littlemssstrawberry: What happens in the next battle ain't that different from canon. Some changes though. ^^
Toby: I don't get Flay bashing either. I don't think she was written as well as she could've been but I think she developed really well over the course of the story. Her action aren't justifiable but they are understandable.
animefan29: I corrected the 8th Fleet mistake. And I hope you do enjoy this chapter, it took a lot of work to write! XD
Light-Sakura: Hehe, that was precisely the point of that moment right there.
Gazer-Blitz: Hope you enjoy not only this chapter, but the rest of them!
An anecdote that I made on the MAHQ forums: over the course of writing this fic, Cagalli's voice to me has changed. It used to be Vanessa Morley's (the English dub VA) but starting with chapter 3, her voice started turning into Jennifer Hale's. I dunno why. By chapter 8 the voice pretty much was Hale. There's just something bitter in Cagalli's voice as I write her that turned her from Vanessa Morley into Jennifer Hale. I don't know if it's affected the fic all that much, but it's definitely affected how I approach writing the character.
Do you guys think Ms. Hale would make a good Cagalli?
Eh, whatever. Time for explosions and whatnot. Whee!
EDIT: Fixed the words stuck together too. Double whee. Thanks Light-Sakura.
Chapter Sixteen: Shut Up and Explode
Kira's words haunted me into the next day. I had been so sure, at the time of the conversation, that I could handle one more fight. One last battle to protect the Archangel. I had the best weapon, well, one of the five best, anyway, on either side of the conflict. I could annihilate GINNs at will instead of struggling for every kill like an ordinary Mobile Armor pilot. And I had the best tech support I could ask for.
Rumors had spread across the ship that we were close to linking up with the Eighth Fleet. The cafeteria was filled with discussions over finally getting off of this ship, over finally being able to come home.
Most of the Orb civilians were smiling. Their suffering, their struggles, their chafing under the strict orders of a foreign military, it was coming to an end. They were done playing soldier. They wanted to go home, live in peace, pretend this never happened. They wanted to see their families again.
One civilian wasn't smiling: Flay. Unlike everyone else, she wasn't going to regain what she lost just by going home. There was no one waiting for her, and I was sure Flay was not looking forward to seeing her friends. I wondered if those friends, shallow and perky and self-absorbed in their superficial lives, meant anything to Flay now. I doubted it. One snappy comment and those friends would abandon Flay.
The soldiers had more mixed emotions, especially the Artemis personnel, identifiable because of their different flags on their uniforms and their foreign languages. There was no escaping the war for them. Most of them wouldn't be staying on the Archangel, unless they were dedicated crew like Natarle Badgiruel. Murrue Ramius had been in charge of the GUNDAMs, and Mu La Flaga was a pilot, they would be deployed elsewhere.
As for the Artemis soldiers, they looked nervous. The pilots I had saved were, of course, dead, but the remaining twenty or so had to be pondering their futures. How would they be able to explain what they did at Artemis, trying to take control of the Archangel and attempting to take the crew hostage? The Atlantic Federation wasn't going to be real happy about that. They were going to be taken off the career path at the very least, and see court-martials at the worst.
I guess that leaves me.
Garcia's words again mean something. I am unique. I am a rare Coordinator who chose to fight against her own kind. It doesn't matter what my reasons are. What matters is that I did. Not only then, but I'm really good at killing my own kind. That makes me even more valuable. The Earth Alliance will do anything to have me, or, perhaps, even make sure that if they can't have me, no one can.
I'm not naive enough to think that the Earth Alliance are the "good guys" in this war. Even if I did, Artemis was a hell of a wake-up call anyway.
Who knew what was going to happen to me. I was finally going to see my parents again, though, and I already had made up my mind on what I was going to do.
I had spent the last several years at a school far away from them. The Coordinator academy on the moon was done because I wanted to challenge myself, and I wanted to show I was just as good, if not better, than your average Coordinator. Just because I was from Orb didn't mean I was a stupid or inferior Coordinator like a lot of Coordinators think. I was determined to make my parents proud of me, make my kind take notice of me, and perhaps most important, accomplish a goal for myself.
Even when I started attending Orb schools, I was away from my parents. Heliopolis isn't exactly across the street, you know. It's still in orbit, and it's still expensive to fly from orbit down to Earth and vice versa.
I was thinking I had enough of that. I was going to find a college close by and live with my parents again. They were going to be so happy to see me, when I finally made it to them.
I was thinking it was time the three of us lived like a family again.
