Sorry about the brief delay. Had to make things exactly right.
Chapter Eighty-Seven: The Unforgiven II
Surprisingly, the first person who spoke was Dearka. "What did you just call this thing?"
"It's called the Turn X Gundam, Dearka," Feldt replied softly.
I was stunned when Dearka chuckled. "Dammit, Feldt. And you were trying to make this thing sound so scary. You do realize that an upside-down X is still an X?"
It hit me that he was right. He was absolutely right. The opposing machine had the most pointless name in existence and I felt this wild, stupid smile cross my face. Some of the other pilots even started laughing at what Dearka had just said.
"Dearka, the Turn X name is not meaningless. It means an undetermined or unanswered variable. It's no laughing-"
"Shut it, bridge bunny. I have my own something to say to Dearka," Asta growled.
"Huh?" Dearka asked, clearly surprised.
"After the way you were a constant pest when we served together, and after the callous way you shot Providence down, I considered killing you first. After this ignorant mockery, I'm definitely killing you first, you lackadaisical piece of shit!"
Suddenly the Turn X whipped out a beam rifle and shot right at the Buster before Dearka, or any of us, could do anything.
"Oh my God," was all Dearka could say before the shot rammed right into the Buster's chest, blowing the entire machine up in the next instant.
It had been done so fast. Dearka, who had made it through the whole war up to this point, faithfully piloting the Buster the whole way, and even shooting down two GUNDAMs in this final battle alone. And Asta had killed him like it was nothing.
Asta laughed callously. "That felt so good! He's dead! The idiot is finally dead! He should have been deadmonths ago! How he made it this far is beyond me! Well guess what, he'll just be the first of all of you to be judged by me!"
I immediately decided Asta was far too gone to be saved. She had served with Dearka for months. Fought alongside him. He had undoubtedly protected her and helped her as much as he could. For her to kill him and then laugh about it like she squished an ant…
I may not have been a close friend of Dearka, but he was a friend of Athrun's, and I just let Asta get a cheap shot off and kill him.
I was pissed off and ready to kill the bitch for what she did.
"Everyone, light her up!" I yelled as I aimed my weapons at her. All of them.
Asta laughed. "You think that will work?"
"Try fighting all of us, you insane bitch," growled a woman, I recognized the voice as belonging to Juri Wu Nien, one of Asagi Caldwell's wingmates.
"Oh, I think I will," Asta replied.
Everyone shot at her, then, including me. But that's when the Turn X did the most unexpected thing, or so we all thought when it happened.
The Turn X broke into nine pieces.
Nine autonomous pieces, or perhaps somehow controlled by Asta all at once. I'm not sure I'll ever know how she was able to control them all.
"What the hell?" one of the pilots yelled, speaking for us all when the Turn X split, causing all of our shots to hit absolutely nothing.
The pieces flew among us then, faster than I expected. And each one of them was armed, shooting particle beams at us as they flew on by, blasting several of our Mobile Suits out of the way like they were nothing but stationary obstacles.
The METEOR, for all its power, could not stop the Turn X from moving at its will. And I couldn't use METEOR at its full capability, not when surrounded by my own allies. There was no way I could risk the possibility of hitting any of them.
The individual pieces of the Turn X all of a sudden converged on an Astray, and I realized it was Juri Wu Nien's. Just like Dearka, Asta was taking a personal revenge on someone who had slighted her in this battle. Except she didn't even know Juri. Hell, there were so many Astrays in this battle I couldn't tell them all apart. So how did Asta know which Astray housed the pilot that called her out?
The Turn X reformed into its original shape and then slammed its right hand right into the chest of Juri's Astray. It quickly became apparent what the Turn X was doing; the hand was microwaving the cockpit of the Mobile Suit, so Juri would be cooked alive.
"Melt away, melt away! Your brain's gonna melt away!" Asta shouted above Juri's pained screams.
Suddenly, Juri stopped screaming, like she had finally broiled. The Turn X let go of the Astray, which floated in space listlessly for a couple of seconds, before it finally exploded.
It wasn't like we were doing nothing. The Turn X was getting hit. It was getting hit a lot. But it was like everybody was only hitting an invisible barrier. The Turn X wasn't even flinching at the attempts to damage it. This thing was so above our level that I couldn't help but feel a burgeoning dread that we were all going to die.
