"Here they come. We've finally scared the little birds out of their nests." Dyre radioed to Asmodeus, who was back several mountain ridges away, concealed with the rest of the Strike Crusaders and Frost.

"Acknowledged. Send in the hostage teams." Asmodeus ordered.

"Yes, sir." Dyre said. He hit a different channel on his radio. "Go Team, this is Hunter. Do your thing." Almost at once, a half dozen all terrain hovercraft broke from cover from behind the line of Strike Daggers and raced upslope into the cave entrance to the depot. Each hovercraft disgorged two squads of seven special forces soldiers, specially flown in by Cervantes during the previous few hours and then raced back into cover.

"Hunter, this is Go Team leader. We are advancing into the facility. Please avoid attacking the facility until we can collect the hostages."

"I'll do my best, Go Team leader." Dyre replied. He switched to the channel to his Daggers. "You know the drill boys. We want these things mostly intact if at all possible. So try and hit the legs, the head or the weapons if you can. We only have to contain them in the area until Go Team can do its thing." His troops acknowledged him. He had twenty Strike Daggers under his command, plus the Strike Crusader he himself was in. Military common sense indicated that with four to one odds, he would be the clear victor, but Dyre had reviewed a few tapes concerning the abilities of his opponents and they had been enough to make him quite nervous. These people had a habit of taking on impossible odds and coming out victorious.

Dyre checked his heads up display. His missile tubes were only 40 reloaded, but the right shoulder 120mm railgun was ready, as was the 200mm hyper impulse beam cannon he carried on the right arm. He swung the targeting reticule of the hyper impulse cannon onto the head of the mobile suit that was just beginning to emerge from the closest hanger and keyed the railgun to fire from the same trigger and at the same target. "I've got you cold, bitch." Dyre said with a shark like grin. He hit the trigger and watched the blue-red beam of power flash out in tandem with the harsh yellow tracer from the railgun.

Ysak was still getting the hang of the Duelist. It was so much more agile than the Duel and he had to fight not to hit the jets too hard. He roared out of the hanger bay much faster than he intended. He barely had time to register the target locked on alarm. On instinct he swung the Duelist about and powered down thrust, dropping back into the hanger. The railgun shot high, blurring past the Duelist's head and impacting on the lip of the hanger bay doors. However, the hyper impulse beam was dead on and hit the Duelist high on the back. There was an enormous flash of glaring light as the dark blue cloak on the Duelist's back turned incandescent.

"Direct hit!" Dyre cheered. "Scratch one." With a hyper impulse cannon, anything even approximating a direct hit was a kill. The gun was powerful enough to take out space warships in one shot, no armor a mobile suit could mount could even slow it down. And the enemy had practically taken that shot right in the back of the head.

"Bastard!" Ysak cried, powering back out of the hanger, looking for blood. The Photon Cloak on the Duelist's back steamed in the mountain air as it radiated heat. Ysak's eyes lit upon the bulky suit standing not far down slope, its beam cannon still smoking. "All right, you Orb birthed monster, show me what you can do!" Ysak snarled. He stomped the jet pedals to the floor and drew a beam saber while simultaneously targeting the enemy with the new 25mm gatling beam cannon. A hail of green energy darks vomited forth from the rapidly spinning gun barrels as Ysak raced down the slope, chewing through foliage around the Crusader and scarring the mobile suit with hundreds of tiny melted pockmarks.

Dyre stared, disbelieving. He'd seen the hyper impulse cannon shot hit. The top half of the enemy suit shouldn't have been anything but a smoking ruin, but here it was, unharmed, charging down the slope at him at a terrifying speed. His primary weapons were all still charging. Dyre dropped the cannon and jerked out his own beam saber, fumbling the shield into position. It did him little good.

The Duelist screamed by him, the chainsaw teeth on its shield cleanly hacking his shield in half, while the Duelist's beam saber cut the Crusader's left leg off at mid thigh. Rocketing past the toppling enemy, Ysak turned his shield back and fired all three beam grapples. The tethered projectiles penetrated the Crusader's back in three places, one beam eradicated Dyre's head and upper torso in a bloody flash of steam. Ysak pulled into a tight turn, thrusters igniting the nearest trees. The grapple tethers tightened and pulled, throwing the crippled Crusader into the trees to roll downslope in a rippling ball of flaming metal. The grapples retracted into the shield with high pitched whines. "It'll serve." Ysak said, unaware of the massive grin that was currently splitting his face. He went searching for more targets.

