Franklin Borander swore softly to himself as the entire left side of his body started to flare up with pain. Ysak had body checked him violently to the side... the Doc was a great number of years past the time in his life when he could have accepted such a hit with no serious consequences... emminently superior genetics or not, his bones were starting to get fragile. It didn't help that he'd spent the last decade or so down in this lab, with barely any bit of exercise... his diet wasn't always so healthy either... snacks and such grabbed on the go while he worked furiously on one of the many projects that made up the greater project JIHAD. Truth be told, looking back at it in retrospect, the Doc was sort of surprised he hadn't suffered a serious injury or illness earlier... he'd certainly been asking for one. He was the oldest fourth generation Coordinator... he needed to start watching himself. His lifespan may extend into the second century, but only if an accident or illness didn't do him in first... with proper exercise and commitment like what his youngest brother Jeremiah got, he would be able to keep playing physical sports past his hundred and sixtieth birthday... if and when such a time came. The doc privately didn't think he'd live too much more than ten more years... eventually his employers would decide he wasn't useful anymore and he'd go the way of the failed BCPUs... a one way trip to the bottom of the mountain waste pit. Speaking of failed BCPUs... it was too bad about Ashino. He'd certainly been the most likeable of the three high grade BCPU's... the most human, the most personable... the only one he'd ever had an enjoyable conversation with... of corse it was precisely for those reasons that his failure had likely come about... the Doc had been treating him too much like a human, going counter to his own conditioning... he was starting to really treat Ashino like a son, rather than just a creation. It was hard... sometimes they really did seem human... well, not Zacharis... but even Cray had moments when he was just like a big goofy looking teenager, like any other in the world.
Franklin grimaced as he slowly sat up... his left arm was definitely broken... a large fracture along the tibia and maybe extending up the humerus... very painful. And then there was the rest of his hurts... several ribs felt cracked, he was bleeding from nose and lips, his entire torso and upper legs were deeply bruised and he'd lost at least two teeth... damned teenage girls had worked him over pretty hard. Doc supposed he couldn't blame them... he'd have been pretty upset at being treated like that too. That was his problem... he had too much empathy for his subjects... he'd need to work on that in the future. Right now though, he needed to do what he could to prevent the escape of the subjects and then he needed to get himself into medical care. He reached into the pocket of his trousers, under the smock. He frowned deeply... his cell phone was not in its accustomed place. He patted himself down thoroughly, biting his lip in agony as the motion caused his left arm to slip and the fracture to grind slightly. He started swearing... softly and first but gradually growing louder and louder until he was soon swearing at the top of his lungs, in as inventive a manner as he could manage. His cell phone wasn't on him... it must have been knocked loose when Ysak charged him, or when the girls were kicking him. He looked around and swore even louder. "FUCKING BITCHES!" the cellphone was not anywhere around him... it didn't take a genius of his caliber to deduce that one of the girls had taken it. If they could figure out how to operate it, they'd have the keys to the entire facility in their hands. And he didn't doubt they'd be able to figure it out... those four Coordinators had the SEED... their abilities were magnified by a tremendous amount... figuring out the disguised cell phone would be a snap for them in their current state. Which meant that unless the three BCPU's got lucky and managed to catch up before they left sub level six, the subjects would likely make it out of the facility... and once they were outside in the Andes then it would be exponentially more difficult to track them down and recapture them. His day had been so perfect before... the Doc quietly bemoaned his bad luck and wondered what else fate would do to him to further his misery. He didn't have long to wait to find out.
With a grunt and a heave the sixteen hundred pound bank of test equipment that had fallen over on top of Zacharis was flipped upwards so hard it slammed into the ceiling and cracked in half. The pieces rained down onto empty floor. The Doc started... he'd thought Zacharis was already in pursuit of the subjects... he hadn't specifically seen him leave but Zacharis was fast enough and the Doc had been distracted enough that he'd never thought twice of it... Zacharis was usually more than eager to pursue enemies... especially these particular enemies. The Doc looked around the room and started again, groaning as his left arm slipped a little more. Zacharis was standing not more than five feet away, just staring at him. The bloody welts from where he'd been hit with submachine gun fire were already starting to heal over, the healing flesh pushing the bullets out of the dents they'd inflicted. It made the Doc smile proudly for a moment... any physician or biometrist could have thought up the blood coagulant that all BCPU's sported... when exposed to the oxygen in air their blood rapidly solidified and became a hard, leather like crust, allowing them to survive terrible wounds with relative ease... he'd cut several fully in half and they'd lived for days before dying of fever, not blood loss. But Frost was more advanced than that... not only did his blood coagulate with frightening speed, but his body actually replaced the cells which made it up at an extremely accelerated rate... over fifty times faster than a normal human... maybe not enough to just heal massive gunshot wounds just like that, but enough to erase relatively minor damage with ease. The process burned a lot of energy, but Frost was also equipped with mechanisms that allowed him to store far more energy than just the fat on his body would normally allow. The accelerated healing process remained dormant much of the time, only activating when the internal computers wired into Frost's hardware detected damage to the host body.
"Aren't you going to pursue them, Zacharis? I don't care about Cagalli or Miriallia... you can kill them if you catch them. When you catch them. I'm touched by your concern for my welfare, but I'll be fine... you go and hunt them down and bring them back for me, my son." the Doc ordered firmly.
"What is my purpose?" Frost asked suddenly, without turning or even blinking.
"What... what is your...? Zacharis... that's not important right now... what IS important is the return of my test subjects. You want a purpose? Your purpose is to bring them back. RIGHT NOW!" the Doc commanded furiously.
"You said you had a long term purpose for me. What is that purpose?" Zacharis did not move from where he stood.
"God damn... you listen to me you little freak!" the Doc snarled. "When I give you an order you follow it! Do you hear me? Go and get them!" the Doc paused. Frost just stared at him. "Fine... you want to do things the hard way... Activate cranial reciever: activate pain sequence four, run ten seconds." the Doc commanded, activating the voice receptive software installed into Frost for just such sitautions as this... the Doc could cause Frost pain, knock him out or even blow him up, just by saying the right command word. It was a large reason why the Doc never had felt very threatened by Frost... he could be erased with a single word... no amount of muscle or power or speed could compensate for that. Maximized potential... nothing to fear.
Zacharis twitched a minute fraction... as much as a person might if a gnat suddenly flew past their ear unexpectedly. No more. He smiled at the Doc. "Please don't... it hurts. It really hurts. It really hurts about as much as every single last step I've taken all day long. If that is the worst you can do to me, I've had less than nothing to fear from you for even longer than I suspected."
The Doc stared in disbelief... raw agony was flooding down every one of Frost's nerves... this sequence was programmed to simulate the pain of being burned alive. Even a BCPU should be quivering in a ball on the ground, twisting with excrutiation... Ashino had been disabled merely by the automatic implants... Frost was of course superior but he shouldn't have been that much superior. This was a problem... one he needed to correct as soon as possible. If Frost suddenly gained the notion that he was autonomous from the Doc and Blue Cosmos... the thought didn't bear thinking about. The Doc knew that he was a monster with no soul... he'd destroyed the lives of countless people in a way far worse than the physical death and pain Frost delighted in. But he wasn't such a monster as to turn his greatest creation loose onto the world as a wild cannon... the sheer magnitude of the destruction would be horrific to every sense... especially if Frost managed to get to the Fury. "Activate sleep sequence, codeword: Nappy Time." the Doc ordered. Frost swayed, his eyes blinking... blinking until finally they slid shut, like great iron gates slowly descending to seal off a fortress. Frost remained standing but his breathing became deep and regular. The Doc breathed a sigh of relief... the situation had been saved by his forethought. He hadn't been sure for a moment there... he'd feared that Zacharis's biology adapting to the implants might have queered some of his safety protocols... it had looked like Frost was actually fighting the command rather than just switching off into deep REM sleep like he was programmed to. The Doc ran his good hand through his hair and started to turn to head towards his private elevator. Until Frost started laughing. Laughing in his sleep.
"Oh... oh Doc." Frost said, smiling even wider than before. His eyes remained shut and his breathing remained that of a sleeping person. "You built me to be governed by my instincts... to disregard all my higher reasoning, to ignore even the thought of preserving my own life... and you think that merely putting me to sleep solves anything? I cannot tell the difference between my waking moments and my sleeping moments any more... I haven't been able to since the level six surgery. Everything is the same nightmare to me... the same living hell of suffering and delirium and captivity and anger and lust and denial. You made me like this... a creature controlled by his own subconscious... a subconscious you twisted to be as evil as you could, because evil was what was needed to fit the bill your masters wanted. Or maybe you did it for your own twisted reasons... I personally don't care." Frost moved so that he was facing the Doc again... moving as surely with his eyes closed as open. Franklin supposed he oughten't to have been surprised... Frost lived down here, he probably had the entire room memorized.
"What do you want? What are you planning?" the Doc asked, backing away cautiously. He didn't doubt for a moment that his life was in deadly peril. If only he could get to the elevator... once the doors on that shut he'd be safe. But the elevator was in another room... dozens of meters away... he doubted he could make it before Frost chased him down, even blind. Or more accurately, asleep.
"I just want you to tell me what my purpose is. Be a dad for once and tell your son something he actually wants to know." Frost replied.