Literally, that was what I was thinking. We were all going to die, and this infernal machine out of nowhere was what was going to do us in.
Asta laughed again, before coughing a few times. "I can't believe what I can do in this thing!"
"Everyone, get out of my way, I'll take care of her," I said, and I primed my missile pods. I wasn't going to let Asta fly around and massacre us, not before using everything my machine was capable of, anyway.
"You will take care of me, Cagalli? Just like you took care of my brother?"
She still remembered what I had done to Yzak, not that I expected her to forget. "Yzak gave me no choice, and now you're doing the same."
A soft chuckle. "All this war, you've had all of the power. You've piloted a GUNDAM. You picked people off whenever you felt like it. Hell, isn't that what you did in Boaz? Now there's finally something stronger than what you have, you change your tune. Are you afraid, Cagalli?"
I was afraid, but I wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of knowing. "I haven't changed my tune at all. My only interest is to prevent the deaths of as many innocent people as I can."
"Oh, you're such a hypocrite."
I locked onto her. "I think you have other things to worry about right now."
After a moment of careful consideration, I decided to fire everything.
The Turn X immediately split into the nine pieces again to evade my missiles and my beam cannons all converging on her. The missiles immediately changed course to chase after her, but several of them crashed into each other in the process, causing a series of explosions that caused me to lose track of Asta.
I switched to the METEOR's beam rifles to chase after the Turn X the moment I saw it and slice it in half. "You can't dodge me forever, Asta!"
"I find it interesting that your solution to my violence is more violence!" Asta yelled.
"It's not interesting. It's war," I replied as I searched for her.
Suddenly, I heard another pilot shout on the radio. "She's coming out from behind those explosions!"
I turned towards the newest set of missiles exploding to see the Turn X flying through the remnants of the explosions, now armed with a beam rifle and firing it at the METEOR, cutting apart an Earth Alliance Mobile Suit in the way.
The METEOR's right side exploded, and I immediately knew the METEOR was junk and I was going to be a sitting duck. What amazed me was how fast it had happened. The Turn X had only just begun to fight, I had already lost my most potent weapon, and would have to fight with what the Freedom was equipped with from this point onward.
I disconnected from the METEOR before I could lose control, and blasted off. Seconds later, the METEOR disappeared from my radar screen. "Is the METEOR gone?" I asked.
"Yeah. It just blew up," Flay replied.
"Thanks," I said, not that I had anything to be thankful for.
The Turn X's attention had turned from me to the rest of our group, and I was watching multiple Astrays, GINNs, and Daggers getting blown up like they were stationary targets on a gun range. Quite a few of these pilots were veterans in their own rights and their lives were ending in a blink of an eye.
"Feldt," I said, "We're gonna need some help."
"I've already told the captain of the dire straits. We and the Kusanagi and a few other ships are inbound towards your position. Try to hold on."
"Not sure if we can last until you get here," I replied.
"Please try," Feldt said. It sounded more like she was begging me than ordering me.
The only way I was going to be able to keep our group from getting slaughtered was getting Asta's attention turned back to me. Considering how quickly she had destroyed the METEOR it was not something I particularly wanted to do.
At the same time, I couldn't just float around and watch her cut and shoot through so many people.
The Turn X and its capabilities was something the GUNDAMs would have trouble matching, and no ordinary Mobile Suit could hope to stop.
I raised my beam rifle and shot at the Turn X, which made it change direction. "Damn it, Asta! It's me you want, right? Leave everyone else alone and fight me!"
Asta laughed. "You want to make this a duel then, Cagalli?"
I immediately realized that she was suckering me into a suicidal agreement. The Freedom was not likely going to survive long against the Turn X, especially without the METEOR.
"Yeah," I said. "On one condition."
"Oh?"
"I get a helper. Think it's kind of unfair to have something like your Mobile Suit fight an inferior one like the Freedom one on one."
Asta laughed uproariously, followed by another coughing fit. It was then, and only then, that I saw her face appear on the Freedom's monitor, crystal-clear. Her visor was becoming stained with blood. She clearly didn't have much time left, and she was trying to enjoy it while she still could.
"Sure, why not. One helper at a time. Pick the first death you want on your conscience."