Elsewhere on the mountain, Athrun and Kira were smashing through the Strike Daggers that had confronted them with their usual contemptuous ease. The enemy was just too far outclassed. What beams weren't diffused by the Angel Halo's or blocked by shields just missed entirely. Athrun hacked off arms, legs and heads by the bucketful, unwilling to waste ammunition on cannon fodder. Kira experimented with the Gugnir cannon and was quite pleased with its results, though the Dagger pilots who found their machines tumbling down slope with no power thought differently.

Dearka and Miriallia were working out the chain of command a bit further down the mountain. The Grand Buster's OS had allocated the use of the back mounted CIWS and shoulder beam cannons to the co-pilot and Dearka felt that she had enough to worry about with just the electronics and that she should transfer weapons control to him. Miriallia was glad to be have something to do besides just sit helplessly in her seat though, and she refused to give up her "right to defend herself."

"Listen. When we get into a real battle you'll be so busy managing all of us that you won't have time to fire those weapons and that'll be detracting from the overall firepower of the machine." Dearka said, annoyed.

"You listen. Maybe when that time comes around, I'll do just that. But right at the moment most of the electronics aren't even on. We're right in the middle of the enemy, not at the fringes. And in this situation, Kira and the others don't need my directions to know what to do. And besides…" Mir swung the left shoulder turret around and blew the head off a Strike Dagger that was attempting to sneak up on them from the side. "… they aren't that hard to use."

Dearka found it hard to come up with a workable counter for that one, so he decided to drop the subject for the moment, at least until they were over the pacific and headed for Hawaii. Instead he swung the Grand Buster around and hit the jets, lofting them in a low arc following the curve of the mountain. He took advantage of the improved view offered by the jump to blast three Daggers to scrap with the 400mm anti-armor shotgun.

Cagalli hadn't joined in with the others, instead opting to climb to the top of the mountain to play to her machine's strengths. From her position crouched near the peak, she could study all parts of the battlefield. Kira and Athrun were tearing up the south and east sides of the enemy line, while Ysak was mauling his way through the north and Dearka/Miriallia were pounding the west. Cagalli picked off a pair of Daggers that looked like they were trying to retreat from Ysak; she was pleasantly surprised with the power of her gun, which killed one enemy even through his upraised shield. In what most people would consider a shockingly short time, there was no more fighting on the battlefield. Twenty Strike Daggers and one Strike Crusader had become nothing more than inert metal or burning wreckage on the side of the mountain. It had been about six minutes from the time the Go Team had entered the mountain.

-------------------------------------------

Asmodeus was observing from his concealed position three ridges away. He let out a low whistle of admiration. The enemy was far stronger than he had anticipated. It was time to modify the plan a little bit. There had been nothing but static from the Go Team since the first report, and they were well past their allotted time. Jones and his friends must have been somehow able to take out the company of well trained soldiers on their own. They must have had something planned or the help of people inside the facility too, because it was inconceivable that five commandos, no matter how good, could handle more than sixty trained soldiers in just six minutes. Asmodeus got on the line to Cervantes and made his report.

"So what do you want to do then?" Cervantes asked testily. You just couldn't count on the help these days.

"We will engage the enemy as planned, though we will be shooting to kill, not disable. We can still use wreckage to glean some of their technology, and some is better than none if they get away. We'll destroy the mountain, drop the entire facility on them and sift through the ruins for the bodies later. Frost will ensure that there is no retreat for them."

Cervantes sighed and kneaded his eyes. "All right, if that's what you have to do, then do it. I'm sending reinforcements. Two full companies of Strike Daggers, plus assorted ground and air support. They should arrive in about thirty minutes."

"Thank you, sir. I'll make another report when they are dealt with."

"Do so." Cervantes said and signed off.

"Form a firing line on me." Asmodeus ordered his nine remaining Crusaders. "Use the hyper impulse cannons and missiles. We'll engage at range until they close the distance, then we'll go to trios." Asmodeus decided. Trios was two Crusaders using beam sabers to draw an enemy out of position, while a third hung farther back and struck the killing blow with the hyper impulse cannon. "Remember, these people are more skilled than us and are in high performance machines. Teamwork will be required for us to emerge victorious."

"What about me?" Frost grunted. His wounds pained him greatly, which did volumes to attest to the seriousness of his condition. Frost had calmly accepted multiple gunshot wounds in his past, ignoring them as a lesser man ignores mosquito bites, but he really had been worked over by the bomb and collapsing building.