"Why do you want to know?" the Doc asked, his mind racing for a good solution to this... if only he could call for help... even a normal soldier would be able to distract Frost long enough for the Doc to get a good head start on the way to the elevator. But all the guards as well as his other BCPU's were all upstairs, on the other levels. Even the BCPU's in training were out of reach... all in simulations or exercises, none were due for a surgery, he'd cleared the schedule for his escaped subjects.
"I've killed people, Doc. I've killed dozens of people... scores... maybe even hundreds. I hope hundreds. I've killed for the fun of it. I've killed to make the pain go away. I've killed because I was told, because I was tired of it all and just for the pure hell of it. I've killed because I hate and because I lust and because I have to... in order to justify my existence... to prove I exist. I cannot tell if I'm asleep or awake... if my actions are real or not. So I kill people... when they die and blood and organs go everywhere and other people run away... I know I'm awake. When they just sit there and laugh at me no matter how I chop them or twist them... I'm asleep. I think. I can't tell and don't really care. I kill for every reason... except that I really have none. I want to know what's driving me to kill... I know I have a purpose... I know I'm meant for something... why else would have I been built? And don't tell me I was built to kill Coordinators... that is a side benefit... you built me for something else. I know it."
"What'll you do if I do tell you?" the Doc asked, his voice calm. He'd known this moment would come someday... Frost was right on the mark, of course. The Doc had made him what he was because that was what Cervantes had desired... a consumate killer with no morals or ethics or even mind to call his own. He'd been able to comply with everything but the lack of a mind... the human mind is surprisingly hard to get rid of. But the Doc had also made him for two other important reasons. One was to prove that he could. The other was that he intended Frost for a great thing. He'd always imagined himself imparting the knowledge of this great destiny to Frost at some point in the future... some cloudy date that always got pushed further and further away. He never thought he'd do it in the middle of his own wrecked lab, with a broken arm and other hurts, confronted by a rebellious Frost who was very likely going to kill him in a very violent manner no matter what the Doc said.
"I'll kill you of course. I'll kill you in the most horrible, painful and wretched way I can. You knew that before you asked."
"And what will you do if I don't tell you?" the Doc countered.
"I'll do the same thing. And then I'll kill myself too. And all your work on me will have been for nothing... who knows, the war might even be lost over it, especially if those Coordinators escape Cray and Ashino." Frost replied. His eyes flickered open and stayed open... he'd overcome the sleep command. The Doc snorted a laugh... trust Frost to know how to strike to the very heart of the matter... to leave him with no choice at all.
"And if I said... activate self destruct sequence, codeword: Denied Destiny?" the Doc asked, throwing himself down behind one of the operating tables, screaming in pain as his arm jarred painfully, the edges of the fracture tearing through the skin. There was a wet sound, like a fork punched through a side of meat. But no ear shattering explosion. The Doc swore... how could the explosives packed into Frost's heart armoring failed to detonate? They should have blasted him into a cloud of burnt bone shards and vaporized blood... but that hadn't happened. Frost started laughing again.
"You really should hide your detonation circuit somewhere better... the heart is actually a surprisingly unprotected organ, even in me." Frost stepped into view. The scapel the Doc had given him earlier to use on Cagalli protruded from his chest, with quickly hardening blood welling up around it. "I figured out where the activation module was months ago... I just needed to the proper tool, which could pentrate my skin and reinforced organs easily enough, but wasn't so big that the wound would not close in time to prevent me killing myself. I'd thought to use a large needle... but a scapel is a suitable substitute. All I had to do was stop my heart from beating long enough for the cut to coagulate... a trick you installed in me, by the way... and the end result is one severed detonation node and one very alive Zacharis Frost." Frost yanked the scapel from his chest and eyed the Doc meaningfully. "And now that you are out of little tricks, don't you think it's about time you started talking... "dad"?"
The Doc lay back and chuckled. His life was over. Why not do a decent thing for once? Why not? He looked up at the ceiling blankly. "I was going to tell you this anyway... sometime. When you were older. I don't know. Do you know why I chose you for my program, Zacharis?" the Doc asked. Frost came over and sat next to him, idly poking the Doc on the side with the scapel, just hard enough to make an incision each time. The Doc ignored the papercut like stings... he would probably have to endure far worse before he was done with his story.
"You know I don't... you were right to boast about your skills at mind wiping."
"Ah well, that's true. Well, there was always a few reasons why I chose anyone for a BCPU canidate... Ashino I chose because his unchild like solemnity impressed me from a distance. Cray I chose because he was already a homicidal little thing... did you know that he'd killed his own younger brother by cutting him to pieces with a kitchen knife at the tender age of nine?"
"I knew there was a reason Cray and I got along so well together."
"And it doesn't end there... his older sister caught him during the act and turned him in to the police... he escaped charges by pleading insanity and because he was a child... five months later the sister turned up at a hospital emergency room, poisoned from being force fed a large quantity of duct cleaning solution and with her skull and pelvic bones smashed in by a baseball bat. The bat was still embedded in her... well, you know how Cray is with girls. She lived, but she has never awoken from the coma and is in truth paralyzed from the neck down. She's twenty four now. I thought Cray would be a perfect canidate for my program... he already had the killer's instinct I was trying so hard to fabricate in you BCPU's. And even better he was easily controllable... his father had been abusive and he really wanted a good father who'd be nice to him... give him treats and call him a good boy. Once I did that he was mine forever more... especially now that I provide for his sex drive as well, which is really his governing factor."
"Enough about Cray... you were going to talk about me?" Frost encouraged, slicing the scapel deeper along the Doc's flank, drawing a rivulet of blood this time, which Frost caught playfully on the razor edge, flicking it off in tiny sparkling droplets and watching the spray patterns.
"... I was getting to that." the Doc gasped slightly. "You... initially I passed you over for the program, Zacharis. You were the sweetest little thing... the gentlest and most lovable child I'd ever seen. The first time I ever laid eyes upon you, you were playing with a pair of baby pups, barely weeks old, while the tolerant old bitch dog lolled nearby, confident you meant her babies no harm. And you didn't... not once did you even tweak a nose, much less pull a tail or rub them the wrong way. You were all of two years old then... not much bigger than a babe born. That was your problem, I learned later. Your father and mother were Naturals... they died in a vehicle accident fourteen years ago, when you were four. But I'll get to that in time. The entire rest of your family are Coordinators, Zacharis. Except you. Your mother wanted a natural child for once... she was sick of the hoops you had to jump through at the time to bear a Coordinator. Your father just plain couldn't afford the treatments... bearing a Coordinator is not cheap you know... especially when you've already raised three of them. Your older sister and two older brothers are still alive, if you care, which I'm sure you don't. They work as civil engineers in the Orb Self Defense Force... or whatever Orb's military is these days. But getting back to your problem... your parents genetics did not combine well in you... children born to them naturally... specifically you... had a whole host of defects. Dwarfism... weak heart... weak liver... stunted muscles... shriveled brain... by all accounts you should have died at birth, if it weren't for the miracles of modern medicine. But your parents loved you, Zacharis... they paid the prohibitive cost for the medical treatments to keep you alive and healthy... even though it drove them from the middle upper class down into the poorhouse to do it."
"I don't care about my past or my stupid dead parents. Get to the purpose." Zacharis interrupted, plunging the scapel into the Doc so deeply only the handle remained above the skin. This wound bled much more freely, and Frost started cutting channels in the Doc's flesh to guide the vital fluid on its path to the floor.
"... The... the past is... necessary. For the purpose." the Doc gasped. "Be... careful. Zacharis. I-I might not last to give you the story if you keep that up."
"Then speak faster."
"Your parents paid the costs for four years... four years of bills and loans and eventual bankruptcy. Four years in which they and your siblings loved you with all their hearts. Four years which ended in a single night... when a drunk driver ran a traffick signal in his expensive sports car and rammed your family's van right off the road and down a steep hill... this was before automatic cars and such. The drunk survived... he's a politician in Orb now, Unato Seiren something or other is his name. He was saved by the very safe crash protection system his car mounted... barely a scratch on him. You family's van was not so blessed... the car burst into flames and rolled down the hill with no airbags whatsoever... a design defect I understand. Side on collisions were not expected by the designers. In any case, your mother and father died... your father by the impact and your mother by the flames. By the time rescuers had pulled your siblings and you from the wreckage, your sister and two brothers had sustained internal injuries which left them unconscious and unresponsive for nearly a year afterwards... injuries sustained shielding you from harm I later found out. You were made a ward of the state." the Doc took a deep breath... a slightly halting one since Frost had not ceased his idle ministrations. "I took you from the ward... from the warden who preyed upon the children he was supposed to care for... a more disgusting man I've rarely met... I hope you kill him someday. I took you because you were a challenge... if I could make someone as flawed as you into a BCPU... I could do it to anyone."
Frost paused a moment in his cutting... the Doc's clothing was getting soaked and sticking to the skin around his work area and he had to tear it away. "If I was such a nice baby, why am I like this? I can tell you... I don't have any gentle emotions in me... if those puppies were here now I would crush them like grapes... just to feel it."
"Because I pulled out all the stops to make you. I ignored every humanitarian protocol, broke every rule I'd previously set, exceeded every limit, moral and ethical that I could conceive of. I wasn't a nice person before... a nice person wouldn't make BCPU's. But it was the making of you that made me a real monster... a monster worse than you are. Because you don't create people like you... you just kill people."
