People have been waiting for this for a while. It's time to introduce a trio of characters . . . and then some.
EDIT: I fixed the "ZOINKS" things again. Sorry.
Chapter Sixty-Five: Self-Starter
The first response I got from my words was probably the last response I could have expected.
"Jesus, princess, what the hell got into you? Did ZAFT inject pretentiousness into your skull?"
That was Lieutenant-Commander Mu La Flaga. I'd know his voice anywhere at this point.
For the first time after seeing the seed shatter, I felt happiness. I still, somehow, felt human, just for that moment. The hyper-awareness I had was still there, but I felt human. I had finally discovered how the seed worked, and now I knew that the best way was to no longer fight it, but to accept it. By accepting it, by letting it be a good thing, I'd still be me.
"I guess I'm rather overconfident in this machine, Lieutenant-Commander," I replied. "By the way, don't call me 'princess'."
La Flaga chuckled. "Well, at least that confirms that you're no imposter."
I didn't see the Mobius Zero or a Skygrasper on my radar. That meant that La Flaga was piloting someone else, likely a Mobile Suit of his own. I did a search and realize that La Flaga was piloting the Strike. He was flying my previous GUNDAM.
I actually smiled at that. Obviously Kira worked done overtime on the Strike's OS so La Flaga could pilot it. There was no one else who could.
Suddenly, I found Orb Mobile Suits surrounding me. The designations for them were coming up as 'M1 Astray'. They looked pretty similar to the Strike, albeit with some of the features taken away. Obviously a mass-production variant of the Strike.
A young woman's voice entered my radio. "ZAFT pilot, you are trespassing on Orb territory. State your business before we open fire!"
This didn't surprise me. I had to be showing up as a ZAFT unit to them.
"My name is Lieutenant Cagalli Yamato of ZAFT," I finally said. "I am defecting to the Orb forces. I am here to help protect Onogoro Island. Now, who are you, Orb pilot?"
"My name is Asagi Caldwell. My wingmates, who are going to shoot you the moment you do something I don't like, are Juri Wu Nien and Mayura Labatt."
Another girl's voice entered the conversation. "Um, ma'am, did you have to give our names to this girl?"
"Shut it, Mayura."
They seemed young. Not much older than me, if that. They seemed to be lacking cohesion as well, a sign that they were definitely lacking combat experience too.
The fact that I knew this, somehow, was sobering. To these girls, I was the grizzled war veteran. How long ago was I just like them, with the same amount of insubordination and confusion and unprofessional snarking? Heliopolis? Hell, my ways didn't really change until after Tassil. That's when I finally began changing. I spent the entire trip until Tassil trying to hold onto the person I was.
Now, I was someone else. And now I knew what Mu La Flaga had to feel whenever I was doing something stupid in the Strike.
"Is this really the best time to have this conversation?" I asked the girls surrounding me. "We're in the middle of a war here, and I just cleared the enemy out."
"And also taunting them. They're going to send even more of them here now." That had to have been the third girl, Juri.
"So be it. I'll blow them all away," I replied.
"Um . . . while it is interesting to see women doing the chest-thumping, I think we should all get behind cover to have this conversation. The princess' little show definitely got the Earth Alliance's attention, and they'll definitely be taking another tack for the next assault."
That was Mu La Flaga, and his tone of voice suggested amusement with this conversation more than anything else. At the same time, as tempting as it was to shout 'Stay out of this!'; I knew he was right. The middle of an invasion, and caught out in the open on a shattered beachhead, was the worst place to have this argument.
So I took the Freedom and blasted it into the air, and landed it close by to the Strike, behind some shattered buildings.
"We're not done talking yet!" That was Asagi Caldwell, and she clearly was not going to let this go.
"I'll worry about the proper defecting process or whatever later," I replied.
"That's not what I meant! If you are defecting, then we need to figure out how to best use you, Lieutenant!"
That sounded somewhat more reasonable than arguing over the nature of my defection back to Orb. At least it related to the matter at hand.