"Flank them. They'll be charging us, wanting to get past the hyper impulse cannons as quickly as possible. They won't be expecting a sneak attack from the rear, especially from someone like you. You can make a new scythe from the wreckage of their precious Gundams."

"I'd like that." Frost affirmed. He started the Fury up and set it bounding along the wooded vale behind the mountain ridge, managing to weave his way between the myriad tree trunks to avoid causing a noticeable disturbance. His agility, combined with the Fury's small posture and stealth systems would help ensure that his maneuver would indeed be a surprise.

---------------------------------

Dearka had jumped the Grand Buster up to near Cagalli's position, resigned to his role as a support unit. Miriallia had relented and switched over control of all weapons to him for the moment, while she booted up the Long Range Radar and Vari-camera. "Let's see what there is to see." She said. Almost instantly her screen lit up with threat symbols. "There! Three ridges away, ten enemy mobile suits… checking signatures… nine of the upgraded Strike Daggers and… oh my god… the Freedom."

"What?" Dearka asked, calling up her data on one of his screens. "Holy shit."

"Kira? Athrun? We've got ten enemies in a line about two kilometers north of your current position. Ysak, they should be within sight of where you are right now."

"I see them as well." Cagalli cut in. "It's hard to get a solid lock on them, all the trees keep getting in the way, and they're crouched down real low."

"So what are we going to do?" Dearka asked.

"You're asking me?" Mir replied.

"You're the CIC."

"Okay… no pressure or anything… let's see… let's see…" Mir said, racking her brain for a good strategy.

"Kira and I will move to the sides, Ysak will go up the center. You and Cagalli will provide covering fire for Ysak until he engages the enemy, after which you will take targets of opportunity and watch for enemy reinforcements and tricks." Athrun's cold, calm voice cut through the chaos of Miriallia's mind.

"R-right!" she said, glad that someone knew what to do. CIC work had never been this involved before, she'd only had to warn Kira and the others when enemies were approaching or tell Captain Ramius what types of enemies they could expect to be fighting.

"Don't worry, love. You'll get better with some practice. Athrun always was good at everything he did." Dearka tried to comfort her.

"Of course." Mir said, trying to be cheerful herself.

"Now, help me with this program. I think I found my excuse to use the Earthshaker."

"You and your toys… Ysak, Kira, Athrun, be warned that one of the enemies is piloting the Freedom."

"Thanks for the heads up." Ysak said sourly. He had had a lot of bad experiences fighting against the Freedom while Kira was piloting it and he couldn't shake a small sense of dread at the thought of fighting it again, even with a mere Natural at the controls.

"Could it be the same guy that attacked Junius Six?" Kira asked Athrun.

"Let's hope so. He wasn't very skilled."

-------------------------

Asmodeus was just locking in his final firing solutions. "Trio one and two be advised that your targets are attempting to move out to the sides, do your best to herd them into the central kill zone. Trio three, your target is dead ahead. I will assist trio one and two until target three gets closer." Asmodeus aimed his hyper impulse/plasma cannons at the Justice upgrade and his railguns and beam rifle at the machine that bore a startling resemblance to his own. "All units, fire at will."

Blue-red streaks of energy filled the air, blasting through groves of trees like they were little more than air. Ysak was almost immediately pinned down by the unrelenting barrage of destructive energy. Kira and Athrun tried to move closer but found it difficult in the face of the well coordinated and timed fire from their enemies, which wasn't made any easier with the erratic volleys from the Freedom, switching from one of them and then to the other, whichever seemed the closest to breaking through. Ysak used his Photon Cloak to block a converging blast on his position and snapped off a few shots with his dual 57, to the detriment of several century old trees on the ridgeline just in front of the Crusaders. "Some back up would be nice!" he growled.

"Working on it." Dearka replied, typing furiously into the Earthshaker's OS while Miriallia read off sensor displays rapid fire and worked at anchoring the leg stabilizing struts securely.

"I'm firing as fast as I can." Cagalli snapped in frustration, her ion cannon blasting away at the distant enemy. "They've got really good cover and they're moving around enough that I can't do much more than hope I get lucky."

"Here comes the secondary attack!" Miriallia called out, her eye catching on the radar scope. "Ysak, you've got missiles inbound, more than fifty contacts. Kira, Athrun, you've both got a couple dozen coming your way."

