Intrusion

Lagrange 4

The Gundam Harute halted a hundred meters away from the asteroid base of Lagrange 4 and charged its twin cannons as the yellow mobile suits of unknown faction approached well over the speed of sound. The CIC operator in the control centre tried to hail the mobile suits through every channel they had, only to hear the response of nonsense blabbering from their programming. Allelujah didn't like the sound of it, and all that's between his finger and the trigger was the permission to engage from the control centre.

"Unknown mobile suits, this is your final warning. Leave the airspace at once or be shot down." Yet the yellow dots showed no signs of deviation, or even and willingness to talk to them, leaving the operator with no other choice but to order Allelujah to go weapons free. Once he got the word the cannons of the Harute II started glowing in a pink bright enough for both the control officers and the mobile suits to notice it. The mobile suits instinctively scattered as one of the beams hurtled towards them, just as Allelujah predicted. As a counter he pointed the other cannon off his right, allowing him to score a hit on one of them and triggering an eerily silent explosion.

One of the mobile suits transformed and revealed a built-in rifle, while the surviving two made a run for the incomplete Harute II now hovering in position, its cannons ready to take another shot. With the encouraging music still playing inside the cockpit, Allelujah was able to score another shot at an incoming mobile suit.

His victory was short lived, however, as a third mobile suit came out of nowhere and started pounding the E-carbon armour of his with its fists and its cannon mounted on the right arm. Allelujah quickly shook the enemy off and ignited Harute II's beam saber, but missed when the yellow mobile suit suddenly sped out of melee range, forcing him to use his non-dominant arm to keep up with the unfriendly presence of hostile mobile suits.


"Don't worry about the transforming mechanism. Just put a weapon on the Ahriman. Hurry up!" Linda ordered anxiously as the chatter in the control centre only grew more intense. It was told that their base's position was already given away, but before they abandon it both Linda and Marie knew they must make a stand, even if it's with mobile suits that weren't even halfway finished.

"CBS-74 Ptolemy! Do you read us, over!" The same officer that directed Harute II's launch cried nervously, but once again her efforts were in vain as the only response was static. Although Allelujah's still alive and well, there's no telling whether he could keep it this way, and all the turrets were doing was distract the enemy and give them another bullseye to shoot at.

Marie, getting more and more desperate as time flew, decided to take matter to her own hands and started piecing a salvaged rifle for her mobile suit together. The manipulator arm now switched to manual control slowly moved a GN blade from the training base's reserve racks under a beam rifle that apparently once belonged to the very faction that had a grudge with Celestial Being...the Earth Sphere Federation. The very government created to respond to Celestial Being's armed interventions, and the government currently ruling over planet Earth.

"Done! Can it sortie now?" Marie launched her foot onto a railing next to the arm's controls, sending her drifting back towards the Ahriman while a Haro unit took her place and moved the weapon right next to the new Gundam.

"Well the essentials are in place, but…" Linda was cut off by the hyperactive super soldier. "No buts. I'm launching now, as long as this functions."

Linda was about to protest, but when she heard Allelujah's grimacing yet again through comms she knew there was only one thing that might get them all out of this mess. So reluctantly she helped Marie into the hatch of the Ahriman, and passed her crimson helmet to her. "Don't overdo it. We're already lacking parts for this thing." She warned, her tone never stern to such a level which shook Marie.

"Noted." Marie shut the hatch once she was the only one inside Ahriman's cockpit, and stepped onto the launch catapult only after her machine's heads-up display was activated. Normally she'd have to take a deep breath before firing herself out into space, but thanks to her years of experience as a pilot that was no longer absolutely necessary. "Gundam Ahriman, Soma Peries, launching!" She shouted after her tougher and more headstrong persona took over the Marie inside her. If there's one thing the Marie persona couldn't do, it was fighting. But she knew who could, and that would be her other set of personality, Soma Peries.

Her orders were quite specific. Remain near the Lagrange station and act as a replacement for the stationary turrets to keep them from getting shot at, as well as watching Allelujah's back while he would try to lure the last two mobile suits closer. "Won't mind if you help me out, Marie!" Allelujah requested after missing a shot. To his horror all he could do was further angering the yellow mobile suits which have barely missed his efforts to take them down. And revealing their fury red eyeball on the left of their chassis, both of them made a charge for the Harute II, leaving Allelujah in a very unfavourable position.