"Let me handle that." That was Mu La Flaga. "Right now, I'm down a wingman. I think Cagalli here will do nicely. She and I have some timing down, we fought together for a long time."
Caldwell sighed. "I can't argue with that logic, especially not in this situation."
"What is the situation?" I asked. "It looked like the beach was going to be overrun before I got here."
"A lot of politics, a lot of threats, and the Earth Alliance is acting on all of them," La Flaga said. "That's all you gotta know right now."
I was still pretty pissed off. That wasn't a good enough answer. I mean, I could take educated guesses; like that the Earth Alliance was probably after the Mass Driver on Onogoro, but I didn't want to work on educated guesses. I wanted answers. Right that second.
"If you won't tell me the situation, tell me about the battle," I said. "Bring me up to speed on the battle."
"Right," La Flaga replied. "We had missile salvos, we were able to intercept them, mostly. The Archangel has joined the Orb fleet in trying to break the Earth Alliance's left flank, but there hasn't been much success so far. And you disrupted the attempt to overwhelm us with their Mobile Suits. So . . . I guess you could say we've done pretty well so far."
As La Flaga spoke, I scanned the area, and saw the coastal city had taken some damage, there was smoke from damaged and burning buildings beginning to waft into the sky.
Seeing a city of my country burning pissed me off. But I kept my temper in check. I knew that getting angry wouldn't help anyone, and would just put me right back on the path I was the previous times the seed shattered in my vision.
"Not well enough," I finally said, looking out at the city.
My sensors beeped then. "Look like they're coming for another attack!"
Three of the targets on my radar were accelerating much quicker than the others. Something was up with them, and I didn't like it. They were heading right for the damaged city.
"What the hell are those three machines?" Juri asked. "They're moving faster than any Mobile Suit I've ever seen! Well, besides yours anyway."
"I don't know, but I'll take them out!" I replied.
I was not going to let them murder civilians. Something told me that their advance on the city might be a trap, so they could surround and attack me, but I knew I had to take the bait. My conscience wouldn't let me do anything else.
So I blasted off and shot right towards the city, aiming to intercept the three mysterious bogies before they could get there.
They were not Strike Daggers like the others. That much I could already tell. They were not going to be as easy.
Suddenly, one of the bogies opened fire on me. It occurred to me that he had a long-range weapon like the Buster, and it was even stronger than what the Buster had.
I spun the Freedom to the right to dodge the shots as they came, and I flew right above the water, pouring on the acceleration to outrun the shots. I got a visual on the three of them, and my suspicions were confirmed . . .
They were not Strike Daggers. They looked more like GUNDAMs. And they all looked unique.
"Hey, hey, hey!" That was a communication from one of the Mobile Suits. "I don't know what the hell you are but I'm gonna turn you into a pile of scrap!"
Taunting me already? On a public channel?
"Orga, Shani, I'll take her out!" Suddenly one of the Mobile Suits charged forward, and I saw that he had some sort of ball and chain as his melee weapon.
"Say hello to the Raider!" the pilot yelled as he charged at me, hurling the spiked ball right at me, and I barely got out of the way in time.
"Clotho, stay out of my way! I got her!" shouted another, significantly raspier, voice. It was another one of the GUNDAMs, and he seemed to be armed with both a gigantic scythe and a railgun, and he began firing his railgun at me. It was a colossal, layered blast, and it hit me that I was in over my head trying to fight these three on my own.
I shot the Freedom into the sky, barely dodging the shot, to find the third and final GUNDAM waiting for me.
"Dammit, Shani! Learn how to aim!"
He shot at me several times, and I put up my blast shield to deflect the blows, but my sensors let off an alarm. 'Shani' was already rushing me with the scythe, aiming to cut me down from behind.
I pivoted and blasted away, towards a forest by the city, as 'Shani' swung and missed.
"You should take your own advice, Orga! That was pathetic!" Shani snapped.