"Wonderful. Just fucking wonderful." Ysak grumbled, throwing up the Photon Cloak to catch a few more hyper impulse blasts and bringing the 25mm beam gatling into play for a few seconds before he was forced to duck down again. Still, he'd managed to thin the swarm that was headed his way, hopefully by enough. Besides, with Phase Shift Armor, mere missiles weren't much of a threat anyway. None of Kira's or Athrun's missiles even got more than halfway before being picked off by accurate beam rifle fire.

"Done." Dearka declared triumphantly.

"Done here too." Miriallia replied. While missile detonations churned the grassy fields below into a morass of fire and smoke, the Grand Buster stowed its carried weapons onto special racks on its back. With ponderous grace, the Earthshaker artillery cannon slid around on its track until it was well braced by both arms. The stabilizer struts drilled deep into the solid granite around the feet of the Gundam to provide a steady and balanced firing platform. Dearka reached back into the ammunition hopper mounted on the Grand Buster's lower back and removed a single shell, which was more than ten feet long and weighed a good five tons. He slammed the shell home into the breech of the gun and locked it into place.

"I feel like a soldier from centuries ago, with those muzzle loading guns." Dearka muttered. "This thing takes forever to fire." The gun cranked around to the pre programmed firing position. Everything was still for an eye blink. Then the world shook to a mighty thunderclap. Stone cracked and danced under the Grand Buster's feet and the torso rocked back alarmingly, until Dearka was sure they were going to fall over. The muzzle flash had temporarily blinded his cameras, so he couldn't see what was happening. Miriallia was following the projectile's progress on her radar. The image impacted on the enemy ridgeline.

"Radar says we hit. Did we? Our cameras are out for the moment." She asked. There was a long pause.

"I'll say you did." Ysak said numbly. He stared at the gaping hole the shell had blown in the enemy held ridge. Pretty much the entire right half of the ridgeline had disappeared in the cataclysmic explosion. Bits of burning trees and melted armor were pattering down like rain all over the place. Ysak slowly brought the Duelist up to a full stand. No one fired at him, the enemy was in disarray.

"Trio one… trio one, are you there? Trio one… oh, screw it, never mind. They're gone." Asmodeus said with a grimace. He'd jarred his back when the Purifier had been knocked flying from the blast wave. He'd had a glimpse of a monstrous shell flitting through the air towards the ridgeline, and then an explosion the likes of which he still couldn't comprehend had flipped his machine around like a toy. Around him, the remaining machines of trios two and three were likewise slowly getting to their feet, discarding warped cannons and jettisoning mangled missile launchers, damage suffered from being in proximity to the blast.

"Keep firing, men. We have to keep them engaged until the reinforcements get here. A weapon that powerful can't be quick firing. They've played their trump card; now all we have to do is wait for ours to get to them." Asmodeus shouted. He clambered back up to the top of what remained of the ridge. The enemy was closing rapidly. He opened up with all his weapons again and again, hoping to drive them back, but they were too skilled, managing to dodge or deflect all of his attacks with seeming ease. "Where the hell are you, Frost?" Asmodeus snarled as his command entered the desperate fray behind him.

--------------------------

"What's that?" Cagalli muttered, scanning the ground back to the south of the battle. She'd seen the results of the artillery cannon's shot, and she had been cheered up immensely. The enemy couldn't last against that kind of firepower, especially that now that Kira and Athrun were free to advance to close combat range. Some sixth sense had told her to check behind her and so she had twisted the Rubicon around after checking the battery charge. Still 74 left. Plenty of power.

Something was moving through the trees at an incredible pace. Her cameras were panning as fast as they could go and it was all they could do to keep the image in the middle of her screen. And that was at a distance of at least a mile. She brought up her ion cannon. Whatever it was, it wasn't likely to be friendly. "Could you check out this contact for me, Miriallia? It's closing from the south, down in the valley and its closing FAST." Cagalli requested. She didn't wait for a reply before opening up with her ion cannon. She had a bad feeling about this.

Her fire blew trees apart and sent fountains of dirt and rock flying through the air, but she didn't even manage to slow down the oncoming target. Indeed, if anything it increased its velocity. "Yeah, sure thing, Cagalli. Hold on… okay, I've got it. Wow, it IS fast. Computers are running the info… come on… okay… no match. Unknown mobile suit or mobile armor, closing rapidly from the south. Probably hostile."

"How rapidly?" Athrun asked.

"Sensors indicate a speed greater than two hundred miles per hour… and it seems to be traveling on the ground, not flying. That's through a forest mind you." Miriallia shook her head. "And not a blade of grass disturbed." She whispered. Well, maybe not that, but no trees were being knocked down she could see.