As I ate the cafeteria food, possibly pilfered from the ruins of Junius Seven, I felt somebody tugging on my left side. I turned and there was Elle, looking as childishly adorable as ever.
"Hi, Elle. What's up?"
"Mom says we're almost safe," she said.
"She's right. We are. Might have one more battle to get through but we're almost safe," I said. I smiled at her. "We can make it through one more battle, right?"
Elle averted her gaze for a second. "I don't want there to be another battle. I just want this over now."
"Well, hopefully ZAFT is too stupid to figure out where we are," I replied. "Maybe they got lost in the debris belt."
Elle smiled. "That would be great."
"Yeah." Too bad I doubt it.
"My Mom's been in the Gottfried this whole time. It's so exposed, I kept thinking during the last battle that someone was gonna shoot at it."
"My goal is to make people focus on me. I am in the most powerful Mobile Suit out there. ZAFT is going to focus on me, because I'm more of a danger than the Gottfried to them. That simple, Elle. Your mom is not ZAFT's primary enemy out there. I am."
Elle's eyes shimmered. "I see."
"Elle, your mom's going to make it through this, and so will you. Now stay strong. Hopefully nothing will happen and-"
But the alarm rang out, and I felt like chucking my food across the room. Talk about rotten timing.
"All hands, level one battle stations! All civilians, get to your assigned quarters! We have encountered a ZAFT vessel, I repeat, we have encountered a ZAFT vessel! Preparing to engage!"
Murrue's words of doom seemed to echo even more than usual through the loudspeaker in the cafeteria. Immediately, people got up from their tables and tried to hustle out. I knew I had to follow, and not only that, but had to make time. I needed to get my pilot's suit on and be ready to launch within minutes before the ZAFT got a free run at the bridge.
I looked at Elle. "Go to your room. I'll handle this, okay?"
Elle nodded. "Okay. Just don't die."
"I won't. I've come too far to die now. We all have."
I left her then, and went straight for the hangar.
"Cagalli Yamato, Strike GUNDAM, launching!"
I accelerated the Strike out of the hangar bay and propelled it in the general direction of three bogeys. They were quickly identified on my screen as I accelerated away from the Archangel.
It was the Blitz, the Buster, and the Duel. No sign of the Aegis.
So it is Athrun's three stooges.
I had launched in the Aile Pack, which meant I was equipped for medium-range combat. No big melee weapon, though, other than a beam sword. I was going to have to rely on my shooting skills, or lack thereof, for this one.
Not like I had much of a choice. I couldn't take three GUNDAMs with only melee weaponry. I wasn't good enough of a pilot to pull that off.
I remembered Kira's words. I had to avoid "spray 'n' pray". If I ran out of battery charge I was going to be completely, totally screwed. I had taken so many risks already, who knew what would be the risk that would kill me at last.
Speed and hit-and-run tactics. I was really good at manuevering the Strike, that wasn't going to be the primary problem. I had to choose my shots wisely, stop shooting when it was going to be clear I wasn't going to hit anything, and never relax. I could not let my guard down even for a tenth of a second, not against these three.
They weren't Athrun. They would shoot to kill.
In a way, I wished it was Athrun who was facing me here. He I'd be able to distract. If I could tie him up, there would be no real danger facing the Archangel, other than enemy ships. We'd escape easily.
But no. Things didn't work out that way. And now, here came "Nicol", "Yzak", and "Dearka", all eyeing to kill me. Except maybe Nicol. He seemed to be a nice guy and he didn't seem to want to kill me. But he was outvoted here by Yzak and Dearka. And he seemed more practical than Athrun did. And, even though he seemed to have a conscience, Nicol was more than willing to go and murder Garcia and everyone at Artemis.
How good was a person if he was willing to slaughter an entire military base?
Mu joined me then. His Zero had been repaired following the battle with Athrun, there hadn't been any unrepairable damage done to his signature machine. The crew, like the rest of the ship, was a patchwork of Orb refugees and professional soldiers, it was amazing they were able to work together as well as they were.
They wouldn't be able to get Mu off of the ship so soon if there wasn't some real teamwork here.
Even with all of our problems and differences, the mismatched crew of the ship, at least for now, was functioning as a unit. As a team.
The Gamow was in the distance, and starting to take potshots at the Archangel. I cabled Mu. "What should we do about the ship?"