As I flew over the forest, I did a scan. The machine matched to 'Shani' was the 'Forbidden'. 'Orga' was matched to the 'Calamity'. And the final machine, which belonged to 'Clotho', was the 'Raider'.
Whoever had named these Mobile Suits clearly was bloodthirsty and had a taste for the macabre. For all I knew, it could have been the pilots themselves. Something was off about them, and they seemed even less disciplined than Asagi and her team. And Asagi's team wasn't that bad, they just didn't have combat experience.
These guys . . . they were fighting each other as much as me, and they didn't seem to care that was happening.
Orga was chasing me now, firing wildly at me. Many of the shots were blasting into the forest, and I realized there were groups of refugees below us, trying to flee the city. I had to get out of this area before I got them killed.
I spun around and blasted right towards Oruga, and I ignited my beam saber.
Orga let out a cry of surprise. "Oh shit!"
I scraped him. I wasn't able to cause much damage but I scraped him and that forced Orga to back off significantly.
"Stop it before you look even stupider, Orga! I'll wear her out, you just wait your turn!" Shani yelled.
He was coming right for me with that scythe.
He fired his railgun first, and I had no choice but to dodge. The shots rocketed past me, hopefully not getting close to the convoys of fleeing refugees. At least, that was what I was hoping.
And then we collided with each other, and the Forbidden drove me into the ground, where we deadlocked.
As long as I had him like this, he wasn't going to be able to get off another railgun shot. But this wasn't going to last very long. It was three on one, and it wouldn't be long before either Clotho or Orga would make an attempt to kill me while I was busy with Shani.
For a group of arguing boys, they actually had a pretty decent strategy to kill me.
Even if it seemed pretty much improvised.
Clotho came diving in with that damn ball and chain again. I saw a chance to get out of the way and have Shani get hit by the blow instead, and I stepped aside, but Shani knew Clotho was attacking and deflected Clotho's assault easily with his scythe.
"Clotho! For the last time, stop trying to help me or I'll shoot you down too!"
"We don't got time to be waiting around for you to wear her out! Don't be an idiot! She's like a boss character! We gotta work together or she'll take us out one by one!" Clotho replied.
"Don't bring your stupid video games into this!" Shani snapped back. "This ain't a goddamn game!"
"I don't care! I'm not losing this battle to a girl boss and that's final!"
It seemed these guys didn't have the best grip on reality. Particularly the 'Clotho' guy, who seemed like a horrible video game troll . . . except he had actually been handed lethal weaponry. Not exactly a great combination.
I knew there was only one way to settle this, and I had a prime opportunity to do so since they were arguing yet again. I aimed my beam rifle right at Shani and opened fire, aiming for a direct hit and taking one of them out right away. However, much to my surprise, the shot dissipated. It had no effect at all, it was like my shot had vanished into nothingness, like it had been sucked down a black hole.
Shani let out a short laugh. "That ain't gonna work!"
He suddenly bent low to aim his railgun at me again. I was expecting the railgun to fire, but much to my shock, he was aiming something different at me judging by what was charging.
I immediately retreated as a wide-arcing shot tore a swath through the open air, nearly colliding with the Freedom head-on. It shot below me, just barely, and it crashed into a mountain behind me, leaving a massive indentation and a cloud of smoke in its wake.
Whatever he had just shot at me, it was some sort of plasma cannon, and being hit with it was instant death.
I was not going to die by being cleaved in half. Dying in this Mobile Suit was a horrible way to go in general, but dying in that particular way was rather low on my wish list.
"I got her this time!"
That was Orga again, taking another potshot at me.
I dodged his salvo, and then rushed him. He wasn't keen on getting slashed again and he accelerated backwards to avoid me.
"Hey, hey, hey! You think I'm just gonna let you try that same trick again? Forget it!"
"Orga, get out of the way! She's mine for the last time!" Shani shouted.
He was aiming another shot at me, and it could very well hit Orga at the same time as us. Orga seemed to realize that too, as his reaction was an apt "Not this shit again!"
