murrue ordered. "Bring me a rifle kit and bandoleer."

"Will do, Captain," Yzak answered immediately.

"Watch your ass, Yzak. Bridge is out," Murrue said.

Murrue unbuckled herself from the captain's chair and swung down into the CIC pit below and behind her chair. Sai was not in, but his console was still active, so Murrue could easily change system settings to see a better view of what was around the ship. Two sensor passes and she had a fix on the culprit — just one other ship that was roughly ten kilometers away from the Archangel.

Given the distance, a visual check on the tango ship was not difficult. It also revealed a striking problem to Murrue. "That ship… it's like those two unidentified vessels are trying to combine… with blue… oh dear," she let her sentence trail off.

To the rear of the bridge, the lift door slid open with a grating sound. Before it was fully open, Murrue had her pistol on target from the CIC deck. "Whoashit!" the lift occupant half-shouted after he realized he was being aimed at, and ducked out of the line of sight of the CIC pit.

Murrue decided a quick check was in order before she started shooting. "Challenge phrase, Figaro!" she shouted, given that any legit member of the crew would know that story well.

"Edgar Roni!" she recognized the voice of Kuzzey easily enough.

"Okay, come on," Murrue said. "Did you see anyone else?" she asked as Kuzzey took his customary seat.

"I caught a glimpse of some unrecognized blonde in pink and a mini-skirt, she was headed away from me, I don't think she saw me or even knew I was there," Kuzzey said. "What the hell's going on, Captain?"

Murrue opened her mouth to answer, but the hull creaked in a series of pops from bow to stern, almost as if the whole keel of the ship had flexed. The sound was loud and eerie to both radio operator and Captain. "I don't know, but I think the two ships we landed nearby, they tried and failed to subsume our ship into a composite ship with theirs." Murrue dialed up the visual track onto the main monitor, which was locked onto the tango vessel.

"They're trying to meld into one," Kuzzey said. "Glad they didn't succeed with us."

"They did infest the ship with the crystal, though," Murrue said. "Yzak reported it is all over the engineering area."

"Okay, not good," Kuzzey echoed the thoughts inside the Captain's head. "What do we do now?"

"Try to regain control of the ship," Murrue decided. She lifted the growler phone and set it to 1MC. "Attention all hands, this is Captain Ramius. All active personnel are to take all necessary steps to secure the ship. All pilots available are to move to the hangar and attempt to prepare machines for launch. Elementals are to deploy in armor and sweep the ship bow to stern with support from any available crew. Yzak Joule has command of the armory, contact him on channel 7 for approach authorization. Report any major unidentified happenings to the bridge as usual."

"Where do you want me, Captain?" Kuzzey asked.

"Remain here, help me deal with incoming reports until we have more personnel in the bridge," Murrue ordered. "I'm starting to wonder if our personnel may have been mixed up in the jump, and some of their crew transplanted onto our ship while some of our guys are on their ship?"

"If that's the case, I wonder how our guys on the other side are doing?" Kuzzey asked.

"Get on the radio, see if you can get someone's attention," Murrue suggested.

-x-x-x-

(70 minutes after the misjump)

"Attention all hands, this is Captain Ramius. All active personnel are to take all necessary steps to secure the ship. All pilots available are to move to the hangar and attempt to prepare machines for launch. Elementals are to deploy in armor and sweep the ship bow to stern with support from any available crew. Yzak Joule has command of the armory, contact him on channel 7 for approach authorization. Report any major unidentified happenings to the bridge as usual," the ship's intercom reported.

"We're saved! The Captain is a woman!" Amarone half-shouted after the transmission was done.

"I don't think so," Jura answered. "She said a man has command over the armory, and all crew were to contact him. Something's wrong here."

"Okay, we're not saved," Amarone groused. "Now what?"

"Where are we? It's like we've been walking in circles," Paiway asked quietly.

"We haven't been walking in circles, the corridors all look the same," Jura answered.

The entire hull of the ship creaked again, a frightening sound of twisting and stressing metals and materials that Jura hoped she would never hear in her pirate career. Groans and shivers of that nature usually presaged a ship falling apart, which was not an entirely welcome happenstance to someone on that ship.

The three ladies came to a 90-degree turn, took the mandatory left, and walked another five meters to an intersection. The main path went forward with a hallway that appeared decorated in the distance, and a dead-end offshoot went right. The signage said enough to the three ladies.

"Missile Silo Control System Access, Silos 1 to 16. NOTICE: This is a restricted area. Unauthorized entry or attempts to emplace surveillance equipment will result in severe punishment. Enforced by Yzak Joule."

"There's that name again," Amarone said. "Whoever this Yzak guy is, he must be some kind of head honcho or something. At least the writing is readable, even if its done in Tarak calligraphy."

Paiway sniffed at the air. "Hey! Do you two smell that?"

"Smell what?" Jura asked.

Amarone took a couple sniffs. "Smells like the hot springs on the ship! Coming from over there!"

"Wait! We don't know — " Jura cut her protest short and simply ran with the two support operators to the area where the smell of hot springs intensified.

"Whoa!" Amarone stopped dead at the wall of material opposite the two obvious Hot Springs doors.

"This is — " Paiway half-squeaked when she realized what she was looking at.

"A wall of memorabilia, photos of the ship's crew, collected objects, and what…"

"A triangle-folded flag of some kind?" Paiway asked, looking at the first box of several.

"Dearka Elsman, Gundam Pilot, Zodiac Alliance of Freedom Treaty; Magic Knight Squire to Rayearth, Cephiro Magic Knights. Slain in battle on the planet Romulus against the Jade Falcon Clan, 29 April 3050."

"Kinda looks like a male version of myself?" Amarone asked after examining the picture.

"Here he is again," Paiway pointed to a picture of five persons standing in some kind of hangar area. A lady rested on one knee in some kind of ornate armor, with a fairly large red-hilted sword resting point-down in the deck. Behind her was another lady dressed in a white uniform, with some kind of massive ruby armband wrapped around her upper arm. The other three were guys: one with a large red-blade axe, one with some kind of double-blade sword, and the third carried a pair of ancient samurai swords? "Magic Knights of Rayearth," Paiway read off the picture's information card. "Magic Knight Hikaru Shidou, Magic Knight Squires Murrue Ramius, Athrun Zala, Kira Yamato, and Dearka Elsman."

"Those four look like they mean business," Jura said, having an appreciation for sword-swingers given her own taste in weapons.

"Guys, think I found Yzak," Amarone said. "Magic Knights of Selesce. Magic Knight Umi Ryuuzaki, Magic Knight Squires Natarle Badgiruel, Flay Allster, Yzak Joule."

"That's a nightmare," Jura concluded after a hard look at Yzak. The massive two-handed sword he carried could easily convert the Pirates' boarding armor suits into shreds of cloth in a couple well-placed swings, she figured.

"Where are we? And why are all these women in the pictures with the men?" Paiway asked. "It's like they don't even know there is a war going on!"

"No, this is something else," Amarone pointed to a picture set toward the periphery of the display. "Tolle Koenig and Miriallia Haww, married 12 December AC195, Northern Luxembourg, Earth."

Both Paiway and Jura gasped. "Married? A man and a woman? That is so wrong!" Jura half-wailed.

"And she's hanging all over him in this picture," Amarone pointed out.

"Ugh! I can't take this! I need a shower, I wonder if this hot springs is functional?" Jura turned around in disgust and pushed her way into the bead curtain on the hot springs. One twist, a second twist, and she passed another bead curtain into the locker and shower room. "Huh. Smells like a natural hot springs? Heated rocks?" She asked herself, considering that would be a strange thing to find on a Male military ship.

The smell of such heavy earthen rocks and steam was coming from a third bead curtain, so Jura decided it was worth a look. the Dread Squad Leader looked in, looked around, and then looked down at the rock setup for the hot springs.

What she found was Athrun Zala hanging half in the water, motionless. Jura, thinking him dead, screeched.

-x-

"Did you hear that?" Elemental Christos asked.

"Aff, I heard it," Star Commander Natalya said. "That screech matched no lady on the crew."

"It came from the area of the hot springs," Elemental Jason said.

"Two troops move down the starboard axial. One with me in the port axial."

The slow march of the Elementals made a creepy echo through the halls of the Archangel, but the echo modulated into even stranger sounds with the crystal that was beginning to expand into every corridor, every storage space in the ship. "What gives with this crystalline structure?" Elemental Jason asked.

"It may be a denizen of this dimension? I have never seen the like," Natalya answered.

"The Hot Springs security system is online. Looking back through recent footage, it would appear three are in the area," Elemental Christos declared.

"Incoming!" Jason shouted as the wailing-screeching of a young lady approached the corner nearby the Axial.