"I wouldn't mind a wife... do you think I could bring Pink around to my point of view?"
"I think you could extinguish the sun by spitting on it first." the Doc chuckled. "Just kill her and be done with it... consign yourself to loneliness, Zacharis... no one will ever love you again. Not even me... I may have created you, but I don't love you. You're an object to me. An object in which I have placed hopes and dreams and so much more work than you can ever imagine... but an object nonetheless." the Doc looked Frost directly in the eyes. "I've mindwiped you on four seperate occasions... the things I've done to you required that I do so, lest you have killed me long ago. I tortured you to the brink of death... I made you beg for more... I shattered your personality... let you think you'd recovered it... and then shattered it again. I destroyed you... and reincarnated you from your own ashes. Not literally, but in all but reality. I cannot even list all the terrible, terrible soul rending things I've done to you... things which make the sort of death you have planned for me look like something someone as kind and innocent as you used to be would think of."
"You're making me horny, Doc... I want some details."
The Doc glared at Frost. "That was inappropriate... I'd thought I'd taught you better than that."
"You thought a lot of things... many of which you were mistaken about. But get on with the story of the purpose... and quicken it up a bit... thinking of Pink reminds me that I've still got plans for her... plans this little talk is delaying."
The Doc sighed and grimaced as Frost started cutting across a wider area now... it felt like his skin was being peeled back layer by layer, but he forced himself not to look. "I did all those things to you... and I succeeded. You are my greatest creation to date... my greatest creation period, now. I completely reversed your personality... everything you were not before, you are now and vice versa. I took the kindest, gentlest, nicest, most sweet child I'd ever encountered... and I turned him into you. I was so proud of myself. And of you... I've always been proud of you, Zacharis, don't doubt that. Just look at you... the only person I've ever seen with a soul more stained and blackened and withered than yours... well, I see his face in the mirror every morning. But enough about the past and me... if I don't tell you your purpose soon, I doubt I'll be able to, right?"
"Your guess is as good as mine... I'd give you roughly three more minutes before I get bored." Frost replied, running his thumb along the exposed edge of the Doc's right hip bone which he'd excavated layer by layer from the flesh around it.
"Initially I designed and built you just to see if I could, like I said before." the Doc said, his eyes becoming distant... whether from introspection or blood loss Frost couldn't tell. "But it was while I was making you, when I started to look at myself and realized what I'd become... a monster who turned children into pet monsters... it was then I conceived of your real purpose. Your real purpose, Zacharis. Can you guess what it is?"
"You know I can't! If I could you'd be dead!"
"Of course... I forgot, forgive me. Everything's getting pretty distant... your scapel is doing your intentions justice. You have a fine hand... you could be a doctor any day." the Doc said, eyes blurring and his vision starting to narrow before he shook it off. "Your purpose... your purpose Zacharis. Your purpose... its to flay the world. To show the world just how evil humanity can be... to what lengths it will go to in order to preserve itself... that it will utterly rob one of its own of everything that makes him a human... just so they can maintain their humanity. That they can and will take children from their parents, kidnap them off the street, take them into a project that erases their minds and reconfigures them into the most dangerous killers the world has ever known. You must rip them bare... pile high the reapings of corpses... build pyres and pyramids from the dead... show them how wrong they were to allow you to ever be created. In short... your purpose is to inflict yourself upon the world... in order that it recognize what a terrible mistake you are... in order to ensure that your like is never created again. Your purpose... is to be war... to become fear... to embody hatred... to represent all the evil humanity has in its depths. Your job... your life... your purpose... is to be the most hated and reviled being to ever live. When you achieve that... and your very name becomes as a curse upon the living... when all of humanity stands united against you, with the single intent to wipe you from existence... thats when you will have realized your destiny. You are humanity's true judge... their jury... their executioner. It falls to you who is not human to show humanity what they're lacking... you are the peacemaker... the true peacemaker... the man who is not, who will unite all men and women... Naturals... Coordinators... Newtypes... everyone will be united against you. And they will defeat you. And in defeating you... the evil enemy of all, the greatest single threat humanity has ever encountered... peace will finally be attained... the brotherhood forged during the conflict will endure and humanity will advance together... confident they can conquer any monster, defeat any obstacle, as long as they work together. That is your destiny, my boy. My son. Zacharis Frost... the man who will forge humankind's unity... in the fires of mutual fear and hatred." the Doc started gasping and choking... Frost had gotten so caught up in the fervor of the Doc's voice... so excited by the revelation of such a worthy purpose, that he'd slipped both his hands into the cuts he'd made and had been tearing away unconsciously at the inside of the Doc... he'd perforated several major organs and displaced a lung before he'd realized what he'd done. Frost withdrew his hands and studied them as if seeing them for the first time.
"I like it. I like everything you said. Except for a few modifications... I don't intend to be defeated. I will unite all of humanity against me... I will judge their worthiness against me. And I will find them wanting. And I will destroy them. All of them. I may lose a fight... I may fall and burn... but ever will I rise again and prove to them that there is always a greater monster, lurking just beneath the surface of the last one. I will show them their evil... manifested in me. I will reflect upon them their hatred... feed upon their fear... sow war like blood from my veins. I will give them a holocaust the likes of which has never been imagined. The very world will die in my grip. I will face the united humanity and I will best them... I will cast humanity's star from the heavens and crush it beneath my heel. And once I do that...once I do that... I will have realized my destiny and fufilled my purpose. Then... I can die too and it will be like there never was anything." Frost looked at the Doc with new eyes. "I never knew you had such vision in you... I could almost hug you."
"Why don't you... why don't you give your father a proper send off? My family cannot do it... unless... you'd honor me by considering me family? A family of monsters, perhaps?" the Doc replied, coughing blood and bits of lung.
"I won't do it for my father... I have no father. He's dead, you said... and besides, only humans have fathers. I will show my appreciation to my creator though." Frost slithered forward and wrapped his arms around the Doc, standing up and pulling the Doc up with him. He rested his chin on the Doc's shoulder. "Thank you. Thank you for my purpose. You should have told me sooner, you bastard... but thank you."
"One... one more thing, my boy." the Doc whispered. "Remember this word. It will be of use to you. When next your hear this word... know... know...know that you must attain... attain what... ... ... what it signifies." the Doc said, his breath beginning to leave him as the internal bleeding grew terminal and his lung started to rip itself apart due to its odd position.
"What word?" Frost asked softly... almost respectfully.
"Pulsar." the Doc breathed. He tried to scream but couldn't get the air to do so... Frost's arms had tightened like the grippers of a vice... flesh compressed like putty, bones twisted and snapped like rubber, organs ground themselves to paste... by the time Frost finally released his grip and dropped what was left of the Doc, the Doc's waist had narrowed from 32 inches to 3 point 2 inches and his torso had been crushed as flat as a pancake. His features were strangely peaceful... almost fufilled. Frost dropped the cadaver... it held no more interest for him. He wiped his shirt down... he'd made a mess of himself again. His foot bumped against something on the ground and he picked up the scapel the Doc had initially given him. He casually gripped it in one hand. He had a destiny. What a destiny. He smiled... and smiled so hard it actually hurt. He had just started to laugh as he casually walked towards the elevators leading upward... now that he knew what he really was for he could reward himself with some play time. Pink. Pink, pink, pink. She couldn't have gotten that far, could she? He was almost through the door when he cursed softly... he'd meant to ask the Doc when his birthday was... oh well, today was really as good as any.
Murrue Ramius shifted positon... her captain's chair on the Archangel really was uncomfortable... especially after being sat in for more than a day straight. It reminded her of the days when they'd been fleeing from Heliopolis in space... days with no rest and constant worry. In modern terms the worry was the absolutely gargantuan buildup by the Earth Alliance in the Pacific Ocean... more than a hundred thousand troops, combined from all the various member states of the EA, were obviously preparing for a major push against Carpentaria sometime in the very near future. They'd need every last one of those troops too... ZAFT had beefed up Carpentaria's defenses considerably vs the last war, and they weren't blind either... after the failed recovery of Gibraltar they knew the hammer would fall on Carpentaria next... they'd been turning the place into the strongest base they could... even including warships in permanent low orbit overhead. The Archangel and the Kusanagi had been standing by at a rendevous point about three hundred miles south of Hawaii for more than a day now... they were just waiting to complete their forces before they headed south to take up their position as watchdog. It wasn't likely the EA would use WMDs, since they looked like they were planning to occupy Carpentaria for good this time, and ZAFT had yet to deploy a WMD on Earth, but you could never be sure in a war this bloody. Both warships were crewed, supplied and fully repaired. Ready for action. Andrew Waltfeld had flown out from Antartica and was currently serving as CIC commander for the Archangel, while Colonel Kisaka commanded the Kusanagi with his usual quiet competence. The only thing the ships lacked were pilots for their complement of mobile suits... and the bodyguards for said pilots. Murre smiled... she found the idea of Kira and Athrun needing a bodyguard unit somewhat ludicrous... those two could handle just about anything, she felt. Cagalli and Lacus were also plenty capable... more so than Murrue had been at their age.