So she had agreed. I wasn't sure if I was to be happy about this or dismayed. "Everyone, back the hell off. Worry about GENESIS or Jachin Doe. I'll hold her off as long as I can."
"I'm not going anywhere." That was Flay, and I felt my heart sink. She was going to try to be the hero. I had made her mindset change too much.
"I promised Kira you would be coming back, and I'm going to do whatever I can to make sure you do. I'll fight her with you."
"A volunteer, huh? Suit yourself. It's always the brave that die first in war. Like my brother, like all of my friends."
A smile slashed its way across her face, and it became painfully clear that Asta was truly lost in madness. Or despair. Or both. "I lost anyone I still cared about in Alaska. Did I ever tell you that, Cagalli?"
As long as she kept talking, it was less shooting, and that meant extending my lifespan, however long or short that was at this point. "No, you didn't. You hardly told me anything."
I looked at my radar. Some of the Mobile Suits were scattering, but not all of them. Mu La Flaga and Asagi Caldwell in particular were hanging in the vicinity.
Damn it guys, get out of here. Don't be stupid, I found myself thinking.
"Alaska. What a trap that was. So many brave people heading to the front line, believing they were going to win the war, only to die to a cowardly trick. Microwaved alive. I've heard GENESIS does much the same thing to a human being. Why do we make weapons that create such horrible deaths, Cagalli?"
"Both sides have been taking this to the point of no return, Asta. That's what I'm trying to stop."
"Stop with brute force?"
"Pacifism is a great ideal and all, but it's not really a good way to win a fight when your back is against the wall, Asta."
"So you admit your own hypocrisy. You want to save humanity so they can keep building these weapons, keep experimenting on human souls, keep exterminating each other. You want to save people so they can kill each other some more in even worse ways."
I knew what Asta was saying. This was an endless, vicious cycle, that would never truly end. No matter what people did, war would never change.
"There will never be a truly lasting peace, Cagalli! Humans can be reduced to hunter/gatherers and there will still be war, rape, mutilation, murder, deception! All the way back to Cain and Abel people betrayed, deceived, and murdered each other! It will never end unless the human race is exterminated!"
"So your solution to humans killing each other is to kill them all yourself. Lovely philosophy," I replied.
"Humans have ruined the Earth, spread like a virus to other planets, playing God with themselves, and are intent on killing their own species off slowly. I'm just going to speed up the process a little, or at least reduce the human race to a point where the only things they can hurt is their own planet!"
"Wonder how ZAFT feels about this," I replied. "I highly doubt this is with Patrick Zala's blessing, considering the implications."
Asta's smile reappeared again. "ZAFT didn't even realize I had this thing until about ten minutes ago. They didn't even bother erasing Rau Le Creuset's clearance to this machine because so few people knew about it."
Now I knew how Asta had gotten access, and what Rau's plan was if he had died in Mendel. He had passed this information on to Asta somehow, giving her the tools to enact his revenge for him.
"I don't think ZAFT appreciates the implied threats you just made against their colonies," I said.
Asta laughed. "Want to see how much I care?"
I quickly realized that I had made a big mistake pushing the conversation in this direction. "Asta, what are you doing?"
"There is just enough energy left in this machine to use this attack maybe four or five times at moderate strength. I'm going to give you a demonstration of it. Witness how I'm going to put humanity right back to where they were after their foolishness at the end of Anno Domini. Witness how we exterminated an entire alien species. Witness the Moonlight Butterfly."
Suddenly, I saw it.
Translucent butterfly wings emerged from the back of the Turn X, glowing brilliantly.
They sent a chill down my spine even though they looked so innocuous.
I heard Feldt's voice then, trembling. "Cagalli, whatever you do, don't let those wings touch you. It will turn the Freedom and all technology in your spacesuit both into sand."
"You know this for sure or it's just theory?" I asked.
"It doesn't matter." That was Natarle Badgiruel's voice. "Cagalli, Flay, clear out of the way! Do it now!"
It was then that it hit me that the Archangel was about to fire its Lohengrin cannons at the Turn X.
"Dive, Flay!" I shouted, and I immediately put the Freedom into a spiral out of the way of the Archangel's cannons.