"Freeze Surat— " Natalya shouted, though the screeching lady with blond hair simply ran past both herself and Jason. "What?"

"By the Founder, what manner of denizen was that?" Jason asked as the lady took the first right intersection.

"Star Commander, two bolted on our side as well, headed up the Starboard Axial. One appeared to have some kind of a hand puppet, the other looked reasonably normal. Do we pursue?"

"What manner of stravag menace have we been invaded by?" Natalya asked nobody in particular. "All Elemental troops, pursue those ladies and capture alive, unharmed if possible! I will inspect the Springs, see what has them running scared."

"Aff, Star Commander," Elemental Jason set off at a run after the lady in the decidedly-nonmilitary dress.

Natalya turned down the hallway to the Hot Springs and inspected. Several of the pictures had been moved, and one was on the ground (the wedding photo of Pilot Koenig's marriage to Commander Haww), but otherwise everything appeared normal in the area.

"Was it something in the springs?" Natalya asked, then jolted slightly at the sound of some kind of impact from inside the women's springs. "Who goes there?"

"Athrun," said pilot sputtered as he slammed into the partition wall just inside the bead curtain. "Who the hell was that with the screaming? She screeched so loud I slipped into the water and nearly drowned," Zala complained.

"I have my troops trying to chase them down, we shall have a proper answer soon enough," Natalya assured the pilot. "Do you require medical assistance?"

-x-x-x-

(80 minutes after the misjump)

"Been here for forty minutes, still have no fucking clue where I am, nobody's seen me, and this day isn't improving. Yep, sounds like an Archangel Team operation."

Tolle again tried to lay down, but his broken legs screamed defiance when he tried, so he contented himself with simply adjusting which ass-cheek was holding most of his weight.

"Mister Alien! Where are you?" some lady shouted somewhere in the dark off to Tolle's right.

"Leave me alone!" the shout was from a guy, but roughly in the same direction.

"Mister Alien! I just want to talk to you!" the lady shouted again.

"Doesn't sound like that to me," Tolle grumped. "Wholly inappropriate time to be chasing guys, but hey, to each his or her own."

Off in the distance and more to the front than the right, Tolle could hear the sound of a guy tripping over something at a full run. A few seconds later, the sound of a lady squealing as she tripped over something in the same vicinity came to his hearing. "Ow! Get off me!"

"Why does chasing an alien hurt so much?" the lady asked in a clear daze.

"What the hell is going on?" Tolle asked. "Alien? Sounded like a bog-standard guy from over here."

"WHAT?" the guy shouted in a rising voice. "Who said that?"

Aww fuck, he heard me. Not good, Tolle groaned inside the confines of his mind.

"Hell with it! I ain't got time for a loudmouth! I gotta run!" the guy shouted, then continued hoofing it right-to-left.

"Mister Alien! Wait up! We haven't discussed what you like!" the lady shouted, then continued her run from right to left.

"Sounds like a bad case of crush, crush denial, and wildly screwed up circumstances," Tolle guessed aloud.

With the disappearance of the two runners down a side corridor, the cavernous room fell silent again. For want of a better thing to do, Tolle started checking his pockets for something to ease the tedium and take his mind off the pain in his legs. What he turned up was a piece of chewing gum and his personal music player.

"Whelp, six hours of distraction. Might as well enjoy it while the battery lasts."

-x-x-x-

(85 minutes after misjump)

"Charlie-6-Alpha, Charlie-1-Zulu, respond code twenty," Master Chief Ryback requested by radio.

"Charlie-1-Zulu, Charlie-4-Echo and Charlie-6-Alpha report twenty as fucking unknown. I don't recognize shit about this ship, I hope it's not ours."

"Charlie-1-Golf, Charlie-2-Juliet, just passed corridor 3-A-20, whatever that marking means."

"You're right behind me, 2-Juliet," Ryback said. "You want to take the 3-A-21 turn, then the next left."

"Roger that, coming up behind you." Ryback could hear the steps as they approached. "What's the word, boss?"

"This is definitely not our ship, or any part of our ship," Ryback said. "The architecture and systems are all wrong. It's like someone or something dumped us on a totally different vessel."

"Maybe they did," Commander Chevalier said. "One thing's for sure, our crew is mixed in with theirs. I was able to dodge two ladies dressed weird on my way here."

"Good to have you here, Commander," Ryback said, then turned back to his radio. "Charlie-6-Alpha, state your twenty if possible."

"Negative, boss, busy," Chief Leelane answered in a hurried fashion. The radio caught the crack of a whip, followed by several gunshots. "4-Kilo is down, repeat, 4-Kilo down, I am oscar mike!" Several more gunshots were heard over the radio. "Dark-skinned lady, silver hair, watch your ass Chief. She's a nasty customer with a whip!"

"You have any pyro, 6-Oscar?" Ryback asked.

"Fuck no, boss, I'm lucky I have clothes and a pistol! If this shit had gone down five minutes sooner, I'd be buck naked traipsing through cracktown!"

"I don't want to know," Commander Chevalier grumped.

"Second that," Ryback said with his thumb off the microphone switch, then activated it again. "Keep mobile, keep smart, 6-Oscar. We're doing what we can. Charlie-1-November is clear this channel, switch the net to the alternate frequency."

"Now what, Master Chief?" Chief Petty Officer Oakes asked.

"Find someone that has a clue where the hell we are, squeeze them for info, and either sabotage the ship or find a way off it," Ryback said.

"I approve of this concept," Chevalier said. "Let's make it happen."

"Two, you have point," Ryback ordered.

"Gott mit uns," Charlie-2 said before he ducked around the corner and brought his sub-machinegun up to bear on the 3-B-21 corridor.

Chevalier and Ryback followed close, with Chevalier covering the rear. The corridor went on some 40 meters, then cut left and out of sight, with nothing of note in it. As the troopers moved past a door, one of the overhead pipes ruptured and began spewing water into the corridor. "Son of a bitch! Is there a shutoff valve?" Ryback asked.

"Yeah, down there," CPO Oakes said, pointing past the leak.

"Got it," Chevalier said. He passed under the water venting, reached up, and pulled the lever valve closed. Inside of twenty seconds, the water stopped flowing, which was a good sign for the area. "I'd say their ship is having more problems than ours by far."

"Pfft, we just did a bow to keel overhaul less than a month ago," Charlie-2 said. "If we're having problems like this, it's game over for the Archangel Team."

Ryback sniffed at the air. "Smell that?"

"Yeah, smells like some good cooking," Chevalier answered. "That door?" he pointed to an open door another ten meters down the corridor.

"Carefuls, it might be a trap," Charlie-2 said.

"Carefuls, he looks hungry," Ryback played off the joke.

"Hey, last decent meal I had was before shift rotation, so it's been about 10 hours or so," Chevalier said. "Besides, there's strategic value in holding the galley."

"He's got us there, Master Chief," Charlie-2 acknowledged the point.

"Do it."

Chief Petty Officer Gary Oakes approached the door quickly, did a quick check to verify no obvious ambush, then jumped off for entry. Ryback followed him in, pistol up and sweeping for any obvious threat (none).

"What the hell? Is this a military galley or some kind of postmodern dinette?" Chevalier asked, staring at the rather absurd food conveyor belt that was still running and ferrying around a couple plates. "Still, food is food, even if it is served up in a weird manner…"

"Movement left!" Ryback shouted before he flipped up a table to use as cover. Chevalier dove into the conveyor ring for cover and Charlie-2 made a dead run for the galley section to clear the line of fire. The latter of the three drew the opening barrage from the tango, roughly a dozen rounds from a sub-machinegun were loosed in his direction, but the gunner was a meter behind to clip him before he slid into the kitchen sink face-first.

"Damnit! That's some serious shit she's swinging!" Chevalier shouted.

"A Calico full-auto pistol? Last time I saw one of those was in an antiques collection," Ryback said. For his effort at identifying her weapon, the lady in purple fired a five-round burst into the table where he was hiding at.

"Say hello to my little friend!" CPO Oakes shouted before he cut loose with part of a magazine of Thompson toward where the lady in purple was trying to suppress Ryback. "CHIEF! On your left!"

Ryback barely had time to look left before he was tackled by some large lady in more conventional clothing than the lady in the purple dress. Chevalier tried swinging around to bring his 1911 to bear on the attacker, but he had to duck down below the conveyor again to avoid fire.

"The FUCK? She's got a Mini-uzi now! As well as the Calico!" Oakes shouted in dismay.

"Get off me!" Ryback drove both of his elbows down into the trapezius of the lady that had grappled him, the paired strikes caused her to let go by autonomic reaction. Once her grip slacked, he kneed her to create some space, and drove her away with a boot to the sternum that shoved her back onto one of the other galley tables.