But there was this troubling situation to consider... they'd been at the rendevous for more than ten hours past the scheduled meeting time, with no contact from either Alkire or Kira or Athrun... or anyone. The helicoptors that were supposed to carry the pilots and company back to the ship never showed up. They did not answer calls to their personal phones, or respond to emails to their computers. They'd just dropped off the surface of the map. Everyone had been worried sick... and that was nothing compared to what they were now. Eleven hours late, Alkire had finally called in... on an Earth Alliance signal. He'd looked more haggard than Murrue had ever seen him... and given that she usually only saw him just before he went off on a self appointed mission of destruction or just after he came back after getting shot up during aforesaid mission, that was saying something. The man had drive, that was plain. In a way he reminded her of Mu... though he was far less handsome and far less likeable than her dead love... he did share the reckless courage and casual disregard for orders he didn't like though. She'd lost track of the number of times she'd forbidden Alkire or his TEMPEST team to leave the ship... and they always managed to slip out anyway, under some pretense or other. She'd just given up eventually... as long as they kept to themselves... especially the one called Vladimir... she was happy. she wasn't happy to have a former mass murderer on her ship... but Kira hadn't asked her to send him away when she'd asked... he hadn't said keep him around either, but if Kira didn't want him away, that must mean there was something more to the man than she'd thought. Or was really willing to look for... she could forgive a lot but never the murder of children.
Alkire's message had sent electric shocks of dismay running through everyone... not least Kisaka and herself. Apparently Kira had finally received word from Sai... sai who'd been missing and presumed lost for months now. Apparently Sai was due to get married... in Hawaii, yesterday... and had decided to invite Kira and his friends to his wedding. Innocuous enough, even though it did make her suspicious... it would make a good set up. Apparently Alkire had agreed with her feeling but Kira was typically stubborn and had gotten his way... which had caused her to smile briefly in amusement... she remembered when he was just a lost boy, totally unsure of himself and what he was doing. What Alkire had repeated next had wiped the smile from her face in an instant. Sai's wedding had initially gone well... they'd all arrived early and everything looked to be shaping up fine between them... but then Sai's wife had shown up. Vanai Zunnichi... daughter of Cervantes Zunnichi, head of Blue Cosmos and the man who nominally ruled Orb for the Earth Alliance. Cervantes Zunnichi himself had shown up moments later, along with his intelligence and security director, Asmodeus Sark... a devil of a man with a devils name that apparently Alkire knew from his work with EFSOU. Sai had revealed an affiliation with Blue Cosmos and argued with Kira... Kira had pressed the argument too much, in the manner of Kira... he never knew when to give up on a lost cause. Sai had ended up striking Kira and knocking him down... a surprise to her, since she was well familiar with how fast Kira was. Sai had left and Cervantes had closed in with a large group of elite soldiers... it had been a trap after all. The kids and the commandos had been taken captive... violently in the case of Kira, who'd been tasered down trying to defend Lacus from Cervantes. Alkire himself had been shot while attempting to intervene... he was still a bit unsteady on his feet from what he'd said. Alkire had awoken tied up in a cage on a plane that was landing on the east coast of the old United States... the other members of TEMPEST were around, as was Asmodeus, but no kids. Alkire had later learned from Victor that the kids had been loaded onto a different plane as per Cervantes's specific orders... destination unknown.
Alkire and the members of TEMPEST had been forced to endure a brief stay at Levansworth Military Prison, in the high security cells. Murrue had commented on how easy they'd made their escape... she noted how improbable it was that a man as reputably smart as Asmodeus could have underestimated them so much, especially given how much reaserch he'd done on them. Alkire had replied that in all likelyhood the files that Asmodeus had studied had been at least a year out of date. He also somewhat sheepishly admitted that their escape could be attributed in large part to luck... without some older building design features that they were able to use to their advantage, and a paperwork error in their favor by some nameless clerk that had put Vladimir in the cell with a cellmate with a good stash of materials to use for an escape they would have been there for much longer... days if not weeks. Asmodeus had placed them in just about the most secure prison imaginable... they were good, very good, but not that good. If it wasn't for dumb luck... well... that was unknowable. In any case, they'd made their escape... they'd even managed to pick the location of Asmodeus's destination from the air control tower on their way out... it wasn't in the computer system but Vladimir had had a "private talk" with the operator on duty at the time and had wrangled the information from him. Alkire hadn't mentioned exactly how and Murrue felt it best not to ask... though she did shudder... yet another way this man was different from Mu... Mu never would have condoned such a thing. where exactly Asmodeus was heading was unclear... but it was in the Andes mountains of South America. Alkire had said that they were on their way there... but that they would need to be picked up by someone as their plane only had enough fuel to reach the Panama area. After much hard debate with Kisaka, it was decided that Murrue and the Archangel would rendevous with Alkire at sea outside of the Panama air defense cordon... how exactly that was going to occur was beyond her, as the Archangel did not have the landing facilities for cargo planes like the one Alkire had purportedly stolen. They'd been flying hard ever since that time... everyone on edge... hoping against hope they'd arrive at whevere the enemy was located in time... Blue Cosmos was not well known for keeping captive Coordinators alive for very long. And there were some very well known Coordinators amongst the group... Athrun Zala... Lacus Clyne... maybe even Kira himself, if Blue Cosmos had done a little bit of digging. Not to mention Cagalli... Blue Cosmos had already gone a long way towards ruining her life... what else they might do to her was anyones guess, but judging from the stormy look she'd last seen on Kisaka's face, none of it was likely to be good as she could imagine... and she wasn't imagining very good things.
"Ma'am... we have a contact incoming on the radar... it matches the type of aircraft that Mr.Majesty claimed to have appropriated." one of the bridge crew informed her. "It is currently flying across our course at an altitude of thirty thousand feet. It will overfly us in... three minutes."
"Captain... call incoming from the plane. It's Mr. Majesty." another crewmember said.
"Put him on." Murrue ordered, picking up the phone. "Well hello."
"My... what a big ship you have, Ms. Captain Ramius." Alkire replied. "I almost bet I could park this bird on her back."
"If you attempt anything that crazy I will have the Iegelstellung blow you out of the sky." Murrue replied smoothly. "And you might as well call me Murrue... you aren't under my command and you're technically not even military personnel anyways."
"Only if you call me Alkire... I'm on a first name basis with friends only." Alkire replied tiredly. He tried to smile but it was hard... his gunshot wound was still fresh... running around breaking out prison and stealing the transport hadn't done it much good either... he was going to have to be careful or he'd tear the scab and bandage open. And that wouldn't be good. Re-opened wounds always took longer to heal.
"We're not exactly friends... but I'm willing to cooperate in the interest of time." Murrue replied. "How are you planning on getting aboard, Alkire? That plane cannot land on the Archangel and you're flying a bit high for a water landing."
"Oh... don't worry. Everyone in TEMPEST is HALO certified... we won't have a problem getting to you... just make sure that once you see us exit the plane you stop or slow your big ship down so we can catch up." Alkire said with a crooked smile.
"Exit the plane?" Murrue said questioningly.
"They're going to parachute down from the plane. High Altitude Low Opening jump... a former standard for military special operations insertions before anti air defenses became as sophisticated as they are today." Waltfeld supplied. "I wasn't aware the Naturals still trained their people to do them."
"They don't." Alkire replied. "I do it for fun." He looked around the cargo area of the plane, making sure every member of the group waved an acknowledgement that they were ready. The plane was on autopilot... it would run out of fuel in another few hundred miles... it would never be found, not that it mattered much... they hadn't left anything on the plane which could be connected to them or the Archangel. "I'm glad to see parachutes are still standard on planes these days." He looked around one last time and received four thumbs up. "Well... as fun as it is to talk by radio... I much prefer in person. Coming... down." Alkire turned off the radio while simultaneously hitting the cargo door open button... all the air inside the plane rushed out into the low air pressure at thirty thousand feet... he allowed himself to be sucked out after everyone else was.
"That man is insane." Murrue commented. No one disagreed. She, as well as everyone else on the bridge, turned their eyes to the radar display.
"Altitude 25000... 22000... 20000..." the radar operator slowly counted off the height of the falling people. It took nearly a minute. Murrue could barely imagine what it must be like to actually jump from a perfectly good aircraft with only what amounted to a big synthetic cloth blanket strapped to your back... she shuddered... she didn't think she could do it. "7000... 5000... 4000... 2000... 1500... 1250... ma'am, they're getting really low. At this rate..."
"Don't they open the parachute usually?" Murrue asked Waltfeld. "What's the minimum altitude?"
"Do I look like I leap out of airplanes with a parachute strapped to my back?" Waltfeld replied. "Maybe they're already too low and they're going to go splat... good riddance in one case."
"800... 750... 7... there's the parachutes. Whoah... I was worried there for a moment. They'll be down in a few moments, ma'am. Shall I open the topside door?"
"Yes, do that." Murrue ordered. It was barely five minutes later that Alkire walked through the door onto the bridge, followed closely by the pretty female sniper whom Murrue assumed he was in a relationship with, given how close they always kept to each other. Murrue found herself wondering what sort of person the woman... Raine Belaruse... was. What could motivate her to be someone who killed people from a distance without a thought for a better way to solve a war? "You made it." Murrue commented.
"I usually do." Alkire replied casually. "It was actually a picture perfect jump... of course there was no anti air fire coming our way and the Archangel has a much bigger landing surface than I usually aim for, so that is only expected. But enough about that... we need to get moving."