The next moment, I heard Natarle Badgiruel utter two fateful words. "Lohengrins, fire!"
The cannons both shot directly above Flay and I, heading right for the Turn X. Much to my shock, the Turn X simply twisted itself out of the way of the cannon shots, and the missile salvos fired by the Archangelsimply vaporized upon hitting the Moonlight Butterfly's wings.
"How dare you." There was no amusement in Asta's voice anymore. This was something much worse.
The worst thing you can do is make a crazy, power-drunk person enraged.
I heard Natarle make a frustrated snarling sound in response to the Turn X's acrobatic feats. "All batteries, keep firing! We can't let the Turn X have any opportunity to attack!"
"Too late!" Asta suddenly shot above us, barely missing scraping Flay and I with the Moonlight Butterfly. The wings suddenly shifted from translucent to golden, and I had a feeling the Turn X's Moonlight Butterfly had shifted into some sort of attack mode.
"Archangel, watch out!" I shouted.
I had never felt so helpless before as when I had seen the Moonlight Butterfly shine over me, just so barely missing from striking me.
Any attempt to save the Archangel would involve flying right into the Moonlight Butterfly and immolating the Freedom, killing myself in the process.
"Shoot her down!" Natarle yelled. "All non-essential personnel get into the lifeboats immediately! That means you too, Feldt, don't argue with me!"
The Moonlight Butterfly finally left my field of vision and I re-adjusted the Freedom in order to spin it around.
The Archangel wasn't the only one shooting at the Turn X. There were other ships, the Archangel had bought escorts, two of them immediately trying to get into the Turn X's way, firing missiles and flak without any regard for saving energy or ammunition.
The Turn X just blew right through the escorts, the Moonlight Butterfly stretching enough across to blow the front ends of both ships right in half, causing dust plumes to cover up my line of sight. The back ends of both ships fell away, smoking with dust. Electrical sparks crisscrossed through the dust, like the Turn X had turned the ships into little lightning storms.
My heart skipped a beat. It had sliced through those two ships so easily. It didn't take an active imagination to know what it could do to the Archangel.
"Flay, follow me! We have to try to stop her!" I shouted, and I blasted after the Turn X, flying right through the dust plumes.
"We can't get too close, Cagalli! What can we do?" Flay asked.
"Whatever the case, I don't think this is gonna be an honorable duel anymore," Mu replied. "Let's all converge on her again without getting into each other's way and take her out."
The Archangel's defensive batteries forced the Turn X to angle away from the ship, instead beginning a circling motion around the Archangel, wiping out a former ZAFT ship acting as escort in the process. This one was more or less a head-on collision with the Moonlight Butterfly, by the time the Moonlight Butterfly was finished passing through, there was nothing but dust remaining of the escort vessel. Dust and human bodies.
An ad hoc squadron of Mobile Suits and Armors attacked the Turn X, but the Turn X didn't even hesitate. It just blew right through them, leaving at least ten little smoke explosions in its wake.
The Turn X wasn't just flying around vaporizing everything with the Moonlight Butterfly. It was shooting at the Archangel, and moving much too fast for me to get any lock onto the Turn X, especially from the range I was at. All I was doing was useless potshots that the Turn X was simply ignoring, especially with the Moonlight Butterfly seeming to effortlessly absorb every shot I made that did connect.
"None of our shots are getting through!" Asagi Caldwell yelled, as if giving voice to my thoughts. "They're just getting vaporized by those wings!"
"How can we shoot something down that we can't even hit?" Asagi's remaining wingmate, Mayura Labatt, asked.
"There has to be some way we can," Mu said. "We have to make the impossible possible here[/i]."
"We have to try to at least deter her from the Archangel. If we can't do that…" Asagi trailed off.
Suddenly, I saw one of the Archangels engines explode from a few shots from the Turn X, and the ship immediately began to list. "Archangel!" I yelled, by sheer reflex.
"Neumann, keep control the best you can. Everyone, prepare to abandon ship. Fire one last salvo. Everything this ship has, put it into destroying this Mobile Suit," Badgiruel ordered.
The Turn X made a longer looping motion than before, and that's when it hit me.
The Turn X was going to make a charge right for the Archangel, aiming to immolate it by having one of the Moonlight Butterfly's wings crash right through the ship.