The enemy lady in purple fired a suppressing burst against Charlie-2 with both weapons, the Calico held vertical, the Uzi held below her right hand grip horizontal. She alternated fire between the two sub-machineguns for six or seven bursts, until she ducked back out of the line of sight for some reason.

Ryback flipped himself to standing in time to meet the lady that had tried hammering him from the side, and this time he was ready for it. When she charged off the table, Ryback caught her left arm and redirected her inertia 90 degrees to run face first into the table he upended for cover. Whoever the lady was, she was smart enough to arrest her forward inertia before she smacked the table face-first, but she wasn't fast enough to get turned around before Ryback took her legs out with a stomp to the back of her knee. The Master Chief used her descending inertia to drive her forehead into the bottom surface of the upended table, which knocked her unconscious in a single directed blow.

Chevalier fired four rounds blind over the conveyor, one of which caused a minor food explosion as the 230-grain FMJ round passed through a bowl of Jell-o and caused it to hydrostatically explode all over the vicinity. Oakes used the quick hesitation in his foe's reaction to bring suppressing fire on her position, which worked wonders — she was driven back out of sight and Oakes caught sight of her passing another doorway at a dead run away from the galley.

"She running?" Chevalier asked as he switched out magazines.

"She's hauling ass northbound," Oakes said before he dropped his spent magazine and loaded a fresh mag into his Thompson.

Ryback picked up his pistol from next to the unconscious lady and racked the slide to clear a stovepipe jam that she caused when he accidentally fired as she tackled him. The Master Chief Petty Officer holstered the 1911 Tactical Mod and looked her over now that he wasn't trying to hammer her flat.

"Not a match for the Elementals, but certainly nothing to sneeze at," Chevalier said. "C'mon, we need to move."

"Nobody beats me in the kitchen, honey. Nobody," Ryback said to the unconscious lady before he turned to join the Commander. (1)

-x-x-x-

(90 minutes after misjump)

Bart Garcis considered that the silence around him was a good time to pop out and look around, see what was going on in the area — if anything. Maybe the Tarak military had driven the pirates away? Or killed them?

During the fighting, the head of the statue he was hiding in had been cleaved off by a passing fighter. The women pirates had not been too interested in a lone guy hiding in a statue, if they even knew he was inside the decorative piece, so he escaped the initial boarding action unharmed. To see out, all he had to do was peek his head up out of the statue and see what was going on, so he braced against part of the base and peeked out.

Bart received the first of several rude shocks of the day when he looked around the hangar he was in. "Where am I?" Bart asked the machines around him, none of which matched the Vanguard units he was 'trained' to pilot.

Every machine around the cavernous hangar was different from the Vanguard types, and not one of the machines was smaller. Several of the machines were at least double the size, and one looked to be almost triple larger than a Vanguard. The weapons were also wildly different and more geared toward ranged combat than close-quarters battle.

As his head traversed the hangar, his eyes stopped at one of the larger machines, this one mostly white with some blue. The thing that immediately drew his attention was the mounted and carried arsenal — two hip-mounted guns, two head-mounted guns, a big gun in the chest, and two energy weapons, one in each hand. Whatever it was, and whatever it was designed for, it was heavily armed for the job.

"What the hell is going on?" Bart asked the machine in front of him. The eyes on the machine flickered green, briefly, before they went back to black.

"You're not the only guy around here asking that question, kid," an older guy said from behind him.

"YAAAH!" Bart spun around to see who was talking, but immediately settled down when he recognized a guy as the speaker. "Oh, good, a man. You haven't seen any women around here, have you? They were trying to assault the ship earlier."

"Nope, haven't seen any women trying to assault this ship, but I'd guess you're not on the ship you think you're on," the guy said. His nametape said 'Murdoch', and his rank bars declared him an officer of some kind, but the uniform was all wrong to be a Tarak mechanic.

"Wait, isn't this the Ikazuchi?" Bart asked, again looking around.

"Nope, you're in the hangar of the Archangel," Murdoch said. Some movement at one of the cargo bay doors drew attention to a guy being supported by a woman? "Oi! Spazz! Terra! Over here!"

Bart watched in a mixture of fascination and dread as the woman approached while shoulder-carrying the guy. He had no problem identifying the pistol on her right leg or the sword on her left hip, but what was most curious was that she was helping a man, not using those weapons to subdue or kill them.

"Got molested by the blue crystal, Chief," Spazz said. "It was… wrong, but kinda alright," he said.

"He has multiple broken bones on his left side, sir. Probably flew into a bulkhead when whatever happened happened," Terra said. "I can't vouch for him and the Crystalline stuff getting friendly, but he swears by it."

"What the hell did happen? I mean, parts of the ship are untouched, parts of the ship have this weird blue crystal shit, and like this headless wonder statute, it ain't no shit we've ever seen or passed by, but now it's in the middle of my hangar?" Murdoch asked nobody in particular.

The woman set down the injured guy at the base of the statue, and with it Bart could tell all three — Murdoch, Spazz, and Terra — were wearing the same uniform. Did that mean that the men and the women were part of the same crew?

The sound system in the Hangar crackled. "Hangar from Bridge, report status at first available," an older woman's voice ordered.

"Got a radio?" Terra asked Murdoch.

"No, but Spazz does," Murdoch pulled a radio off the belt of the wounded guy and changed settings on it. "Bridge, Hangar, status is foxtrot, repeat, status is foxtrot. I have myself, Terra, and Spazz down here, with Spazz pretty badly banged up. As of right now, if I had to do anything more complex than piss in a bucket, I'd be hard pressed to complete the objective as ordered."

"Understood, I have Athrun at the Medbay right now, I'll roll a medic in that direction. Do you have any intel on unidentified persons in the ship?" the same lady asked through their handheld radio.

"Aye, got a guy down here hiding in a decapped statue. We're collectively trying to figure out what the hell is going on. No hazard at this time, stand by for further. Hangar is out." Murdoch turned the volume on the radio down and dropped it in a holster on his belt. "Well, this day has gone to the dogs. Now, if I may ask, what has you hiding in a hollowed-out statue?"

"The women!" Bart said.

"The hell?" Murdoch asked.

"The women! Serious! Our ship was attacked by a band of female pirates! I couldn't get to my Vanguard unit, so I took cover in this statue," Bart lied.

"I must be missing the distinction about women pirates here? Pirates are pirates, I'd guess?" Murdoch asked.

"Are you crazy? Women eat men's livers! They'll kill us all and serve us up for dinner!" Bart half-wailed.

Spazz tried laughing, but after two chuckles he started coughing from pain in his left lung. Murdoch and Terra simply stared at Bart in utter amazement of his tale.

"Can't say I've ever had any desire to eat liver," Terra said after about thirty seconds of considering it.

"I did have a girlfriend once that swore she would eat my spleen, but I think she was high on Meth and Cocaine at the time," Murdoch admitted. "Liver would be a new one."

"My brain is in full rebellion, trying to understand what he means by his explanation," Pytor said as he approached the group. "The Elementals and Reserve Infantry have rounded up some thirty ladies in pink gear, but we are missing roughly half of our crew," he estimated.

Bart was surprised to see an older guy in their group, but the green tattoos on his face and arms were unexpected at best. More disturbing was the presence of another lady, this one fairly young and dressed in the same uniform as the other soldiers, but her weapon of choice was an absolutely massive sword with a green hilt and handle.

"The bullshit is strong in this day," Spazz said.

"Damn straight," Murdoch said. "Pytor, can you try to get the Vayeate fired up? I want an insurance policy in case someone comes looking for trouble."

"Aff, Murdoch." Pytor turned to one of the (somewhat) smaller machines that was almost completely blue and began climbing the ladder behind it.

"Now, you want to fly this by me again?" Murdoch asked.

Bart looked from Murdoch, to Terra, to the newcomer with the large glasses that made her look rather innocent and harmless, though rather frightening with the massive sword. "I think something is very wrong here," Bart said, hoping he could play an innocence angle to curry favor.

-x-x-x-

(Same time; 90 minutes after the misjump)

"This… I guess I can live with this," Tolle complained while listening to his music player.

The lady chasing the guy had stumbled through the cavernous bay again, and this time they came close enough that Tolle was able to see their outlines as they moved by. On the other hand, neither guy nor lady had noticed him sitting against the wall, so all things being equal, he was still not known to anyone from the other ships.

This also created a conundrum: If somebody friendly didn't show up and help him soon, the injuries could become permanently crippling or lethal.