"I have the projected destination coordinates here." Raine stepped forward and handed the helm officer a disk. "I've also plotted a tenative course through the mountains... we were there several months ago and this is the route we took... we destroyed what we all thought was a training camp then, but I think it may have been an outpost of a much larger facility now. I've always wondered where Blue Cosmos produced and researched their weapons and trained their highest quality terrorists... I think that wherever Asmodeus went is that place. I believe the Archangel can fit through the mountains along the path I indicated... it might be a tight squeeze at points but I've heard good things about your piloting skills, ensign." Raine nodded at Ensign Neumann, who had helmed the Archangel ever since Heliopolis.
"I could always fly..." Alkire stared to say... everyone glared at him... even Raine. "Or I could just sit and let the experts do it." Everyone lapsed into a tense silence... no one wanted to think about what they might find at this unknown destination. After several minutes Alkire and Raine excused themselves to go make sure they and the rest of TEMPEST were as ready as they could be, given that most of their equipment was still stashed in Hawaii.
"How long do we have?" Murrue asked at length.
"Two hours until we reach the coast... two or three more past that to the location, depending on how long it takes to get through the mountains." Neumann replied after a moment's consideration.
"Any obstacles? Alliance obstacles?" Waltfeld asked. "I have no recollection of ever hearing of a base of any size around these parts... South America was neutral until the start of the last war... ZAFT never received any intelligence indication about the construction of a base."
"Nothing but the terrain... the Archangel has maps showing most Alliance bases and it shows none in South America either. But it could just be an isolated facility... maybe only a few buildings and a bunker or something." Neumann said consideringly. "Although if it is a big enough base to have a landing strip for long range jets... you'd think that the construction for that would have showed up somewhere...clearing and leveling enough land for an airstrip in the middle of a mountain range is tough to keep secret."
"I also sincerely doubt that a man like Cervantes Zunnichi would valuable prisoners like Cagalli and Athrun and Lacus and Kira to something as unsecure as a bunker and outbuildings... all the files I've ever seen on the man indicate he's a risk taker... but only when the deck's already stacked in his favor. He'll have sent them to the most secure location he can, where he'll be sure they won't escape." Waltfeld added.
"What about this Cervantes Zunnichi and his aide, Asmodeus Sark? I've never heard of either of them... though Zunnichi was apparently very highly placed in Blue Cosmos if he took over after Azrael." Murrue asked. Waltfled scratched his sideburns thoughtfully.
"I wasn't much of an intelligence officer before our little encounter in the desert, but since then I've built up a reasonably good network, with Dicosta's help and that of a few others. The Clyne Faction also has a reasonably good network of informants that they let us use. I never had much access to much more than general level intelligence on Blue Cosmos when I was with ZAFT either. But I heard a few things... read a few files, smoked some cigars with the right people." Waltfeld said, gathering his thoughts. "If I understand things right, Cervantes Zunnichi was the muscle behind Azrael... not the political or financial muscle, but the real grit of Blue Cosmos. Azrael had the public speeches, wined and dined the politicians... Cervantes gave the orders to the hit teams and supervised the training of agents and the development of Blue Cosmos tactics. We... by we I mean ZAFT... never really had much on the man... he didn't come out in public much, his legitimate job was the CEO of one of Azrael's defense industries congolmerate... he's apparently a very independently wealthy man. After Azrael died he quietly took over the reins of the organization and the controls of the industrial conglomerate... either no one was powerful enough to oppose him or he got rid of those who tried. I never even knew what he looked like until I saw his speech at the Orb Parliament house." Waltfeld replied. "As for Captain Sark... well he's a someone I've heard a lot about... a lot of rumors. He's a bit like... Rau Le Creuset, I suppose you could say. A lot of people on our side knew things he'd done... but few had ever actually fought the man... fewer still had fought the man and had come back alive afterwards. He's the Hellhound of the Alliance Special Forces community... one of the stars of EFSOU... pretty much every successful EFSOU operation during the last war can be traced back to him, people he trained or people he advised. It's a good thing his superiors kept him hoarded up in the SpecOps community... I shudder to think what a man like him could have done if he'd been given a fleet to command. He's smart... experienced... adaptable... he always studies his foes in as much detail as possible before he engages them in combat, so he very rarely underestimates people... I wouldn't be surprised he has the entire personal records for every last person on this ship memorized. He's one of those frightening Naturals who just goes to show that Coordinators really aren't always superior to Naturals."
"Just most of the time." Murrue said with a slight grin. Waltfeld shrugged.
"I can't change the facts of life... a Coordinator just is potentially mentally and physically superior to a Natural. That's why we were made in the first place." Waltfeld looked out the main viewport, looking at something that wasn't there. "It doesn't bode well that Asmodeus is working with Cervantes... I'd never heard much about his political views but he doesn't strike me as the type of person who'd be a fanatic... he's never hated Coordinators as far as I'd heard... we were just the enemy, not monsters. He sometimes would play himself off as a fanatic in order to get people to underestimate him, we knew that much... but that wasn't really him."
"Is Asmodeus really his name?" Murrue asked. "Or is it an alias, like Alkire?"
"I have no idea... it seems unlikely a parent would name their child after a devil though." Waltfeld replied. "It should be interesting to see what this base is... I just hope we get there in time."
"So don't we all." Murrue whispered, looking out the viewscreen herself, as if hoping to catch sight of Kira right then and there... there was only the blue waves ahead though.
"It's freaking locked! The elevator's shut us out!" Ysak cried bitterly, slamming his hand against the shut doors. They had barely started their escape from the twisted clutches of the Doc and they were stymied. They'd just broken out of the lab not moments ago, running full tilt down the hallway... going for broke... but the elevators would not respond to the call button no matter how often or how hard he stabbed it. The BCPU's would no doubt soon be behind them... they hadn't hurt them nearly enough to keep them down for long, Ysak knew from repeated experience.
"You think this will help?" Lacus asked, holding up a cell phone. "It fell out of the Doc's pocket when you hit him, Ysak. I picked it up while everyone else was breaking free." Lacus said. Well... she hadn't just done that... she'd gotten a few kicks in on the Doc as well.
"It's just a cell phone... theres no way it'll have reception down here." Dearka replied. Athrun took the phone from Lacus and opened it up. He studied the screen for a moment and smiled wolfishly.
"How cunning of him... this isn't a cell phone." Athrun said.
"I think I know a cell phone when I see one... I've owned one for longer than you. It's just like any other video phone you can buy in the PLANTS." Dearka retorted. "If that isn't a cell phone, what is it?"
"A remote control. For this base, unless I miss my guess." Athrun replied, hurriedly scrolling down a long list of commands. He found what he was looking for within seconds. He pressed a button combination on the phone remote and the elevator doors whooshed open... the cars were still on this level. Everyone piled in and the doors slammed shut. Lacus was looking out while they shut and she saw Ashino running towards the car... he slowed just slightly as he looked her in the eye... she could have almost sworn he was being deliberately slower than he could have been. The door shut and someone slammed into it... probably Ashino. The entire metal door vibrated and then they were rising.
"Well... we're safe for the moment. No alarms have been sounded yet." Athrun said, still studying the phone. "Damn... this thing has everything on it... this is the key to the base. I'm surprised Blue Cosmos let a Coordinator have this... even a trusted one like the Doc."
"Maybe they didn't know about it... like I did with the Strike's control systems, locking them so only I could use them when we landed on Artemis." Kira said. "It would be a handy thing to have... a key to every system your bosses didn't know you had."
"It's more than a key... it's also got schematics of the base on it, and voice activated command overrides of important systems... the sentry guns, the blast doors, the cameras... the Doc fricking owned this base, not Blue Cosmos. Good job on picking this up, Lacus... this is our free ticket out of this hellhole." Athrun said with a smile. He looked around. "Aren't we four just a sight?" None of the four Corodinator males had yet dropped out of the SEED mode.
"So this is how you guys did all those amazing things during the last war." Dearka said wonderingly. "I thought there was something fishy going on when I saw Kira blocking beam blasts with a beam saber."
"Or disabled three or four teams at a time with the Freedom at JOSH-A." Ysak added. "I couldn't understand how you could possibly be that good before... now I know."
"We should be careful though... the longer we spend like this the worse it'll be for us later." Kira warned. "Athrun and I have been using this for a while now... we're always beat after even five or ten minute battles... and that's just piloting mobile suits."
"Hopefully... and with the aid of this remote... we won't have to remain like this long. Each level has two seperate sets of elevators on it... one that leads up the the level above and one that leads down to the level below. This base is pretty large, but the elevators are reasonably close together... probably to reduce transit time between the upper and lower levels." Athrun mused, studying the tiny schematics on the phone. "I'll turn off the automatic guns and cameras as we get to them... the guards will certainly notice if their entire system goes off line at once. They'll probably notice that their system is going off systematically too... but every extra second counts." Athrun turned to look at everyone else. "I'm actually very surprised an alarm hasn't been sounded already... what is that bastard up to down there anyways? Ysak didn't hit him that hard... he should have been mobile enough to find an alarm of some sort."
"I think the opposing side might not be as opposed to us as we thought." Lacus replied thoughtfully. "When we got into the elevator, Ashino was charging towards us... I think he purposefully slowed down and let us get away."
"And you're basing this assumption on what now?" Ysak asked, incredulous. "These guys aren't human, Lacus... they're all seriously messed up individuals... ascribing normal human emotions to them is... well, foolish, in my opinion."