"What's that you say?" Dearka asked.

"Nothing. See if you can't slow this guy down, would you?"

"Which guy?"

"The one Cagalli is shooting at!"

"Okay, okay no need to shout." Dearka had just finished stowing the Earthshaker. Kira and Athrun and Ysak should be able to finish up without another shot. He drew out his other weapons and started tracking the new enemy. By this time, whatever it was was only a half mile or so from the field Ysak, Kira and Athrun were engaging the enemy in. "Quick bastard." Dearka said with a frown of concentration. He cut loose with everything he had. Beams, explosive shotgun shells and red-blue plasma cut through the air, followed closely by sixty missiles. A section of forest more than three acres on a side vanished in smoke and flame. By the time the smoke had cleared, Dearka expected to see nothing but twisted wreckage.

"You missed." Mir sounded disappointed.

"What do you mean? My targeting was dead on!" Dearka protested.

"Look at the radar. He didn't even slow down a tiny bit."

"That's impossi…ble." Dearka stared open mouthed at the target icon, which had changed course. It was approaching HIM now.

-------------------------

Frost smiled icily. The enemy would now learn the true meaning of fear. He activated the Celerity system mounted on the back of the Fury. The system dumped raw fuel into his engines and pumped overflow current through his maneuvering thrusters. In practical terms he got several orders of magnitude faster and more agile, at least for the next couple of minutes. He'd have to be careful. If he let the system run too long his reactor would go critical, which would be a flashy way to go, but he still had things to do in life.

Landscape had been blurring by before. Now, even with his enhanced eyesight he couldn't see more than a blur of green and brown outside his screens. He was piloting more by instinct now than anything. He stopped dodging trees; just bulling them out of the way was enough now that the enemy had given away their position. He would take out their ranged support and then punish the melee fighters for their foolish decision not to run away when they had the chance. The enemy was shooting at him from their position near the top of the mountain. Frost went into evasive maneuvers and activated his Geschmeidig Panzer beam deflector shields. Mounted on wire guided pods, they were based off the Moebius Zero gun barrels, but with a defensive goal instead of offensive. Frost elected to keep the pods attached to the Fury for the present; the system didn't function too well in atmosphere, with the drag of air friction, especially at his current pace.

"Goddamnit!" Dearka shouted, startling Miriallia. "I can't get this guy! He's too fast!" he blasted away desperately with his hyper impulse cannon and shotgun while willing his missile tubes to reload faster. "I'm giving you the turrets, so help out." He said through clenched teeth. Miriallia nodded without saying anything, she could sense his concentration. She tried to catch the rapidly approaching enemy between her crosshairs, but the mobile suit moved like something you'd see in a movie on x24 fast forward. It brought to mind images she'd rather have kept buried.

"Frost." Cagalli echoed in concert with her, unknowingly. Her ion cannon was worthless at this range, not that she'd been able to do much with it when he was farther away either. She dropped it and pulled out the beam lance, while filling the air with fire from her twin 25mm beam gatlings and shoulder missile packs. She even opened up with her CIWS guns, in desperation. Nothing seemed to make a difference. The unidentified enemy mobile suit… piloted by the insane monster Zacharis Frost in all likelihood… was still storming upslope at her at an unbelievable speed. "Athrun! Help!" Cagalli shrieked, quite unnerved.

Athrun froze in mid attack. The Strike Crusader he'd been about to finish off tried to take a swing at him with its beam saber, but Athrun's mind re-engaged and he fended it off and tore off its sword arm with a casual kick from his right leg. The enemy fell back weaponless.

"What is it?" Kira asked in concern, spitting a Crusader head on his beam saber nearby. The enemy pilots were reasonably skilled, and working as a coordinated team it was taking longer than he had expected to deal with them. That the leader was in a Freedom didn't help matters either, it was quite disconcerting to fight against it and while the pilot was no genius he was still skilled enough to make Kira wish the Freedom was under his control again.

Athrun didn't bother to reply. From the tone of Cagalli's cry, she was in immediate and life threatening danger. He had no time for conversation. He hit the afterburners on his flight packs and soared towards the mountain top as fast as he could go. He hoped he wasn't too late; the enemy had been moving incredibly quickly when Miriallia had first spotted him, though Athrun doubted it could maintain that pace going up a mountain. Still, something deep and visceral inside him clenched with fear and urged him to greater speed.