His music player simply dragged onward, one song at a time

Blue Oyster Cult — Don't Fear The Reaper (4:48)
Men At Work — Land Down Under (3:28)
Aerosmith — Livin' On The Edge (6:10)
Kiss — Tears are Falling (3:55)
Savage Garden — To The Moon And Back (5:41) (Added by Murdoch — not claimed by Tolle)

Partway through the Savage Garden offering, Tolle heard a lady in the far end of the hangar shouting for anyone to help her. Tolle wisely didn't answer — he was in no position to help, and in all reality it could easily be a trap, someone offering themselves as bait for some heavy hitters elsewhere in the bay that might have night vision or thermal goggles. After two or three shouts, Tolle went back to lip-synching with the music on his earphones.

Scorpions — Rock You Like A Hurricane (4:10)
Nirvana — Lithium (4:20)
Van Halen — Me Wise Magic (6:06)

About halfway through Me Wise Magic, Tolle saw a red glow moving through the hangar in the distance. On the far side of that red glow, he easily recognized the person wearing the Magic Knight Glove. "Kira! Oi, Kira!"

"Tolle?" the pilot shouted.

"Your three o'clock!"

Kira looked in that direction. "I can't see you, man."

"Deliberately, I'm not having a good day. Just come this way, you'll eventually wander into me. And watch your step, one of the other ship's crew slammed into some debris in that area."

Kira made four paces of closing distance before someone shot at him with some kind of beam rifle or laser rifle — and missed by several meters. A second shot from the rifle also missed, but highlighted the shooter's position easily. Since he was a pilot, Kira always carried a 1911 as well as his Magic Knight Squire Glove, so a quickdraw and four shots into the distant beam-slinger changed the dynamic. Kira landed no hits by firing on the original bearing, but she made the mistake of firing a third time and missed a third time. Yamato adjusted his aimpoint, fired four more (2), and dropped the magazine as the lady screeched from a hit she took by the .45 ACP slugs coming her way.

"Nice shooting!" Tolle half-shouted over the echoing abuse from the sound of the gunshots.

The lights in the bay flickered on briefly, which gave Tolle a brief glimpse of where he was, but shut off quickly thereafter. "This ship has some problems," Kira groused as he continued his approach to Tolle, since he had a good but quick sight of the Buster pilot. "Why are you just sitting there?"

"Both my legs are broken, man. I can't move if I wanted to. I've just been sitting here listening to music while crazy shit goes on around here."

"Mister Alien! Stop running already!" The lady from before shouted.

"Damnit! Leave me alone!" The same guy she had been chasing shouted.

"See my point?" Tolle asked.

"Another fine day in the Archangel Team," Kira said. "There's nothing I can do for your injuries, Tolle. I can try to find a medic, but that's the best I can offer."

"Beats the hell out of what I have right now," Tolle said. "If you happen across Miriallia, don't tell her where I am. I don't want her to see me like this."

"You know I won't be able to keep that from her," Kira said. "I'll see what I can find."

"Stay sharp out there," Tolle said with some strain to voice.

-x-x-x-

(115 minutes after the misjump)

"What are those creepy noisy things? What is this ship?" Jura wailed in the closed confines of a janitorial closet on the lowest deck of the ship.

"This isn't our ship," Meia said. "Too much is wrong about it. I think this is that mystery ship that arrived just before the torpedo hit."

"Yeah, I saw some pictures at the far end of the ship that suggests this ship is something else. I mean, seriously, men and women in the same picture, acting like they were supposed to be together?" Jura looked up from her complaining to the floor to see Meia digging through the closet contents. "What are you doing?"

"Looking for something to tie up a wound," Meia responded.

"What happened?"

"That last machine we encountered, it grazed me with its claw," the senior pilot responded. "This should do." Meia used a clean rag to tie up the gouge in her arm. "Now, we need to find some way off this ship and back to our ship, wherever it is."

"No doubt, but where do we begin?" Jura asked.

"I saw some of the writing that indicated we were approaching a hangar." Meia stepped past Jura and thumbed the door panel to open it. Rather than step out immediately, she looked around before she exited the door. Nobody appeared to be in the area of the closet, so…

"Is this a wise idea? We could run into more of those mechanical things." Despite her misgivings, Jura followed close to the senior squadron leader.

"You can stay in the broom closet, but I don't think you're going to get home from there," Meia pointed out with perfect honesty and a good hint of sarcasm.

"Are we going in the right direction?" Jura half-whined, but made sure to keep it quiet since the echoing sounds of those mechanical units could be heard in the distance.

"Here, this sign indicates hangar access," Meia said at a T intersection. She continued forward, not realizing that down the perpendicular intersection was someone who was smart enough to not challenge them.

Further down the corridor, she came to a pressure door. "Locked. Now what?"

"Give me a minute to try to hot-wire the door controls," Meia said.

"Rather than tear up a door panel, try a key code," a very strange voice said.

Both Meia and Jura recoiled in shock and some apprehension when they saw the speaker. The old man in question wasn't particularly tall, only shoulder height on Meia and bust height on Jura, but the hair style that reminded them both of a mushroom and the long nose were significantly creepy. The scar on his left cheek only added to the creepy factor to a significant degree.

Meia raised her laser ring and aimed at the Professor. "Don't move or I'll shoot!"

"If you fire that weapon, every Elemental on this deck will know exactly where you are," Professor G semi-lied. "If you want into the hangar so desperately, the entry code is 3606."

"That easy?" Meia asked as the old guy started ambling his way toward the door behind Meia and Jura.

"Enter the hangar, or don't. Your choice. I have work to do, if you will excuse me," the old man said as he ambled past Jura and keyed the code into the door access panel, then stepped through into the hangar proper.

Jura and Meia bolted into the hangar behind the old guy, and immediately realized what a mistake it was. Jura tried to turn back to the door, but found it closed behind them. She entered the 3606 code into the door panel, but it simply chirped at her and flashed red.

"Oh, yes, forgot to mention, the code to get back into the decks is significantly longer than the one to get into the hangar," the old guy said as he continued ambling toward a group of other old guys nearby a cargo bay. "Doctor J! Have you identified the crystal yet?"

"Not yet, Professor G," an old guy with some kind of weird mechanical eyes and a mechanical left arm said. "Perhaps you would like to assist us?"

"Better late than never," an older guy with an artificial nose said. Conversation halted as the hull of the ship gave off a loud groaning-tearing sound, as if the material of the hull was shearing itself apart somewhere nearby.

"Spare me the chewing," Professor G grumped. "I came conscious in one of the engine room spaces. This ship appears to be longer than when we last jumped. Or I appear to be getting older at a noticeable pace." He pointed at Doctor J's head threateningly. "Don't say it."

"I would certainly not say such a thing," Doctor J said as Meia approached the Professor from behind. "Something we can help you ladies with?"

"Yes, we need the code to get back into the corridors," Meia said.

"Sorry, can't help you there," Doctor J answered. "They don't give us the codes."

"Don't lie to me!" Meia raised her ring to aimpoint. "I just watched mushroom-head get into the hangar!"

"Oh, did I?" Professor G asked with mock innocence.

Meia heard a faint clink of metal against metal behind and to her right, and only barely saw a flash of red and gray before something slammed into her shoulder with enough force to splay her out on the ground. When the world stopped moving of its own accord, Meia could tell the impact weapon used against her was a large pipe wrench, and she wasn't able to lift her right arm to bring the ring to bear. Apparently, a sufficiently large pipe wrench made a hellish impact weapon, and was capable of breaking someone's arm in one blow; Meia committed that thought to memory, since that appeared to be what knocked her down.

"Playtime's over, kid," the guy with the pipe wrench said before he stepped on her right wrist with his left boot. He transitioned the pipe wrench to a forearm carry in his right hand, and used the left hand to strip the ring off her right hand.

"You monster!" Jura half-shouted before she drew her sabre to take aim at the man with the pipe wrench. "You release her immediately!"

The guy stood up straight and stuffed the ring into his shirt pocket. "Put it down, kid. You've already lost."

"Release her!" Jura repeated.

A blue blade of light appeared in front of Jura's face, which caused the junior squad leader to recoil backwards, trip over a section of schedule 40 pipe, and fall to her butt with her back against the hangar interior bulkhead. "Drop it, kid. You've lost," the lady holding the blue energy sword ordered.

"What is this?" Jura wailed as a far louder mechanical stomping approached the area. When she looked up at the source, she saw a unit that was larger than both her Dread and the Vanguards. "What is going on here? Where am I?" Jura wailed in despair, now confused that a lady with some kind of energy sword was working with them men to subdue her.

"Welcome to the Archangel, surats," the pilot of the blue machine said before he aimed a massive beam cannon at the area. From what Jura could see of it, the muzzle of the beam cannon was every bit as big as the cockpit of her Dread, much less larger than she was. "Murdoch, Terra, stand clear, I have already summoned the Elementals. These stravag interlopers have nowhere to run or hide."