But they miscalculated one thing as well, Marie, as well as her Ahriman. She calmly pointed the shortened rifle at the nearest mobile suit, and pulled down the trigger on her right joystick until she saw fragments of yellow flying past Allelujah. The last one was now at Allelujah's mercy. Though Allelujah was long used to killing anyone that posed hostility to Celestial Being, his persona was smart enough to use nothing more than fists, until he was sure the yellow mobile suit with a seemingly transformable chassis was totally immobilised.

"Got them." He painted breathlessly as if the Harute was running out of oxygen. Marie, or Soma at the moment, was in fact quite stable. And as a result she was able to reply with full sentences. "You don't sound good." She pointed out.

"And you're flying out in a skeleton." Allelujah joked upon seeing the Ahriman that has only half of its armour on. He picked up the wreckage floating in front of his mobile suit, and followed Marie back to their home base as soon as he made sure he didn't get any wounds, both externally and internally.


The battleship coated in blue and white paint along with a thin GN field lay motionless in the training station, with half its crew inside the maintenance hangar which was vacant so as to offer space to investigate the recent attacks of the yellow mobile suits. Ian had been scrounging through the wreckage for the past hour, but his response to his findings were more or less the same. "More electronics?"

"This is definitely automated." Lyle Dylandy, the Gundam Meister designated to marksman duty, commented as Ian pulled out the nearly destroyed eyeball of the mobile suit, revealing its black box which recorded its every programming, provided that it wasn't already deleted when Allelujah disabled it.

"This one! This is all we need." Ian called out. "Smelt the rest of it. We're gonna need parts." He ordered while leading the Meisters, including those who weren't already officially appointed by Veda. Upon hearing the irregular footsteps outside the sick bay Allelujah bolted upright and followed, despite the endless objections of the medical Haro units. He nearly tripped over a cord as he left the room, startling Lyle right beyond the door.

Allelujah hurriedly closed the door behind him, still wearing a white medical coat and plimsolls that made him stand out. "Thought you panicked somewhere along the way." Lyle joked.

"Did not. What is all this?" He protested.

"Ian-san found a blackbox of the mobile suit that attacked you. We're going to decode it and see what's in that thing." Lyle explained. "You better go help your girlfriend instead."

Out of nowhere Allelujah felt the urge to give his partner a good one, and decided he will, but only after things were settled. As soon as Lyle made sure he had disappeared he hurried up to Setsuna's side, who was as quite as he always was. "You still haven't told me what ticked you off when you first came back." He demanded.

"It's private." He replied flatly, trying not to show his unsolved inner turmoil.

"You don't actually have to come, Setsuna. There won't be anything to tell you until this black box is decoded anyway." Ian added as a way of encouraging Setsuna to open himself again, like he tried to do after the deadly fights above Lagrange 2. Without any reason to object, Setsuna lead Lyle to a corridor with windows on one side and handlebars to cope with zero gravity on the other. He paused halfway, and turned to Lyle who was already getting curious to hear his story.

"Did anyone ever mention Feldt's becoming a Gundam Meister?" Setsuna asked sternly.

Lyle was having a hard time going through his memory log for a moment, but then out of the blue he decided to have a little fun. "Well, you just mentioned it." He replied casually.

"I'm being serious, Lockon." Somehow Setsuna decided to use Lyle's codename, Lockon Stratos. In fact Setsuna wasn't the real name of the boy having mental issues either, but he'd rather not mention it. "This is no laughing matter." He reminded.

"Alright, no one. But why mention all of a sudden?" Asked Lyle.

"I can't stop thinking of her."

If there's one thing Lyle never saw coming, it was this. A simple, open response to a seemingly sensitive matter. Come to think of it, not even Lyle had the balls to open up his feelings to anyone, not to mention the woman he loved when she was still loyal to Celestial Being. That was until before one battle when he realised he might lose his life if he keeps flying a Gundam out into space to fight.

"Why not? I definitely have no right to answer you for that." But then Lyle's 'experience' flashed in front of him, and instantly made him burst out laughing. "This isn't what I think it is, right? I'm so happy for you. You have something I don't." He joked.

"I don't get it." Setsuna replied.

"Let me get this straight," Lyle finally managed to keep himself under control. "I think you shouldn't waste time on me." He stated, only to confuse Setsuna even further. "You spend time with her while you're still alive. I don't know how, but that's what my guts are saying."

"Now it makes a lot of sense."

"Hell. If you got the nerves you can even propose right before deploying, like I did." Lyle grinned as he pictured the day he shouted out those three words that'll shock the living daylights out of every bridge crew of Ptolemy, and so did Setsuna after he remembered listening to the crew's reaction to the sudden declaration of his.

And for the next few minutes Setsuna stood in place like a statue, wondering just what could he do for the pink haired girl, or rather, woman.