"Nothing,", Mu replied. "Our mission are the GUNDAMs and the GUNDAMs alone. We take them out, we annihilate the ZAFT advantage in high-powered Mobile Suits. The Earth Alliance and ZAFT will be even if we take those three out."
"Yes, sir."
Suddenly, somebody called me on the public channel. It was the Duel.
I thought that Athrun had put them up to contacting me one last time, but that wasn't the case when I accepted the call.
"You," the Duel's pilot said as he appeared on my screen.
"What is it?" I asked.
"You humiliated me at Artemis. I will not be taken lightly by a treacherous Natural-loving bitch like you!"
His words were so predictable, so generic, that I could barely keep from laughing out loud. In this situation, as we were about to fight, why would this guy be so stupid to hail the enemy? Just to issue a crappy challenge like that?
I did the mature thing. I blew a raspberry at him.
His face crinkled in bewilderment. "What the hell is that supposed to be mean?"
"Stop compensating for your lack of manliness. I'm so not impressed."
I could hear laughing on the com. "She got ya there, Yzak."
The angry Duel pilot punched the side of the cockpit. "Shut up, Dearka!"
I saw the Duel was locked on. I smiled as I aimed directly at the cockpit. "Hey, Yzak or whatever your name is! Have you eaten today?"
Yzak, again, looked completely confused? "Huh? Not since breakfast."
"Hope you enjoyed it, because tonight you're dining in hell." I opened fire.
Yzak helped and barely managed to get his machine out of the way in time. Wisely, he killed the communications, and it became a comical game of cat and mouse as I chased the Duel all over space, shooting at it and even scratching the Phase Shift Armor a few times.
I heard Mu then. "Never announce your intentions to the enemy, princess. You could have killed him right there and it would be two-on-two."
He was right, of course. I didn't want to admit it, but he was.
"And, in case it wasn't obvious, stop chatting with the enemy, too."
"Yes, sir."
Miriallia entered the com. "Cagalli, Lieutenant La Flaga. We've gotten in contact with the Eighth Fleet, they're closer than we thought. They're rushing to our position, forward elements will make it in ten minutes. You two must keep the GUNDAMs away for ten minutes-AAH!"
"Miriallia, what's wrong?" I shouted, as I struggled to keep my bearings on the Duel's position. The Duel was recovering from my assault, and starting to shoot back. I wasn't going to have the advantage for much longer.
"The Gamow just hit us!"
"Should we go after the Gamow then?"
Murrue Ramius' voice, strong and sure, spoke instead of Miriallia. "Worry about the GUNDAMs, we'll handle the ship. That's an order."
Mu spoke then. "Princess, Blitz has activated Mirage Celloid. I have no visual, repeat, no visual."
Great. That meant that Blitz was going to be sneaking up on the Archangel any second to wreak havoc.
Mu had his hands full keeping Buster busy, and I was engaged with the Duel. The Blitz had made itself scarce, and it likely wasn't retreating. No, it was probably aiming to loop around and attack the Archangel's engines. It was the logical place to strike, as the damage could cripple or destroy the ship immediately, causing more damage than the Gamow could.
With Mu and Buster trading shots, I was going to have to take two GUNDAMs at once. At least Athrun wasn't here. Perhaps he and Creuset had pulled back to get Lacus to safety. If he and Rau Le Creuset had been here, the situation would've changed from difficult to untenable.
The Duel managed to graze me with a shot, giving me a warning that my free reign blasting him was over. I took the opportunity to thrust the Strike away from him and start looking for the Blitz. I took off towards the Archangel, banking that the Duel would shoot at me instead. It was a risky gamble but considering how angry the pilot had seemed . . .
Well, it didn't hurt to make sure. "Hey, Duel. Maybe if you got your girly hair away from your eyes you'd be able to hit something."
"Shut up!"
Okay, he was pissed off. Good . . . and bad.
He started firing at me as we closed in on the Archangel, and the anti-air turrets opened up, though the fire was inaccurate as they were trying to shoot around me to try and hit the Duel. The result was wasted ammunition, none of it hit me but none of it hit the Duel either, and in fact was barely a nuisance to it. The Duel, thankfully, ignored the Archangel and kept its focus on me. I was going to have to trap it where it was vulnerable to the Archangel's fire, and then finish it off for good.
But then a brief signal suggested there was a flaw in my strategy.
I still hadn't accounted for the Blitz. And, as the random flak blasted around, one shot, by dumb luck, grazed the Blitz.