"All yours, Pytor," Murdoch said into a radio as he hauled Terra away from the scene. Likewise, the scientists moved their workbench farther starboard and out of the line of the particle wash if Pytor fired.

"That big thing? I could run circles around it," Jura half-challenged the pilot of the machine.

Pytor shifted his aimpoint a whit. "You may run, surat, but you will die exhausted if you try anything before the Elementals take you into custody."

Jura wisely slid aside her sword and put her hands up. With a veteran pilot that meant business and had the firepower to back it up, she knew better than to press her luck. Meia didn't move from where she landed, since simply breathing was a bit difficult for her.

-x-x-x-

(120 minutes after misjump)

One thing that Kira had done on the advice of Master Chief Ryback was carry more magazines for his pistol. 'Two is one, one is none, none is an empty gun and a plaque on the memorial wall,' as Ryback had explained the logic of carrying four or six magazines. It worked well for the Commandos, no sense arguing the logic. Kira's duty kit was always six magazines, which meant firing a full magazine in blind combat conditions did not put him hurting for rounds.

It was a prescient decision. Since he departed the large storage bay, Kira had been in two shootouts: one with another lady that carried some kind of beam rifle, and a shootout against some lady in some kind of purple skintight partially-revealing dress or somesuch. The clothing had been almost enough of a distraction that Kira was nearly ventilated while he stared at the sheer implausibility of her dress as any kind of uniform. On the other hand, when he did wise up, the lady was a good enough shot to challenge him but not good enough to stack against his years of experience. Kira won with a pair of grazing wounds against her body that forced her to retreat toward the bay.

Further adventuring led him to find the medbay, the galley (and evidence of a battle), and then the ship's hangar for standing machines.

Kira entered the bay and looked around at the machines that were still in the hangar. "What are these things? Beer cans trying to pass off as Mobile Suits?"

"About what I had to say about 'em," a friendly voice said.

"Commander La Flaga! Dorothy! Chief Ryback and Commander Chevalier! Oh man, I am glad to see some friendly faces," Kira said in exasperation.

"Glad you're alive, kid," Commander Chevalier said. "Think you can fly one of these?"

"I don't know, but if they have an integral radio, I can definitely use it," Yamato said.

"Perfect," Commander Chevalier said.

"Cover me while I give it a shot," Kira said before he made for the nearest of the units. Getting up into the cockpit was simple enough, climb up, drop in, trip the latch to close. Once sealed, the power systems came online and started feeding from the ship's power grid to power up the internal fusion reactor. "Everything is coming online now. Give me a few to work out what controls are for the radio."

"Kira, you may want to make it fast, I think we have comp — Miriallia!" Dorothy shouted.

"Guys!" She waved at them from the far side of the hangar, before she started a slow trot toward where the troops were clustered around one machine. "And… Kira? In that machine?"

"I am," Kira responded over the external loudspeaker. "Found the radio. Listen up, guys," he said before he switched the external speakers over to a full feed.

"Archangel Command to Archangel Team members, any team members respond immediately! Damnit guys, give us a sign!" Kuzzey shouted over the radio.

"Archangel Command from Kira Yamato, authentication 01148, can you read me?"

"Kira? Damn good! Someone is alive!" Kuzzey half-shouted. "Hold on, what is your status?"

"Lost in a large ship, no idea where we are or how to get out," Kira admitted. "How is the Archangel?"

"Ship's engine is being consumed by some kind of crystal, the Scientists are looking into it. The rest of the ship, well, the crew has been jumbled up between the two ships, and we have captured most of the foreign personnel, but this shit is off the deep end and flapping its arms trying to fly, follow?"

-x-

Pirate Captain Magno Vivon frowned at the radio that was being worn by the captured Commando.

"We've got a lot of loose personnel on this unknown ship. Listen, is the Captain around?" 'Kira' asked.

"I am here, Kira. Have you seen anything of Commanders La Flaga or Chevalier?" a female asked.

"Both are here with me," Kira responded. "Captain, Tolle's in a bad way. He's in a storage bay in this unknown ship, immobilized with two broken legs, and what crew we have here is disarrayed. We need extraction."

"Understood. I'll put a team together to come over to that ship. Hold the landing bay you're in, we should be able to spare at least a point of Elementals and some of the Reserve Infantry. Archangel is out."

"Boarding party," BC said. "If they're anything like what we've faced already, a boarding party would be able to overrun the ship with our depleted manpower."

"Can we take the hangar and stop them from boarding?" Magno asked.

"Not likely, Captain," Barnett said as she approached the group. The obvious injuries had been bandaged, but her dress was still effectively ruined from blood. "I've been in two shootouts with their personnel, and even ill-equipped they're better than the typical Male troops. These guys are something else, they're not Tarak regulars. If we had to fight against properly-equipped assault troopers, we wouldn't last four minutes."

"Can we force an ambush, then?" BC asked. "There is a cargo bay in the center of the Ikazuchi, we passed through it during the initial boarding. We can force a battle from cover and high-ground in that room."

"It might work, but we need everyone who can use a rifle," Barnette said.

"One question for the special forces trooper here," Magno said, looking past BC and at the 'cook' that had almost caught BC in the face with a pistol round. "You, 'cook', your Captain said something about a point of Elementals. What was she referring to?" Magno pinned the kneeling Commando with a fierce stare.

The cook snorted. "Infantry with heavy exoskeletons, called Battle Armor. They're absolute murder on infantry and equipped to tear apart armored units with battle claws and point-blank weapons fire," he said calmly and professionally. "A Point of Elementals is five troopers. We have ten in the Archangel's forces. If you get caught in close against one Elemental, chances are better than fifty-fifty you're dead. Get caught in close against five, well, I figure your odds of surviving two lightning strikes in three minutes are better than surviving the Elementals."

"Zero, in that case, or close enough," Buson put it in more blunt terms. "Why suddenly so talkative?" BC lifted the trooper's chin a bit with the handle of her whip.

"If the Captain is assembling a boarding team, I don't expect I'll be a prisoner too much longer," the 'cook' said. "Also, I'm not one to relish watching otherwise decent people go to the grave, and I'm pretty sure if the circumstances were a bit better, I think our two crews would have more in common than against. Captain Ramius is a professional, not a butcher. You play it smart, something might be worked out."

"You assume a bit much, cook," Barnette said with her Calico pistol aimed at his head.

"We are pirates, you do know that?" BC asked.

"And the Archangel Team are mercenaries, not national forces. Our career paths are not far removed from each other," Chief Petty Officer Gary Horwald answered calmly. "Look, you want to take your chances, that's on you. I recommend against, fighting invasion actions and quick-strikes is our unit specialty. I've said my peace on the subject, it's your call."

-x-x-x-

(130 minutes since misjump)

Miriallia had no trouble finding the bay where Tolle was stranded in, and had even less trouble finding Tolle since the lights were on but dimmed.

"Mir! You shouldn't have — " Tolle started to say as she approached.

"Don't," Miriallia stopped him mid-sentence. "We need to get you out to the medbay for medical extraction."

"How do we want to do this?" Commander Chevalier asked.

"Can we not do this until we have some medics in the area?" Tolle half-whined.

"Not an option, Tolle. This is about to become a battlefield," Miriallia explained. "Commander, can you do a Fireman's Carry on him?"

"Sounds painful," Tolle whined.

"My back agrees. Our best option right now is a one-man drag," Morgan said. "Thankfully, Kira found an emergency stretcher in the survival kit for that machine he was in, so we have options."

Miriallia sensed something in the area — hostile minds, she quickly determined. "We need to go. Now. Incoming."

"Aww fuck," Tolle groused.

"Here," Morgan rolled out the emergency stretcher bag and positioned it next to Tolle. "This is gonna suck, kid, but it has to happen."

"It won't be happening," a lady warned from the balcony that surrounded the room.

Miriallia and Morgan looked around the balcony areas, and quickly came to the same conclusion. Even if they had Tolle on the drag-stretcher right now, their chances of making it to the door alive were slim, approaching zero. Some fifteen troops were occupying the catwalks, with at least two that weren't run-of-the-mill troops — one with a whip, the other with some kind of older assault rifle.

"So much for thinking we had the time to do a rescue," Morgan said.

"Happy thought," Miriallia replied with a sigh. "Another Archangel Team day."

"Hands up or we'll shoot!" the lady in the purple dress with the assault rifle ordered.

Morgan and Miriallia both put their hands up as ordered. "Somehow, wasn't expecting her to threaten throwing a pillow at us," Morgan said deadpan.

"Yeah, no, of course they'd go with the obvious consequence. No creativity in threatening skills, you know?" Miriallia said.