I couldn't let the Turn X do it. I refused.
I would not lose my home for so many months to Asta and her monster of a Mobile Suit.
The Archangel was the reason why I was still alive, more than anything. It was a place where a bunch of people from different countries had come together and bonded under strenuous circumstances. It was a symbol of humanity's understanding, of how our common causes can unite us, and I could not let that ship be destroyed.
The Turn X prepared itself for its charge against the listing Archangel. I knew the only thing I could do, and I prepared myself to do it, by accelerating down from where I was, and stand right in the Turn A's way.
I would stop it right in its tracks with my swords or die trying.
Asta's attention turned towards me then, and my eyes couldn't help but peel away from the battle towards her image on my screen. "You've taken everything away from me Cagalli. If I had never encountered you I would never have lost it all. So I'm going to take everything away from you."
"Good luck with that," I said as I prepared to make my charge, but then I realized Asta's trick.
All of a sudden, the Turn X had turned itself away from the Archangel and had its beam rifle aimed right at me.
My heart skipped a beat. It hit me, all of a sudden, that Asta had only said that so I'd distract myself for a few precious seconds so she could get lock on me.
I had hit her dozens of times to no effect. But she only needed to hit me once to annihilate me.
Then, to complete the shock, all of a sudden the Strike Rouge put itself between me and the beam rifle.
Blam.
The Strike Rouge fell away smoking with much of its right side blown off.
It took me a moment to realize what had happened. And when it did, I felt a wave of emotion I never thought I would have felt if it had happened to this person.
"Flay!" I shouted.
I grabbed the Strike Rouge by the arm before it could fall away completely. It left me completely exposed, but the Turn X had already turned its attention back to the Archangel, sparing Flay and I from dying together.
Flay coughed on the radio, which nearly made me panic. "Damn, that one hurt."
"Why did you do that, Flay?" I asked.
"I promised your brother you would return. I never made that promise about myself."
My eyes began to water. "Dammit Flay."
Flay chuckled softly. "You sound like Mu did when he was teaching me how to fly."
Suddenly, flashes of light from up ahead turned my attention from the badly wounded Strike Rouge to theArchangel. I saw extensive damage on one of the Lohengrin cannons as the Archangel continued to list, hinting that Arnold Neumann and Miriallia, if she was still there, were losing control over the vessel. TheArchangel was a dying ship making its final stand against the Turn X, and I was too far away to try to prevent the inevitable.
As if sensing my thoughts, Flay said "Don't go. You can't stop it. None of us can."
She was right. I knew she was right. But it didn't make what was happening less painful to watch. An ache swelled in my chest as the Archangel took another explosion on its left side this time, putting it, ironically, back on course for the briefest of moments. A series of explosions erupted around the Archangel as the final of its Mobile Suit guards all went down in succession, leaving the Archangel without any help at all.
Badgiruel spoke then. "Listen to me. Don't let it win. Find some way to shoot it down. Don't give up, understand? All of you out there."
She was going to go down with the ship. It was the captain's duty to, to be the last one to be on the ship, but that knowledge was no solace to me. "Captain Badgiruel, I'm sorry."
"Take care of yourself, Cagalli. Same goes to all of you." It was such an unexpected response that I wasn't sure how to interpret it.
Nowadays, I wonder if she somehow knew that I was pregnant.
The Turn X made its charge then with the Moonlight Butterfly brilliantly glowing in the darkness of space, and its wing slammed into the damaged Archangel.
The light gave way to the darkness of smoke and dust.
The Archangel was gone.
And with it came the realization that any chance of Asta finding forgiveness for her actions, especially from me, was gone forever.
I saw the seed flash in my eyes again, and I sensed it would be for the final time.
The seed shattered, and I did not allow myself to cry as I saw the dust that had once been the Archangeldissipate.
I'm going to kill you, was the only thought that flashed through my mind.
There would be no forgiveness from me, not for what Asta's done.
Maybe it made me a hypocrite. Maybe this proved Asta right about humanity. I didn't care.
She was going to pay for everything she had done. Somehow, some way.
The Turn X stood, surrounded by the dust of the Archangel, as if looking at me in defiance, or perhaps in triumph.
It was going to come down to just me and her for the fate of us all.
Both of us having completely given up on the other.