I dove lower to the ground then, to the point where I physically landed on the ground, in order to avoid Shani's attempt at a kill shot. Orga easily dodged it too, and I think that was Shani's gambit there. He knew Orga was going to dodge with the very brief advance notice, but he wasn't sure whether I could do the same. And even if he didn't hit me, he had put me in a vulnerable state on the ground, one which Clotho and the Raider were going to try to take advantage of.
"Game over!" Clotho shouted.
He had shapeshifted the Raider. Now it was in some sort of flight mode, resembling the Skygrasper Mobile Armor. And he was coming in for a dive-bomb assault against me!
The only thing I could do was raise the shield and weather the machine-gun assault as the Raider blasted past me, shooting at me like he had infinite ammunition to spare. Several of the shots went spiraling past me and smashed into the forest, causing fires to erupt where the shots had immolated trees.
This was better than fighting in the city, but not by much. And in the back of my mind, I knew there were civilians around. And they were going to get hit if I kept fighting here, if they hadn't already.
"I'm still standing," I replied. This time I was going to be ready for the Raider's counterattack, and I wanted him to come back and make another pass. He wasn't going to be so successful this time.
"Well we'll see what I can do about that!" The Raider, just as I expected, spun around and began another pass.
But this time I was ready for him. I turned on the HiMAT and locked onto the Raider just as he began making his pass.
But then a massive force hit me from behind, staggering the Freedom.
In desperation, I made a dodging maneuver and shot at the Raider with the HiMAT engaged even though the lock was not perfect.
The Raider saw my attacks coming and he somehow evaded all of my shots. I spun the Freedom around to find Orga and the Calamity GUNDAM he was piloting right there, his gun barrel still smoking from shooting me.
The Freedom had taken damage. It wasn't crippling, however, if anything, all that Orga caused was cosmetic, only on the surface. I was not crippled at all and I had no plans on that happening to me.
But this was starting to get bad. I could not keep fighting three on one, not without wiping one of the three boys out to make this easier on me. I needed to do that. I had almost hit the Raider, but almost doesn't cut it, especially in war. You have to just do it in order to find any success at all, and what I had managed to do was just continue prolonging the battle, without either side gaining much headway. I had scratched the Calamity, and now he had scratched me. That was pretty much it.
All this proved was that even with an advanced GUNDAM like what I had, not every battle was going to be easy. And fighting these three boys was anything but easy.
I now wished I hadn't left La Flaga and the Astray girls behind. I could have really used their help in this moment.
And I still hadn't made contact with the Archangel proper yet. There was a possibility they didn't know I was alive. No one had made an attempt to contact me yet, anyway. There was a pretty good chance they didn't know.
I wasn't getting reinforcements for this battle. Yes, with the Freedom and its nuclear powered engine, it could keep fighting theoretically forever. But the Freedom had a human pilot, and said human pilot did not have the same endurance as the machine she controlled.
I couldn't keep fighting forever. Eventually I was going to wear down. I had already made the mistake of concentrating too much on the Raider and not on the other two machines. How soon before I made a mistake that wound up being more lethal?
I needed help. But I didn't know where I could get it from. This was a different front, with the defenses already worn down, compared to the beachhead that the Astrays and Mu La Flaga were defending. I had nothing left, not even ground forces, to try to help me by at least hassling the GUNDAMs. It looked like this area was very well cleared of friendly forces besides me.
I aimed the HiMAT at all three of the machines and opened fire, but that had no noticeable effect. The Raider and the Calamity simply got out of the way and the Forbidden stood there and deflected the blows like they were nothing. It was clear that what the Forbidden had didn't dissipate the shots into nothingness like I had originally thought. No, the Forbidden was deflecting the shots, and it was being done so quickly it was like my beams were being vaporized.
There was no way I could destroy the Forbidden in a frontal assault. The Earth Alliance had designed the machine exceptionally well.