"Whatever happened to the good old days, opposing forces that were both inventive and dangerous?" Morgan asked nobody in particular. "Even ZAFT went straight to guns, nothing really creative from them beyond the whole N-Jammer routine."

"Oh, don't worry," the lady with the whip said as she approached the trio. "I can think of something." The silver-haired pirate dialed a combination into a stray cargo box's control panel, which caused it to open to reveal a large spool of rope. "The three of you will make the perfect bait."

-x-x-x-

(135 minutes after the misjump)

Athrun charged shield-first through the energy barrier, but much against his expectation, it had no effect on the Mercurius.

"Mercurius is inside the field, shuttle clear to enter," Athrun waved them toward.

Mu and Ryback were standing at the feet of some half-sized standing armor unit, utterly undersized to be a proper threat to a Mobile Suit, and Kira was sitting in the cockpit chowing on survival rations (likely 'borrowed' from the supply cache of the machine in question). Murrue put the shuttle down next to the walking unit, and as soon as landed she popped the doors open to release the troops.

"Commander La Flaga, what is the disposition of the enemy?" Star Commander Natalya asked after she disembarked the shuttle.

"Miriallia and Chevalier went into the corridors to try to rescue Tolle. No radio contact for the past five minutes," Mu said. "I'm hoping it's just where they are, not that anything has happened to them. Radio reception is hit and miss in this ship."

"We shall find them," Natalya assured the Commander.

"I loaded extra gearsets into the shuttle," Murrue said as she came out. "Arms and armor, guys. We've got a ship to sweep."

"Hell yes!" Chief Petty Officer Oakes said.

"At least one of them is reasonably competent, Captain. Watch out for the wench in the purple dress," Master Chief Ryback said as he passed by her to enter the shuttle.

"Purple dress? This I have to see," Murrue groused. She tried settling her shoulders on her armor vest, but it wouldn't adjust. "Mu, can you loosen up the shoulder straps on my armor? This thing is riding too high."

"Not the shoulders," Mu said. He reached for and adjusted the side plate carriers to give her a little more forward to rear dimension. Once loosed, the body armor dropped down to proper fit and he locked down the side plate adjustments again. "Be out in a minute, dear."

Newman was the last departure out of the boarding team to come out of the shuttle, and with him came his 'little friend'. "Ready for action, Captain."

"You're on the right ship for it." Kira said as he approached the Captain. "I've been through the central cargo hold, that's where they will probably try to lay an ambush for us. Newman, if I can get you up on the catwalks, can you counter their trap?"

"Easily," Newman judged.

"Kira, gear up and move out, you're escort for Newman," Murrue ordered. "Get us some intel on what we're walking into, and use only radio 5-1. They probably have the other frequencies tapped."

"Five-one, got it," Kira said before he bolted into the shuttle to claim his gear.

Murrue looked around at the mobile unit bay of this half of the ship. "Someone had the right idea, but the wrong execution. These units aren't large enough to carry any heavy firepower, I'd guess."

"They all have melee weapons as their primary," Mu declared as he stepped out of the shuttle with his armor and AK ready. "Have you learned anything about them?"

"Yeah, according to them, our crew is impossible," Murrue said. "Mixing ladies and men in one ship is unheard of in their societies."

"Old-world tendencies? Women are not combatants?" Mu asked, scratching his head about the matter.

"No, worse. This is the battle of the sexes cranked up past eleven. It's a full-on gender war between the men of the planet Tarak and the women of the planet Meijere. And apparently we stumbled into a battle between female pirates and the Tarak navy."

Mu couldn't help but sigh and cradle his forehead in hand. "Oh man, it's like we're dropped in the middle of a class of third graders with orders to bring order to chaos and prove that cooties don't exist."

"That and worse. They didn't even want to be in the same cell block with each other," Terra said. "One of the pilots I captured threatened me with war crimes charges for putting a man in the same brig as twenty other ladies."

"Fat lot of good that would do, coming from pirates," Ryback said before he pulled the charging handle back on a Thompson. Once locked open, he was ready to rock. "The run-of-the-mill troopers carry some kind of light beam rifle, nothing spectacular in terms of damage. It will pockmark the walls, but not much more than that. Our pistol rounds bounce, which doesn't say much."

"It's also very good at revealing their position," Kira said. "I was able to wound or drop a lady in darkness because her rifle very accurately pointed out her location."

"Good to know," Murrue said as Kira did a rock-and-lock (3) on a fresh magazine of AK ammo for his rifle. The Strike Freedom pilot yanked the charging handle and put the weapon on safe immediately thereafter.

Captain, they have Chevalier, Tolle and myself held captive in the central cargo bay, Murrue heard by telepathy from Miriallia.

Hang on, Miriallia, we're coming to you, Murrue replied by telepathy. How are Tolle's injuries?

Don't know, he's unconscious from the pain of them moving him, Miriallia said.

Murrue grimaced. We'll be there soon enough. Hang on!

Not like we have a choice in the matter, Miriallia said cryptically.

"Kira, Newman, you are a go. We'll give you sixty seconds of lead time to find a way up a deck to enter the balcony." Murrue yanked the charging handle back on her Thompson. "Sixty seconds, people. Cock 'em, lock 'em, and get ready to rock!"

-x-x-x-

(140 minutes after misjump)

"Why is the old Creedence Clearwater Revival song 'Fortunate Son' echoing in my head right now?" Tolle asked. "My media player is turned off, so that ain't it."

"Because you definitely aren't the 'Fortunate Son'," Miriallia pointed out. "In fact, you're just as screwed right now as I am."

"Always a pleasure to be in honored company," Tolle said with some dejection.

"Relax, I'm sensing something," Chevalier said. "Bit of a fast friend and some assistants, such as they are."

"I hear you," Miriallia said. "Listen listen!"

"What the hell are those?" the lady in purple asked as the echoing sound became louder and louder.

"Sounds a bit off, but that is definitely the sound of Elementals on the move," Morgan said.

Miriallia, looking in the direction of the sound from the Elementals, noticed something in the shadows of the hallway on the balcony level. After staring at the heavily-shadowed figure, she could just barely pick out the outline of a certain sniper rifle…

-x-

"Command, Overwatch, tangos are spread around the catwalks pretty well, some have cover, most don't. I have clear shot to both the tango commander and the lady with the purple dress."

"Anything special we need to know about?" Murrue asked.

"The one with the purple dress has an M-16 or similar, what looks like a Sig-Sauer pistol. She has no clue I'm here."

"Got it. Any sign of the hostages?" Murrue asked.

"Plenty. They're hanging around the area, but should be out of any fire lanes for the shooting match," Kira said.

"Got it. All units, advance on the bay."

-x-

Natalya led the charge into the bay, with two Elementals on her flanks. The other entrance taken was taken by the last two of her point.

"Relent, pirates! Release our crewmembers or suffer the Archangel's wrath!" Natalya shouted as her troop came to a stop just inside the bay.

"What in the name — what are those things?" a lady with silver hair asked as the last two Elementals entered the bay, and four Infantry troops took up positions behind the troopers.

"Oh yeah! The big guns are on deck! Whoo hoo!" Tolle shouted from his position in the center of the action.

Natalya looked up to where she had heard the pilot, and found herself a bit aghast at the treatment of a wounded prisoner. "What manner of dezgra conduct is this? Hanging a wounded bondsman from the ceiling rafters as a threat to the rest of the crew?"

"Not at all," the lady with the silver hair said. "Just keeping them tied up and out of the way for us to settle the matter. We started this day in an attempt to capture this ship, looks like we get a bigger haul with your warship."

"The delusion is strong in this freeborn pirate," Elemental Trooper Christos said. "She seems to have forgotten that it is our ship which has boarded hers!"

"And fifteen unarmored infantry on a catwalk are no threat to a point of Elementals backed by Marines," Natalya commented with some hubris to voice. "I advise you to stand down, pirates, before you find yourself in a battle for which you are unprepared."

-x-

"Do we test it, Captain?" Barnett asked.

"No, it would appear they have the right of it. We're not prepared for combat against professionals," the elder lady said. "We're being watched by a couple of very serious fellows across the catwalks."

"What?" BC looked to the corridor that Magno was referring to, and gasped after five seconds. They all had singularly failed to see a sniper take up position with a clear field of fire to where they were standing, which was a bad circumstance.

"Oh, not good. That's a legendary sniper rifle, the Barrett M82. If the shooter is competent, it can kill us at twice the length of the ship," Barnett said.

"AaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH! I'm gonna go crazy from this!" some teen-age guy shouted as he ran from the starboard lower access, across the middle of the standoff ground, and into the port-side access corridor.