"They may not be human any more, but they aren't all monsters either. Ashino is not... no monster would do the things he did... he resisted the order to beat me... even though it might have cost him his life. I'll grant you that Cray and Frost are beyond the remit of forgiveness and humanity... they need to be put down like rabid beasts... but Ashino isn't like them. Oh, sure he hates Coordinators... but only on a general level... he's... a lot like Sai, I believe. In reverse. Sai hates individual Coordinators but has nothing against us all... Ashino hates Coordinators in general but still likes a few of us on an individual level."
"Could it be that he just has a crush on you or something? I mean... no offense to anyone else present... but you ARE Lacus Clyne." Dearka said doubtfully. "I mean... if I hadn't known before that your were Athrun's fiancee... hell, I would have had a thing for you, easy." Dearka looked around. "What? Am I going to get in trouble for being honest now? Don't tell me that you wouldn't have been interested either, Ysak... she was the most eligible girl in all the PLANTS until her parents and Athrun's arranged their marriage."
"Maybe he does have a crush on me. But if that were the only reason, why would have he intervened to save Cagalli, Miriallia and Katie... and Chanel... from being raped by our guards as well? I think he might just have a soft spot for girls in trouble. He wouldn't be the only guy like that, by any means." Lacus replied.
"Maybe not the only guy... but certainly the only BCPU." Athrun said. "I'm forced to agree with Ysak... describing any of the BCPU's by comparing them to how a normal person would feel or act... I'm not convinced it's at all accurate. For all we know, he did it on a whim... or because he wanted to save you for himself later." Lacus started to protest again. Athrun held up a hand. "Don't get me wrong... I generally trust how you feel about someone... you're usually better at picking who to trust and not than I am. But even if Ashino has the purest of motives towards you... he's still my enemy... and Kira's enemy... and everyone else's enemy. Right now he is in pursuit of us, with orders to either kill us or return us to the Doc... which is basically killing us. If he catches up to us, we're going to have to fight him... perhaps even kill him if he persists. Do you understand what I'm saying? I don't want to hurt your feelings... but our lives come first. Like or not... he isn't on our side... he's on Blue Cosmos's side." the elevator pinged open. Dearka, Miriallia, Ysak and Katie all rushed out and started heading down the corridor.
"Hey... I'm grateful to him too... if it weren't for him I'd have a lot more to hate about Blue Cosmos right now than I already do... he saved me and you and Mir and Katie and Chanel from a fate every girl has nightmares about. But Athrun's right... he's still the enemy. One act of kindness... especially with his motives still in doubt... doesn't make up for a lifetime of wrongdoing. He may have had no choice... but I don't let choice act as an excuse for some of the things I've done, and you shouldn't let yourself shield him that way either. It's all very confusing... but now's not the time. Now we need to get out of here." Cagalli told her, not unkindly, before grabbing Athrun and pulling him after her as he dialed numbers on the phone remote. Kira gently pulled her along after them, not quite dragging her along but definitely pulling her faster than she could have run on her own.
"What about you, Kira. What do you think?" Lacus gasped, struggling to stay on her feet until Kira just turned in mid sprint and picked her up in his arms... she may have been a Coordinator but she didn't sprint around very much... her physical skills were actually less than Miriallia's when it came to running.
"I'm thinking I don't like how light you're getting... you need to eat more." Kira told her with a brief smile. "When we get out of here I'll have to buy you dinner at some nice place... as soon as we find the time." he moved forward a few more strides, about ten feet behind Athrun and a very red in the face Cagalli. "But in regards to Ashino... well, if you say he has good motives, I believe you. But motives aren't always enough... I've had good motives, or so I think, for my entire life... but that doesn't mean I don't regret a lot of things I've done. What he did down in the lab... refusing to hit you, even though it caused him real physical pain... that was a big plus in my book. But if he comes after us again... if he tries to recapture us... I will fight him. I'll try to avoid it... but if necessary to save someone's life, I will kill him too. I'll regret it... but the fact of the matter remains that he'll be trying to kill me too... I don't think he has any qualms about harming me."
About a half a level behind the Coordinators, Cray and Ashino raced side by side, spinning around corners and leaping through doorways in their haste. Cray had much longer limbs and he was slowly but surely pulling away, even though Ashino was running as hard as he could. "Cray... head to the armory!" Ashino called. Cray looked back and gave him a gimlet eye, weaving around a corner without looking as he did so.
"Why? I don't take orders from you, midget."
"They'll probably head there in order to grab weapons to protect themselves... you'll have the best chance of finding them there!" Ashino panted, as if more tired than he actually was.
"Why do you care?" Cray asked suspiciously.
"Plainly put, I'm not strong enough to fight them... you are. Especially if they have weapons... you'll have the best chance of recapturing them!"
"Recapture... hell, they're gonna die. I'm gonna kill them. The Doc said "get them, bring them back"... he didn't say to bring them back alive. Or whole."
"Why does that not surprise me?" Ashino asked himself. "Fine... whatever, it's not like I care. Just don't kill Lacus Clyne."
"Why... you got the hots for her or something? Little Ashino in love?"
"Moron! Frost wants her... I'm trying to save your life... can you imagine what he'd do to you if you cheated him of his revenge upon her?" Cray shuddered and almost lost his stride... plainly he could imagine. "Speaking of... where is he? I haven't seen him pass us."
"Maybe he went a different route... he's not exactly rational you know."
"I know. Just head to the armory, Cray. I'll go close off the main doors... then they'll be trapped in here with us... you're the strongest guy between us... I won't have a chance against all four of them... you do."
"Yeah... you're right. You actually say some pretty smart stuff now and again, midget. I'll corner them at the armory... they'll be all mine... I'll have dozens of ways to do them in. Thanks for the idea, Ashino... I'll remember this." Cray suddenly took a left instead of a right, heading along a different path. Ashino waited until he'd turned two more corners before sighing and shaking his head.
"If you wish to remember being a total moron, Cray, that's your business. Have fun getting locked out of the armory by the guards... theres no way they'll let you in there. Especially since the fugitives are in all likelyhood headed for the main entrance... why stop and pick up weapons when you don't even know where the armory is? Pride is such a failing... one of the greatest for anyone, human or not." Ashino put on an extra boost of speed, flipping around a corner and almost running into a pair of guards walking a patrol beat... clearly they'd missed the fugitives or they'd already be unconscious. Ashino wasted no time... he broke their necks before they knew he was on them, a single punch each. He dragged the corpses behind him as he ran, looting knives, guns and grenades from each before flinging the bodies away... he'd lost maybe ten seconds time total. Nothing he couldn't make up. He was up on level one in only three minutes time... he could hear running footsteps ahead of him... lots of running footsteps... seven pair if he heard correctly. There were suddenly a lot of echoes from ahead... the fugitives had reached the roadway tunnel that serviced this exit... they'd be at the main door in a minute. He slammed into a service door that lead to a hallway that paralled the roadway tunnel... this hallway contained maintainance access points for the power and hydraulic systems that controlled the main door on this tunnel. It would have been cramped for a normal sized person, but Ashino was shorter than normal... and if his shoulders banged off pipes and cabling a few times... well, he was used to pain. He sprinted for all he was worth up the narrow concrete passage... he needed to reach the other end of the hall before the fugitives reached the main exit and got outside. Ashino ran as fast as he ever had... perhaps faster... his feet beating down on the concrete like hands on a fast hand drum. He was going so fast his feet lost traction and slipped out from under him when he tried to stop in time to avoid running into the wall at the end of the hall. He skidded and cartwheeled along the hall for nearly twenty feet, rubbing himself raw in more than one place.
He impacted the wall hard enough to dent the armored insulation of the power main that ran across the wall before disappearing through a hole into the mechanisms of the door beyond the wall. Ashino didn't bother to stand before kicking the flimsy metal door of the service hallway right off it's hinges. He flipped to his feet, submachine gun in either hand and dove into a shoulder roll, hitting the door close mechanism with his foot on the way out the hallway... the heavy steel security door dropped with a rattle and clang that resounded down the roadway tunnel... the fugitives were still running full tilt towards the shut door, only twenty feet away. Ashino cursed his short legs... he hadn't beat them by nearly as much as he'd wanted... they were close enough they might think they could rush him... he didn't want that, it would render everything he'd done so far pointless if he was forced to kill them. Still rolling, nearly upside down, his head closer to the pavement than his legs, Ashino opened fire, two short and controlled spats of no more than ten bullets, one burst from each gun. The low caliber bullets whined off the pavement, digging small divots in the asphalt covering, stiching two parallel lines only feet in front of Ysak and Dearka, who were in front of the pack of fugitives. Both Coordinators reversed direction as quickly as they could... they had the same problem as Ashino, their feet slipping and sliding on the relatively slick surface of the road, though they did not fall. The fugitives found themselves forced to a halt only ten feet from Ashino... only fifteen feet from the closed door. Ashino completed his roll and regained his feet. He kept the guns pointed slightly down... not at the fugitives but not away from them either.
"You're either a terrible shot or you missed on purpose. Given what I know you to be, I'm going with the latter." Ysak commented coldly.