At the same time, I doubted the Forbidden would be able to tolerate a melee attack. A beam saber could penetrate in ways a plasma shot could not. But I just needed to get close to the Forbidden to pull that off, and with the Raider and Calamity harassing me, that was going to be a tall order.
Clotho and the Raider seemed to have the loosest grip on reality. That made him the most logical target to take out first. After he was removed from the equation, the Calamity didn't have much in the way of melee options from what I had seen and the Forbidden looked indestructible except against melee attacks, barring, of course, a surprise attack from behind.
So after the Raider was shot down, the most logical move would be to concentrate on speed and try to cut both the Calamity and the Forbidden down while dodging their attacks.
Tall order. But it was the only plan I could come up with as the three boys regrouped.
But then I heard a voice I never thought I would hear again.
"Boys. All of you, stop."
It wasn't a voice I had heard for a long time. I only knew the person for about a day, actually, far less. And she had attempted to kill me during that day too, only for me to fight her off and leave her unconscious.
It was her voice.
I saw a GUNDAM emblazoned in black and gray, looking similar to the Strike, land directly in front of me, in front of the three GUNDAMs I had been fighting.
A visual of the pilot appeared on one of my monitors. The familiarity of her voice was no accident. Her face was the same too.
She smiled calmly. "Hello, Cagalli. Long time no see."
"What the hell is going on here?" Clotho shouted. "You've got no right to interfere like you're like . . . like our mom or something!"
"You guys weren't getting anywhere on your own, were you? Now, if you want to win this battle before the drugs wear off, you'd best follow my instructions. She's got a strong machine here."
The look in her eyes suggested that she still considered me a friend, odd, considering we were on opposing sides. "But first I would like to have some words with Cagalli before we begin. I'm sure she would like an explanation for why I'm here first."
"Yeah," I said softly. "I thought . . . I thought you were dead, Joan."
Joan just chuckled softly at that remark. "Oh, I'm dead all right. It just hasn't been made official yet. They know they own me hook, line, and sinker. I'm addicted to the drugs, just like the boys here."
Suddenly, the dark mirror of the Strike took on a fighting stance. "I'm sorry, Cagalli. Someone has to take care of these boys so they'll fight at maximum potential. That's me. That's why they gave me a clone of the Strike, so they'd respect my machine, if not me personally. They call it the 'Strike Alter'. I guess we'll find out if they made it any better than the original, right?"
There was a fatalistic tone to her words that suggested a young woman so tired and beaten down and cynical there was hardly anything left in her at all. She was almost an empty shell, even more shattered than she had been back on the Blue Cosmos island I had met her on.
It was like looking at a human being who had decided she was completely, entirely, disposable.
"All right, boys . . ." Joan Memphis took a deep breath, and then issued her orders. "Orga, establish a perimeter around the battlefield! Make sure she can't escape and that no one else can interfere! Shani, you blast her with your railgun if she tries to make a break for it, keep her pinned so Clotho and I can keep up attack! Clotho, you and I attack her directly and take her out!"
"Why the hell should we follow your orders?" Shani snapped.
"She came up with a strategy to beat the boss," Clotho replied. "I ain't complainin'. I'm sick of this battle! Let's kill her so our own boss doesn't punish us for this!"
"Yes," Joan replied, her voice much quieter. "I guess we will."
She aimed at me. "Like I said back on the island, Cagalli . . . my sense of self-preservation is just too strong. I fear dying too much to allow myself to get killed. I'm sorry . . . but you'll have to die instead."
I prepared myself. Now it was four on one. There was no way I was going to win this one.
What could I possibly do against four GUNDAMs on my own?
It seemed I had wound up in a hopeless situation, one with no way to escape.
And it would just keep unraveling from there until I was dead.
We're actually not too far from concluding Part 3. Hard to believe, isn't it?
And yeah, dead character turns out to be not quite dead. There'll be a better explanation for it next chapter. I was not quite done with Joan yet . . .