"Mister Alien!" the pursuing lady shouted as she kept on his heels but not close enough to properly latch onto him.

"Dita? Why is she — " Buson asked, but was stopped by an outstretched hand from Magno.

"Let it go, BC. I think this is something that will have to be worked through sooner rather than later. And they are proof of it," Magno pointed to the Elementals and the bevy of troops in close proximity. "Boarding team! Are you willing to parley?"

"You stand down your forces, we'll talk," one of the guys on the far side of the bay shouted in response.

"Make it happen, BC," Magno ordered.

"Aye, Captain." Buson looked around the bay. "Stand down and sling your rifles! Janice, Brandy, let the prisoners down slowly!"

"Ryback, Oakes, receive and release the prisoners, then evacuate Koenig for medical dustoff," a lady on the far side of the bay ordered. "Newman, Yamato, come on out!"

"And that's why we couldn't win," Magno said. "If they brought a sniper to the fight, they knew what they were getting into," she said as a sniper and an escort trooper appeared in the mouth of the opposite corridor. Both troopers had their rifles at low ready, which meant they could easily quick-scope anyone on the Catwalk they wanted to.

-x-x-x-

(155 minutes after misjump)

"Not a professional crew, but disciplined."

"Aye, Captain," Chevalier commented dryly. "And spirited. Not a hard face in the crew, so far as I can see."

"We've got a lot of work to do, though, on our own ship, but we can offer technical assistance to their crew as needed," Commander La Flaga said.

"Listen up," Murrue prompted them. "Chevalier, Mu, head back to our ship with the shuttle. Mu, take command of the Archangel and start assessing the status of the ship. Chevalier, extract the prisoners and load them up for transport back here. It looks like this whole thing is a massive cluster, not a malicious action on either ships' part. We'll ask them for the same courtesy, I don't expect we'll have too much resistance on that note."

"You won't, especially if you're planning to preemptively release our crewmembers that were displaced to your ship," the silver-haired lady with the whip said.

"Mu, Morgan, make it happen. Also, have Sai find Yzak and Nicol and the two of them need to run an astro-location pattern. I get the feeling we're nowhere near Earth," Murrue said.

"We're on it," Mu answered with a quick salute before he and Morgan turned to leave.

"You want Kira over here, or back on the ship?" Morgan asked before he passed back through the entry corridor.

"Here, have Kira relay any word from the ship," Murrue said.

"On it, Captain." Morgan headed down the corridor, leaving Murrue, Miriallia and the troops on the ground with the Pirate Captain and her 2-I-C.

"They all appear to be stood down," Natalya said. "Still, there are more of them now than were in place when this engagement started."

"Not worried about it," Murrue said as the Pirate Captain shuffled slowly closer. "I'm reasonably sure this was more accident than direct action."

"This was definitely not any deliberate action on our part," the Pirate 2-I-C said. "We don't even know what caused it, whatever 'it' is in this case."

"The blue flash was probably same or similar of this blue crystal," Murrue pointed to it on the wall to her left and to the Pirate's right. "That's what started the mess, but I think what jumbled the crews was an unsynchronized jump from our ship."

"Sounds like your ship has a few tricks up its sleeves," the elder lady said. "Magno Vivan, Pirate Captain. This is Buson Calessa, my Second. BC for short. You are?"

"Captain Murrue Ramius, Combat Information Center Commander Miriallia Haww," Murrue indicated herself and Miri. "If you'll excuse things starting off on a bad foot, I have to reassemble my crew somehow."

"No comrade left behind," BC put words to the position.

"Always," Murrue said. "And, as your crew was displaced, we intend to return them without ransom. Have you swept your ship for stragglers?"

"We don't have enough personnel to do a ship sweep," BC admitted. "We ran a tight crew; losing half of it does not allow us to do a full inspection."

"Will you need extra personnel?" Murrue asked, deliberately avoiding the use of the word 'manpower' given what she already knew and suspected about local customs and gender mannerisms.

Buson shook her head. "We should be able to manage once we have our full crew back. We did capture some, they're in the ship's brig."

Miriallia recognized the presence of a tough question from BC that she was forcing herself not to ask, but it was Murrue that acted on that realization first. "If you want to ask something, Miss Calessa, feel free to. We'll have a couple questions of our own, so fair is fair."

BC nodded twice to the point. "What exactly is your ship? I've never seen a ship of this type, never heard of your unit, nothing. If you don't mind explaining, that is."

"Not at all, we get that question a lot," Murrue said. "We're interdimensional wanderers, technically. Our ship was a military asset, an atmospheric assault ship, but we were accidentally pulled by magic — literal magic powers — to another dimension and another world for a very messy and tragic quest. And our adventures have only become worse from there."

"We're trying to find our way home," Miriallia cut to the heart of the matter. "Partially just to get home, partially to see where we land next. In the meantime, we usually do work as mercenaries wherever we land."

"Mercenaries," Magno said with a raised eyebrow, making it more of a question than a comment.

"A ship of our size and type, it takes a lot of material and finance to keep it running," Murrue explained. "On the other hand, a lot of groups have paid top-dollar to rent out our capabilities for their local problems, so it works out."

"That makes sense," BC said. "Kind of like our pirate work."

"Gotta pay the bills somehow," Miriallia said with a knowing smile.

The radio crackled. "Captain, Kira, radio relay from the Archangel: the Scientists think the blue crystal is some kind of living energy being constructed of Dark Energy. The crystalline extensions throughout the lower decks of the ship are possibly body segments or tendrils. They also suspect it tripped the Jump Engine inadvertently when the crystal accidentally charged it up. Also, Chandratta reports that the weapons grid on the ship is partially functional right now, but the hull is being worked over by the crystal from the inside out. Lastly, Sai is reporting that the unidentified ships have fused themselves together with the blue crystal completely enshelling the new composite ship."

Magno grunted in a curious fashion. "It would appear our ship has fused with the older Male ship. This may take some getting used to."

Murrue activated her radio handset. "Kira, find an intercom panel and hot-wire it to do an all-call around the ship to call our crewmembers out. Have them head toward the stern and down toward the bottom decks of the ship, which will put them here in the old Male ship section."

"Can do, Captain," Kira said. BC grimaced when she heard the response from the pilot.

The guy running away from the girl had come back again, this time not running but still carrying the large white object. "What is going on here?" he asked after a few moments of seeing the two crews effectively standing off.

The ship's intercom crackled. "Attention all Archangel Team personnel, attention all Archangel Team personnel, this is Kira Yamato. Please move toward the stern of the ship and down to lower decks. Repeat, please move to the stern of the ship and down to lower decks. Do not engage foreign personnel, we are not in combat against the unidentified ship. Repeat, do not engage foreign personnel."

"What is going on here?" the guy asked again.

"Yours?" Murrue asked, pointing at him.

"Not one of ours," BC said.

"I think we'll adopt the little rascal, if he's willing to prove himself," Magno said. "After all, looking at your crew, it's obvious that a mixed crew can exist."

Murrue scratched her head, trying to form a politic phrasing to the question she wanted to ask, but was interrupted by a pile of boxes collapsing after someone shoved through them. "Gomer?" Miriallia asked after she caught sight of the crewman.

Gomer dropped to his knees and put two fists in the air. "WHOOOOO! I LIVE!" he shouted.

"Huh?" Captain Ramius, Captain Vivon, and BC asked simultaneously.

"The engine spaces in this ship are a maze! I doubt a human designed this ship, there's no logic to it whatsoever," Gomer said as he stood up. "Where do you want me, Cap'n?"

"Evac is toward the stern," Murrue pointed down the corridor. "Anyone else?"

"Ran into a couple'a kids, typical girl-chases-guy thing, nothing special. Also ran into a doc, kinda quiet guy, he was surprised to find other men on the ship."

"Got it. Get moving," Murrue said.

"Aye aye," he said, given that he had seen the whip carried by BC and that his usual 'whips and chains' declaration would not be a good thing to ask for.

"Eccentric crewman," Magno said.

"Our Hangar Mechanics are a bit of a funny bunch," Murrue said.

It would be the appearance of unusualness that started their two crews headed in a similar direction...

Author's Chapter Afterword:

---

And here is where the major scoreboard work changes out.

Not a huge amount to say so far about this section. You noticed the hull of the Archangel groaning and creaking quite a bit? Good. Keep that in mind for the next couple chapters. Things are about to get quite a bit weird. And things will be changing around quite a bit as well. Stay tuned for further, and stay tuned for a new TRO given the massive changes.

Onto the main meat of the chapter, the disjointed crews. This was, as guessed, a product of the unsynchronized jump that jumbled the contents of the two ships. That will definitely cause some heartburn for both crew groups when they discover missing materials and have to swap them out. The personnel are not a swap; Murrue would not hold part of a non-hostile crew, that would be unacceptable. Magni is at least that reasonable, so things are quickly hashed out from there.