Frost was enjoying himself, though his wounds were throbbing again. He could almost taste the terror of the pilots of the slim red mobile suit and its chunky looking green and tan companion. They were doing everything in their power to slow him down, but it wasn't enough. He was too fast for them. Too agile. Big guns didn't matter a bit if you couldn't hit the target, and the Fury was a very hard to hit target. Now all he had to decide was how he would kill them. Frost casually perused his weapons list while the half seconds crawled by. He elected to keep the 57mm beam rifles stowed… in his current mood, blowing them apart with gunfire would be supremely unsatisfying. He wouldn't use the beam grapples on the arms and legs… at this speed he would only trip himself up. And the enemy had Phase Shift Armor in all likelihood, even though his computers couldn't identify the exact class of mobile suits he was fighting, so his armor-Schneider combat knives would be of little use. That left only one weapon system besides the CIWS array. The twin pair of ES06 wide bladed beam sabers. His weapons of choice anyway. Funny how logic tended to reinforce his latent desires. Frost whipped them out, one per hand, twin eight meter long by two meter wide slabs of green plasma fire, perfect for butchering his mechanical foes like cattle.

Frost would take the red one first. It already looked like it was covered in blood and Frost couldn't wait to make the illusion a reality. The machine seemed to be cowering away from him, its rapid firing beam cannons lifting up into the air reflexively, sending their torrent of fire up, high above his head. Frost was excited. He loved it when the victim knew they were helpless to resist and just gave up and waited for death to claim them. Not that he would make it that easy or quick, oh no. The enemy would get a little while to regret being his foe before they left this world. He put his left arm low and right arm high, planning to take a leg with the left sword and the opposite arm with the right sword.

Cagalli tried to bring the beam gatlings down, but her involuntary shiver looked to have cost her her life. The left arm seemed to descend with the speed of a bug trapped in amber, while the enemy rushed at her like a charging bull, dodging her outstretched beam lance with a slight twist that didn't slow Frost by a fraction. The twin wide bladed beam swords surged forward. Cagalli cried out in terror and squeezed her eyes shut. When nothing happened for a second or two, she cracked one open again and blinked hard. A mobile suits red and purple arm was interposed across her vision, less than a foot from the outer hull of her cockpit. The double bladed beam saber gripped in this arm had parried Frost's attacks and the Righteous was currently engaged in a clinch with Frost's mobile suit, each trying mightily to push the other back so they could disengage their swords.

"Athrun!" Cagalli cried, tears in her eyes.

"Little… busy." He gritted in reply. The enemy mobile suit was short but massive. It was all he could do to keep his sword in its current position, much less counterattack. The enemy machine looked almost bug like, with the crimson and forest green splotchy paint job and eight large spikes it sported, two to a limb. Engine exhaust ports and attitude adjustment ports dotted its hide like chickenpox, which no doubt helped explain its maneuvering and speed. Six hexagonal shield like pods were attached in two triangles of three, one triangle on the back and one on the front. Athrun had no idea what those might do.

"It's Frost!" Cagalli said, backing up as fast as she could go, to give her fiancée room.

"What?" Athrun said; sweat beading on his face as he struggled to free his sword while also keeping the enemy at bay.

"The pilot of that machine! It's Frost, I'm sure of it."

"Me too." Miriallia cut in. Dearka was maneuvering for a clear shot, but it was hard. The Grand Buster didn't really carry any weapons designed for close quarters combat. "I don't know how it can be, considering how wounded he was when I last saw him, but that speed… that speed and how the machine dodged our shots… it's him. I know it." She sounded a little panicky.

"Calm down." Dearka said in a slow and sure voice. "We're going to be okay." He switched to Athrun's channel. "I don't want to seem like a coward or anything, but this machine of mine doesn't have the equipment to fight that little monster."

"Get out of here, Dearka. Go help Kira and Ysak. You too, Cagalli." Athrun ordered.

"But I want to help you!" Cagalli protested. Athrun gritted his teeth as his hand almost slipped on the controls.

"You'll do that best by getting far away from this freak. I can't fight at my best when I'm worried about you!" Athrun snapped. "Look, I appreciate the sentiment dear, but this isn't a fight you can help me with. Go help Kira finish with the other guys and then tell him to get here ASAP. That's what I need you to do right now."

"All right." Cagalli replied haltingly. "Just don't die."

"Never even considered it." He replied as Cagalli jetted away along with Dearka. "All right, you son of a bitch, lets play." He growled, a furious anger building in him until the vision of a green seed exploded inside his head.