It couldn't use Phase Shift and Mirage Celloid at the same time. The result was the Blitz briefly showing up on radar as it was jolted by the shot. I saw it, and realized I had to take care of Blitz first while keeping the Duel off of my tail.
But most horrifyingly, the Blitz's position being revealed didn't matter.
It was right on top of the Archangel.
As I turned towards it, the pilot seemed to realize his cover had been blown, and set the Blitz down on one of the Archangel's "legs", and activated its Phase Shift. Immediately, it raised its weapons and prepared to fire right at the bridge.
Miriallia noticed too. "The Blitz is on top of us! Someone get it off!"
Everyone was at risk. The captain, my friends, Melanie, Prince Kira, everybody.
Just a few minutes away from rescue, and we were going to die just like that?
What a joke.
What a cruel, odious joke.
There was no time to line up a shot, I was going much too fast. I was going to have to do this the hard way.
I raised the Strike's shield and hit the acceleration.
The Blitz saw me coming quickly enough to not take a direct hit. I managed to clip it, though, and send it spiraling away from the Archange, briefly out of control. Relieved, I forgot about the Duel, which proved to be a horrible mistake.
The Duel finally shot me.
It was like an earthquake had erupted in the cockpit, and I screamed as I struggled to keep control. I struggled to turn the Strike around, but barely turned it around in time to get bodyslammed by the Duel and we crashed on top of the Archangel's left leg, where the Blitz had positioned itself just moments before.
The Duel drew its saber and raised it to stab me. I was going to die, just like that.
Then time stood still.
It hovered before me, wrapped in a bright brown aura. I couldn't grasp quite what I was seeing, but thoughts were crashing through my head so rapidly that I couldn't focus on anything other than I can't die.
They were all counting on me. Everyone onboard. They needed me one last time and I was going to fail them now after getting them so far? After so many battles, after all of the shortages and hardships and death? I was going to die to some punk flying a stolen Mobile Suit?
The faces of my friends, of my colleagues, flashed before me, rapidly. Something powerful, glorious, horrific built up inside me with each passing face. I saw glimpses of my failures, like Heliopolis, Artemis, the Montgomery, interwoven with the faces of all of the people that needed me, that were reliant on me.
They would die if I died.
No one was innocent. Not even Elle, the little girl. She would die just like everyone else.
I had promised her that I would not die.
And what about Tolle? Hadn't I made that promise to him, too? I had told him I was never going to abandon the Archangle.
Dying was the same as abandonment.
Damn it, I'm not going to die.
I'm not going to die!
I can't!
My body burned as the thing I was picturing started to crack. My whole body and mind felt like it was starting to go into some kind of overdrive. I couldn't comprehend the speed of what was happening to me, just that it was. Like I was accelerating beyond human boundaries.
I realized, a split second before it broke, what I was seeing.
A seed.
A little brown seed, the same color as my eyes.
And as it broke, my humanity went with it, as it was absorbed and disintegrated by the power inside me.
I am not going to die.
Everything was on sheer instinct. Everything I did was solely to protect my own survival. No other considerations were at mind.
I have to live.
The Duel's pilot had made a big mistake. He had forgotten to pin me down. I saw that, as my eyes flashed open. My body felt the fastest and strongest it had ever been, and everything seemed to be moving slower than usual. Not the slow-motion you're thinking of, but something slower than normal speed. And I could see everything the Duel had done, and every vulnerability of its current position.
I took my shield arm and slammed it right into the Duel's torso just as it was about to stab me. It being a machine, the saber didn't fly out of its hand like a sword would have fallen out of a human's, but it didn't matter. I had hit the Duel with such vicious force that I had knocked the machine, and the pilot, completely off balance and away from me.
I saw the Blitz to my right, recovering from my previous attack. I fired several shots at it, and the majority of them connected, sending the Blitz fleeing for its life, smoke pouring out of it.
There was no reason left in me. My intention was to kill. I didn't understand what killing meant anymore. Killing was a means to an end. I could not die, and no one on that ship could die. The only way to prevent either was to kill my enemies. There was no regret, no emotion, just instinct and intention.
I was lining up the kill shot when the Duel charged right at me, its saber aiming for a wide slash that would cleave me in half. Like the Blitz, it had taken a decent amount of damage, but it was more operable. I could see, in that split second, that the chest part of the machine was damaged. I could kill the pilot.
Logic dictated that instead of continuing to shoot at the fleeing Blitz, it would make more sense to kill the Duel and then finish the Blitz off.
I followed that logic.