As to the status of coming attractions, well, let's just say that Dita and Hibiki have much to learn, as do the rest of the crew of the not-yet-named Pirate ship. This is going to be a massive learning experience for everyone, and you're along for the ride. Coincidentally, this place may teach a few of the Archangel Crew how to drink whiskey, vodka, rum, or MD in quantity, especially when Bart says something stupid or the Dread pilots start asking some strange questions…

Now, there are a few missing bodies so far. Don't worry, the jumble did not space anyone. Those persons are caught in locations that they cannot readily escape, and part of next chapter will cover that. Also, one of the foreshadows in the front section includes a mystery guest KIA by the jump. That is deliberate on my part, and he will be discovered next chapter as well. Stay tuned for further on this note.

Don't have much else to say at this time. We'll cover the rest in the next chapter.

NEXT UP: Growing pains, growing pains. Two ships undergoing massive changes will have much to learn about themselves and about each other...

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Review Replies: I had three FFN pages of reviews for this last chapter — that is a total of 45 reviews between chapters. F'kin awesome! MUCH THANK YOU ALL!

Hashiriya R32: The destination is now writ; what say you?

Yes, the dice are unforgiving. Man, somedays they are really unforgiving.

Mordalfus Grea: There are more than a few options for fantasy, and that is one of them. Thanks for the recommend!

Hellhound D O W: Your analysis on the EA and ZAFT is spot on. A couple more sections and they could almost one-ship the entire EA as of when they departed the SEED universe.

Terrace 4: Toga, Toga, Toga, Toga … :)

Arbl A-17: The length of writing is because I rotate material to avoid burning myself out on anything. I try to get around the loop as fast as possible, but I do have limitations.

llat-2: He speaks the truth, and very often it is unwise to speak the truth on a party line with powerful people listening in.

X-over: I aim to please :)

c0dy88: May there be recognizable hijinks in this chapter and many more :)

Mega 1987: Never underestimate the power of pooch-screwing D100 rolls. As much as I think I have an idea how far this will go, the dice can and will change the name of the game.

DS Gundam 00: Was this chapter and location what you were expecting?

Dark Phoenix Jake: This is where things begin on the tangent, so I hope the start has met your expectations :)

CHM 01: Torpedoes are kinda like standard missiles, but slower and with larger warheads. Applies to space as well.

Location should be fairly obvious now :)

Avtar Angel: You are going to re-read? I consider that the highest honor! Much thank you!

Hope this section clarifies where the ship has landed!

One Village Idiot: Given that you are part of my Beta Reader group now, you are cleared to ask any such questions during document writing. You know where and when to find me, amigo :)

Infinite Freedom: Good solid guess, but not quite. This one goes a bit farther back. Hope the chapter is both enlightening and entertaining!

Sky EXE: Nice guess, but not entirely accurate. Thanks!

Gaelic Dragon 2000: Yes, there will be many beers or harder shots done in coming chapters. Many.

Deathzealot: I hope the amusement has begun for you already :)

Biggz 1334: Yeppers :)

Rydan Fall: I will not yet speak of upgrades, but they had started with this chapter and will only get more extensive. Thanks for the long brick of ideas!

Synbad: 1. Not a hard guess to make, eh? 2. The Atma Weapon is a wildly different animal from a lightsaber, and there will be some horror show to come on that front.

Holy Dragoon: Hope this chapter clears up any confusion. And there will be more crewmembers.

Reishin Amara: You laugh now, you may not be laughing once my personal brand of hardass hammers Vandread into the AAA-shaped peg slot. Hope you're enjoying this so far!

CrazyHawke81: I hope my turnout on Sigma stories and the side-stories for Jokers Wild has been ample. And I hope you enjoy this chapter!

ZeroAcception: I hope this chapter answers that question thoroughly.

GreatZero: My apologies for the delay, but my writing schedule has been a bit off kilter. I'm working on normalizing.

Winblades: Thanks for the accolades! Always a pleasure to hear that someone thinks I'm stacking up in the neighborhood of professional authors. That is plenty motivation to push it harder in my opinion!

Don't worry on the magic front, there will be more development amongst the Magic Knights / Magic Squires.

NHO: Well, the nursery may change soon enough.

Ship Girl? Nah, I think I may have other plans in place for that. If the dice say so.

Thanks for the suggestions!

sabakunoyokho: Yep, you guessed right. Thanks for the suggestions, at least one of your ideas hit pretty close to accurate to a coming plan of mine.

Dragoon 725: Much thank you for the lengthy review!

I have more than a few plans for upgrade series, so stay tuned for the next chapter while the ship works its way through the systems modifications.

Cyspark 01: The Tonberries are going to get their noise in the next chapter, and you will find them very adept at multiple forms of magic.

KPhoenix: That is an artifact of my writing and planning style: Everything I write has a long plotline, and events earlier in the series echo well into the future. Of course, the Dice generate their own little plot twists, so I have to calculate for those, but…

The example you cite, the thugs that were blinded in the MMC, they did make some noise — they gave Keiko Yamamoto a clear look by telepathy at the Divine Mage / "Kitsune" which enabled them to more easily track down and confront him, which set off the chain reaction of events that resulted in the IJA gas attack.

Nothing lousy about your review or your guesses. Much obliged for them! Extra plot thoughts are always welcomed!

AznPuffyHair: Your analysis on why the Archangel's contract was terminated is 100 percent accurate.

Terra's sword is the Atmaweapon from FF6, though as with all such stories, there may be more here than meets the eye. I'll leave that one out of full explanation for the time being.

As to The White Wind Movement, your guess is quite correct, but as with all such things, the story is always a bit longer.

Thanks!

KingDark: I have undergone a writing shift since I started AAA, and I really need to go through and correct everything to proper tense.

Gundam Chief: Yeah, everyone hits the obvious series, but much thank you for the not-so-obvious ones!

Axcel (Chap 5): Your analysis is correct, though the denable operations group is a different twist from most hashing of the story I have seen.

Axcel (Chap 9): On this one we are going to have to disagree. My points:

1): Battlemechs and BT tanks routinely shoot down aerofighters, which are both armored and a helluva lot faster than any ground-bound MS would be. That without any kind of special TTS for targeting Aerofighters; dedicated ADA 'mechs or ground armor are yet more lethal to aerospace assets.

2): MS Beam rifles, after some calculation (courtesy of the Best Warship Forum in FFN) is on the order of 50 MJ. Some years ago, I did the math on the striking power of a Battletech PPC and it came out to roughly 200 MJ on target, or technically 20 MJ per point of BT damage. Another thing to consider: a one-ton aerial bomb (standard) is a ten-point hit, so that gives you a rough idea what the armor does in BT (FYI: the center chest armor on the Stone Rhino can take four one-ton bombs and still have armor left over).

3): You just made wrapped up my point at the end of your review.

Axcel (Chap 30): That is one way to look at it, never considered that angle. Cheers!

Axcel (Chap 30): Yeppers :)

Axcel (Chap 37): You won't see anything of that nature in this story, but in the Jokers Wild and much later in the Sigma Mercenaries you will see quite a few custom Mobile Armors.

Axcel (Chap 40): Technically true, on the caveat that medical attention is available shortly thereafter. FoZ is a bit thin on medical work, so...

Axcel (Chap 41): That would have been a sight, but the dice cut the FoZ short...

Arm514ve: Thanks for the apropos! Hope this first chapter matches what you want to see in this series!

Ovrwrldkiler: The Familiar Of Zero crossover work comes in at the end of the existing story. I list the story as a crossover of the present location and Anime X-overs to inform users where they are.

FREAKING AWESOME REVIEWS! MUCH THANK YOU ALL! Keep this fuel coming, I keep the fires burning!

---

The Gripe Sheet:

One minor incorrect word usage, otherwise the only gripes were about the cliffhanger. Hearty thanks to One Village Idiot, Necroblade, Sieben Nightwing, and Takeshi Yamato for keeping the writing straightened out!

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Footnotes:

(1): Homage to Under Siege 2: Dark Territory.

(2): The 1911 has seven rounds in a normal (Mil-Spec) magazine, and when loaded with one in the chamber and a full magazine, is an 8-round pistol.

(3): Rock-and-lock refers to feeding a magazine into the AK platform. Rather than the usual insert-and-slap procedure of most NATO-bloc rifles, which presumes the magazine goes straight in and is tapped to ensure a lock, the AK is fed by inserting the front tip of the magazine into the mag well, then is Rocked backwards and up until it Locks into place. The speed difference between the two feed methods is negligible in the hands of properly trained users.