"If you think we're going back willingly, you're even crazier than the other two. I'd rather die than go back... I'm sure we all feel the same." Dearka added. Athrun calmly walked forward a step and punched a series of buttons on what looked like a cell phone. The main door behind Ashino slid open again with a whine. Ashino blinked... he hadn't expected that. Where would they have gotten something that could remotely control the base systems... oh, of course. He was so stupid... the Doc would have certainly have either been given or more likely made such a device for himself, to ensure his own saftey and superiority. They must have taken it from him while they were kicking him... he vaguely remembered Lacus reaching down to pick something off the ground... now he could see the remote control highlighted in his memory, the junk he'd dismissed it as before fading into what it really was. Unexpected, but it didn't significantly affect the plan Ashino had made up on the way up here. He wasn't standing in their path to stop them... well, he didn't expect to stop them, which wasn't quite the same thing. His conditioning rebelled at the very idea of helping out Coordinators... but the rest of his mind was feeling pretty good... he'd found a way around the conditioning, for the moment.
"I wouldn't expect you to surrender... I wouldn't if I were you. My grasp of human emotions is somewhat tenuous, but I'm not stupid... or crazy. Returning to the Doc holds no rewards for any of you... it will only lead to you becoming like me, at the very best. And none of you want that. None of you should want that. I don't want any of you to go through that sort of pain, either... hard as that may be to believe for some of you. You may be my enemies... but I prefer to kill my enemies on the battlefield... I don't torment them... I don't try to convert them by force... I most especially don't try to make them like me. If you encounter me on the battlefield, in a mobile suit or unarmed...you can expect no mercy from me... I will kill you without hesitation, as my conditoning and my feelings both dictate. But I will not kill you while you try to save the ones you love... a motivation I've always wanted but have never been given the opportunity to experience. I will not hurt noncombatants... I will not kill surrendering foes... I will not give in to unreasoning hate and I will not be ruled by my few emotions or my conditioning... for good or ill... off the battlefield or on it." Ashino told them very seriously.
"Why are you telling us this?" Kira asked, putting Lacus down.
"I don't know." Ashino replied, still completely serious. "I wanted to, I guess. By all rights I should have gunned you down some time ago... you're all my enemies. But unlike most BCPU's... I'm not a creature of instinct. I can make my own choices... even if it is hard."
"What do you want, Ashino?" Lacus asked, not unkindly.
"I want to tell you about the location of a secret VTOL transport aircraft hidden in the mountain jungles a few miles from here...but my conditioning forbids me from doing so under normal conditions... betraying my superiors and comrades to the enemy is an impossibilty for me." Ashino replied. "However... I have no aversions... conditioning or otherwise... to revealing the location of the transport under duress... BCPU are not supposed to be captured alive... my conditioning has nothing in it that prevents me from telling a superior the location of the aircraft... and by definition, anyone who can defeat me in combat is my superior. Flimsy maybe... but flimsy means nothing to my conditioning... it either is allowed or is not... the grey area fits under is allowed in this case."
"So we have to beat you down and then you'll tell us? Why didn't you say so sooner? There are eight of us... we should be able to handle you without too much problem." Ysak said, all grins. Ashino whipped one gun up and blasted a single shot into the asphalt between Ysak's feet. Ysak jumped back awkwardly.
"It has to be in a fair fight or I cannot acknowledge the superiority of the person who defeats me... if you all come at me I will be forced to accept my conditioned response... to shoot you all." Ashino warned them. "Hurry up and decide... Cray won't be delayed by the misdirection I gave him for long... he's already stated to me his intention to kill and dismember you all... except for Lacus, who is reserved for Frost... who could be anywhere right now."
"What kind of fight are we talking here? A gunfight?" Dearka asked, looking nervously over his shoulder.
"I don't care. Any kind of fight... you just have to beat me." Ashino shrugged.
"We don't have time for this..." Ysak started to say. Athrun put his hand on his shoulder to stop him. "Athrun? But.." Athrun handed the remote control to Cagalli and stepped forward.
"Fine... we'll have a fistfight then... you and me, the rules of the jungle. I assume that's okay?" Athrun said. Cagalli said nothing but bit her lip slightly in worry. She knew how tough Athrun was... she'd surprised him with a gun and he'd still beaten her with only a knife... he was an elite ZAFT soldier, trained in as many different styles of combat as there were leaves in a gale... there was reason to why people feared the ZAFT soldiers in red. And Athrun was one of the best the ZAFT academies had ever produced... but Ashino was also pretty damned tough. Cagalli thought about how he'd taken down five soldiers in heartbeats when he intervened in the interrogation room... she honestly couldn't decide for sure who she thought was tougher. Oh, she was rooting and betting on Athrun with all her heart... but she wasn't 100 sure he would win.
"Why you and not me or Dearka? Why you and not Kira? Or even Katie... she's damned good at unarmed stuff, since Vladimir and Raine and the rest of TEMPEST taught her personally." Ysak objected. "I'm an elite too... the only way you were ever better than me was in a mobile suit... and even then, it was debatable."
"Hey... I got no objection to Athrun doing it... I never excelled at the unarmed combat stuff like you guys did. Oh, sure, I scored well enough to be an Elite... but there's elite and elite, if you know what I mean." Dearka replied.
"Fighting outside of a mobile suit does not play to my strengths, I must admit. I never attended any formal training in self defense... sure I've learned a few things from James and Raine... but not enough to feel confident of victory against a trained opponent... especially one as tough as a BCPU." Kira said.
"I'd personally love to toss Ashino around for a bit... it was a person like him that killed Chanel right in front of my eyes by shooting her in the head. But I don't think I can... I know more about unarmed fighting than any of you... but I'm, like it or not, a Natural... he was built to kill Coordinators... trained Coordinators... skill can only compensate so much for talent." Katie said dejectedly.
"Ysak... you may feel okay... but you've been burning yourself up in SEED mode for longer than I have... you need to conserve your energy or you're going to collapse before long." Athrun added. "This fight is mine... you can have the next one."
"Or you can take his place if he fails... as long as you come one at a time and time permits, I'll fight as many of you as it takes to beat me." Ashino said. "However, if we talk much longer it may become moot... Frost and Cray will not honor the terms of this fight." he dropped his guns and kicked them away behind him, similarly divesting himself of the grenades and knives... the fugitives would have need of them if he lost. He honestly couldn't say whether he expected to win or lose... he couldn't throw the fight, because that would render him a traitor, and his conditioning wouldn't allow it. He'd be fighting as if his very life was on the line... he hoped they understood that. He didn't know how tough a SEED Coordinator was... he'd been crippled by pain the first time they'd attacked and hadn't been observing much of anything but the floor. Ashino settled into a loose stance, legs coiled and bent slightly, arms low for balance, head back to keep it out of initial range... it was time to see how tough Athrun really was.
Athrun made the first move, leaping into the air and delivering a side kick aimed for Ashino's head. ashino bent backwards and bobbed low under the attack, keeping on guard... Athrun had moved slow enough he was sure it was a feint. It was... Athrun's other leg came up and around at a rising angle, Ashino brought his arm into the path and took the blow... the surprisingly strong blow... on his wrist rather than his side. Ashino grunted and pushed the leg away just as Athrun pushed off him and flipped in midair... touching down with one hand for guidance before kicking at Ashino twice more, each blow striking cleanly on the short redheads chest, combined driving him back a step. Athrun was still handspringing back to his feet when Ashino charged back in... the step back had been to garner momentum, not from pain. Athrun caught Ashino's knee with both hands and averted it past his face, but was forced to accept a punch to the gut that drove most of the breath out of him as he regained his feet... the little guy was fast and hit as hard as anyone Athrun had ever fought. Athrun did not pause to regain his breath... there was no time, pausing in this sort of fight gave too much advantage to the enemy. Athrun swung a roundhouse at Ashino's cheek, which was ducked under as he'd expected, following up with a spinning high backhand that likewise went high and a spinning low kick on his second time around that caught Ashino just behind his ankles and threw his legs out from underneath him, spinning him in midair so he landed on his head. A ploy as it turned out as the BCPU hit the ground in a roll and came up with an uppercut that lifted Athrun right off his feet and sent him staggering backward.
Ashino pressed his momentary advantage... as long as he could burrow in close and take advantage of his superior hitting power, he would dominate the SEED Coordinator quickly. Athrun meanwhile was trying to keep the short redhead at bay with his longer reach... he couldn't allow himself to get pulled into a boxing exchange or worse, into a grapple. If he let Ashino get inside his elbows he was going to regret it. Athrun faked with a forward knee lunge that Ashino scooted backward out of range of... and then came flying back in with both hands raised high for a clubbing blow that would likely have ended the fight if Athrun hadn't turned the lunge power into a rising uppercut of his own, standing up from almost lying down on the ground right next to Ashino, swinging his hand up, dragging the knuckles along the ground for a brief moment before planting the fist right into Ashino's throat below the chin, turning slightly to the side as he rose to clear his leg to come around and drive his knee firmly into Ashino's side as the BCPU floated in midair for a second, lifted and flying from the force of the punch. Ashino crunched up hard around the knee, which had popped several ribs momentarily out of place. His body started pumping combat drugs and pure adrenaline into his bloodstream... he tried to stop it, but he couldn't... he wasn't fighting at his best without them anyway... the Coordinator had the SEED... maybe it was only fair. Ashino hit the ground and rolled outside, barely managing to roll away from Athrun's stamping foot as Athrun tried to kick his skull in while he was on the ground. Ashino swept out a burly arm and yanked Athrun's feet out from under him, using the resistance from Athrun to kip up himself to his feet so now he was standing and Athrun not. He dropped to his knees and hammered two heavy short jabs at Athrun's chest... screw the head, all he had to do to hurt his foe was hit anywhere. Athrun blocked one bewteen his crossed wrists but took the other right on the sternum, which flexed under the blow as a rib cracked from the strain. Athrun gritted his teeth, fighting his way past the pain. His scrabbling hand came up with a bunch of dirt, which he shoved into Ashino's eyes... he had said jungle rules.