I turned and aimed right at the chest compartment and fired.
A massive explosion erupted from the Duel, and I realized, faintly, that my aim had been slightly off. I hadn't hit the damaged part of the chest, just damaged a whole new section of the chest. It caused fire to erupt from the cockpit for a brief second, and metal and electronics to float out of it, but I hadn't made the kill shot. Even in this berserk mode I was still not an elite shot, I was definitely better than the other pilots, but still wasn't at the level of, say, Athrun.
Still, one shot was one shot. I had to take another, and that would finish the Duel off for good. I aimed again at the damaged chest cavity. It didn't matter whether the pilot was alive or dead at this point. Logic and instinct dictated that it was best not to take the chance. I could not let that machine return to ZAFT one way or another.
But as I was about to shoot I felt myself lose control of the machine as an explosion erupted under me.
I was startled out of my hypnosis.
I don't forget what it's like being in this berserker mode, this combat hypnosis, whatever it is. I see it all in hyper clarity. The images are burned into my memory for me to remember when I'm idle and alone.
As I returned to my normal senses, I was spiraling away, out of control. My machine had taken mild damage, though it would have been kill damage if Phase Shift hadn't been turned on. The Phase Shift had to work hard, though, I had lost a lot of energy while taking what damage I had. I grabbed the control stick with both hands, slammed the brakes, and managed to rotate the Strike around, to see who and what had hit me.
I saw one of the legs of the Archangel smoking, among a couple of other sections. The Gamow had fired again, and the damage was more serious this time. The Archangel couldn't absorb hits like this forever.
To my horror, I saw one of the Gottfrieds smoking. I knew that Elle's mother was on a Gottfried. Was it her Gottfried that had been hit? I couldn't see any bodies flying out of the smoke, so at least there weren't any guaranteed deaths, unless everybody was vaporized, anyway.
With that lovely thought in mind, I realized that there were two people I had been trying to kill who I had forgotten about in my moment of total loss of control.
The Blitz and Duel. I had caused serious damage to the both of them, and now I didn't know where they were.
I raced towards the battle site. Now that I was normal again, I felt sick to my stomach. I didn't want to kill, but at the same time, I was pragmatic enough to know what had to be done. The Archangel would be much safer if I killed the two of them off. So would the Eighth Fleet, which would be showing up any second.
I searched my sensors, and finally found them. Surprisingly, they were together. I looked towards them, and saw the Blitz dragging the badly damaged Duel away from the battlefield. Of course, since there's no gravity or ground in space, the Blitz could drag the Duel away at a really high speed.
Nicol Amalfi had reacted quickly to me being blasted away like that, and he had done a heroic thing by rushing to the Duel and pulling it away from the battlefield.
There was no point in pursuing. The Buster had adjusted its battle patterns as well, and was doing nothing more than spraying fire to cover the retreat. The Moebius Zero had already backed off, and considering the damage I had taken, it wasn't worth the risk of pursuit. Especially when the possibility was strong that I could lose Phase Shift in the middle of the battle.
What an anti-climactic end. Just like that, the battle was over. We had fought to a stalemate, there had been no victors. Pretty much just like the last battle, though I guess you could say the ZAFT won that one considering we had been at Rau Le Creuset's mercy at the end.
Forward elements of the Eighth Fleet entered the outskirts of the battle area, and knowing it was outgunned, the Gamow had already stopped shooting.
I heard Mu's voice then. "Good job, princess. That's more like it. You did well out here."
Did I? I wondered about what I had seen, and how it had changed me in an instant. Was what I had become really the right person for this war, for this situation?
It didn't feel right. Not even close.
That me that had emerged . . . was both animal and machine, driven by logic and instinct and nothing more than that.
It was not human.
But, being a human, I knew I had to respond to Mu. "Thanks."
That's all I could say without lying to him, or anyone else what had happened.
I decided to keep what I had seen a secret from everyone. Even Tolle. I was the freak onboard the Archangelalready. What would happen if they learned about this too? Soon the word that described me would change from a mere "freak" to an outright "monster".
I didn't want to be a monster.
I couldn't be a monster.
So I stayed quiet, and hoped that what I had decided was my inner monster would never emerge again.
After all, the war was over for me, right? I'd never wind up in a situation that could cause the monster to emerge, right?
That still didn't change the fact that there was a monster inside me.
And knowing it was there meant that I would be afraid for the rest of my life, fearful of what would happen if it escaped again . . .
If I let it out again.