Ashino blinked the dirt out of his eyes without flinching... compared to the pepper spray Dr. Prayce had doused him with, a little dirt was nothing. However, one of Athrun's fingers had clawed across his eye in the process and he couldn't help but flinch backwards slightly... his eyes were one of his weak points... tougher than purely human eyes but still vulnerable to damage. Athrun had taken advantage of the flinch to kip up himself, writhing his back and using the counterbalancing motion of his legs to throw himself to his feet... lashing out in a straight forward kick the moment he had his balance or maybe a little before... the kick struck Ashino right in the jaw and snapped his head back painfully hard, sending him crashing back into the ground, his head rebounding from the roadway with a dull smack. If he'd been human he probably would have either broken his neck or cracked his skull. As things were, he felt dizzy and a little nauseous. Athrun had fallen back down... he'd been off balance when he'd kicked and he'd paid for his solid blow by returning to the dirt, flat out on his back. He rolled to his feet as quickly as he could... just as Ashino did the same not three feet away. Blood dripped sluggishly from Ashino's jaw, where the kick had torn his lip... the blood seemed to be hardening into a leathery film even as Athrun watched. Athrun braced himself as Ashino charged in at him like a maddened bull... there was nothing for it but try to do as much damage as possible and hope he came out ahead.
Athrun cut loose with everything he could muster... a right hook to the nose, breaking it with a crack... a left jab that jerked Ashino's head back as it impacted just above the orbit of the eye... a knee to the groin that drove Ashino's breath from him in an explosion of air and flakes of blood crust. The BCPU took the pain and absolved himself of it... washing it away in his mind like dirt during a bath. He paid Athrun back with interest. His own knee struck Athrun on the thigh of his balancing leg, deeply bruising the muscle and sending him spinning to the side as Ashino followed it up with three punches... two short jabs, one to either cheek, which knocked Athrun's head about like a ball and then a blazing spinning backfist that landed right in the middle of Athrun's torso, landing with enough force to actually throw the Coordinator backward and skidding along the dirt by the side of the road. Ashino kept up the pressure hard, leaping forward to land straddling Athrun's chest, further driving the breath from his foe. Ashino snapped his head and torso down as if bowing, headbutting Athrun forehead to forehead, sending blood flying from the gash on Athrun's head... Ashino was unharmed... his skull was designed to resist hard impacts sustained during mobile suit combat... human bone was nothing for him to be worried about hitting. Ashino closed his knees around Athrun's torso, locking himself into place as he punched down again and again... he hadn't pinned Athrun's arms and so the Coordinator was able to defend himself, but Ashino could feel himself winning. He could feel it until Athrun caught his fists with his own hands and slammed both crunched up knees into Ashino's lower back... just above the tailbone. The area was reinforced... but his entire back felt like it had caught fire. Ashino couldn't choke back a cry of pain as Athrun threw him to the side. Both of them slowly climbed back to their feet and faced each other again... only feet apart. They both attacked at once.
From there the fight turned ugly... Ashino caught Athrun on the shoulder with a double fisted hammer blow which cracked the collarbone and sent splinters of agony shooting through his left side whenever he moved that arm... Athrun jammed his speared fingers into Ashino's armpit, the straightened fingers penetrating the skin and digging in more than an inch, tearing at the underarm muscle... Ashino headbutted again, knocking out a tooth of Athrun's... Athrun drove his elbow into Ashino's broken nose, sending gouts of gore flying everywhere... Ashino through punch after punch, battering his way through Athrun's defenses like a machine... Athrun concentrated on countering his enemy's moves, following up missed or blocked strikes with punishing blows from knee or foot or elbow, using as much of Ashino's momentum against him as he could. Cagalli watched with clenched fists and tearing eyes... her Athrun was getting the crap kicked out of him right in front of her eyes and there was nothing she could do about it... they'd taken up Ashino's dropped weapons the moment the fight had gone outside, but the guns weren't accurate enough to fire into the fight without a very good chance of hitting Athrun... and no one felt confident enough to step in with a knife to try to help. Of course Athrun wasn't just getting beat... he was dealing out as good as he got... but Cagalli had this sinking feeling that Ashino could take more punishment than Athrun could... his body was designed tougher... made tougher by biological and mechanical enhancements. They followed the fighting pair slowly as the fight descended down the roadway... not by any conscious decision by either fighter, just because that was the way the punches landed.
Ashino had had enough... he was hurting physically... his mind was hurting him, the conditioning trying to bring his hatred for Coordinators to the front of his mind, but he wasn't allowing it to... this was his fight, his way... not the way he was taught. It was time to finish this... he'd sparred against a lot of people in his life... Cray... Frost... Shani... various other BCPU's... and Athrun was about as good as any person he'd fought. Strong, fast, tough, willing to trade a blow to land a bigger one, merciless... but he was still just a normal person... he was going to crack first... he just didn't have the defenses Ashino did. Ashino threw himself at Athrun, taking another two facial punches to his battered nose and lip in the process... he ignored them... a little surgery and he'd be good as new. Once he achieved this grapple he would squeeze the Coordinator into submission... once he got a hold the fight was over.
Athrun was hurting... he'd practiced against some of the best fighters the ZAFT military could field and he'd never taken this much of a beating before. Of course, those had been matches in a ring, but still... he was starting to get pretty seriously hurt. If he didn't finish this up in the next exchange or two, he was going to lose... he'd be outlasted by the artificial endurance gifted to Ashino by his enhancements. Not altogether fair, but there was no use complaining... most times the Naturals he fought against would not have it fair either. Ashino suddenly physically threw himself at Athrun, arms spread wide to grapple... Athrun tried to dance back, swinging twice, further worsening the broken nose and split lip he'd given Ashino earlier... but his tired and bruised legs didn't move as fast as they had during the beginning of the fight and Ashino ignored the blows with his typical stoicism. Athrun felt the iron hard limbs lock around his waist, hands gripping each other in a ball in the small of his back. He felt the pressure start to build... Ashino was going to bearhug him into submission... maybe even to the death. He was lifted off the ground by the shorter man, denying him good leverage for most attacks. Athrun slammed his fists into Ashino's ears, one on either side of his head, a tactic that would have burst the eardrums of a Natural. Ashino shook with pain but only tightened his grip. Athrun felt his spine bending and his breath leaving him. He looked back up the slope... and found himself looking into Cagalli's eyes. Cagalli's tearful eyes... so filled with pain and fright and worry that it made what he was feeling pale into insignificance. He couldn't lose... he couldn't lose and cause her that kind of pain. He wouldn't let himself lose... because if he lost Cagalli would be lost as well... she put up such a brave front for the others... but Athrun knew better. She was hurting... hurting a lot. She was standing balanced on a bamboo shoot of confidence and love... all it would take to break that shoot would be for him to lose... and if that happened... no... it wouldn't happen. "I WILL NOT LOSE TO YOU!" Athrun shouted, slamming his doubled fists down onto the back of Ashino's neck as hard as he could... so hard he felt his left hand break from the impact. The impact stunned Ashino... his entire body seemed to turn off and go slack... he dropped Athrun and sank to his knees. He could only look up in shock at the suddenly renewed fury in Athrun's eyes.
"So this is the power of love." Ashino whispered. "Such a thing..." Athrun slammed his hands down again, striking Ashino in exactly the same spot on the back of his neck, knocking him out momentarily and leaving him sprawled on the ground. Athrun placed his foot on Ashino's throat and applied a degree of pressure... just enough so that he could really lay it on if the BCPU continued to fight.
"I win." Athrun said wearily, starting to sway a bit... that fight had really taken it out of him... a lot of it.
"You do." Ashino admitted. "There is a map in my left pant pocket that will show you how to get to the aircraft... it seats ten, so you should all fit fine. You should hurry... no doubt Frost and Cray will be here very soon... you'll want to be as far away from them as possible." Ashino paused a moment. "If she hadn't been there... if you hadn't loved her... I would have won."
"Probably. But she was and I do. And so I did." Athrun replied. "Love can do crazy, amazing things to people. You should remember that and what happened today, next time you're confronting someone on the battlefield... most everyone has someone who loves them... who will want to protect them... who will be sad and angry if you kill the person they love. Killing people only spawns hatred. It won't lead to peace."
"Peace is not my goal... to follow the orders of my commanders is my goal and my purpose." Ashino replied thoughtfully. "I'll think on what you said though... my purpose can always change. I..." Ashino coughed up some blood as an internal system rebelled. "I'm human enough for that."
"I'm sure someone will be glad to hear that." Atrhun said, picking the map out of Ashino's pocket. "I hope I never see you again."
"You can always hope..." Ashino said as Athrun moved away unsteadily, soon to disappear into the forest with his friends. Ashino contented himself with lying there for the nonce... he was actually hurt pretty bad and it felt good to just lie there. He may have lost his fight... but he'd won the greater battle... he'd found a way past his conditioning so he could accomplish something which left him feeling geniunely happy. He'd have to celebrate somehow. Maybe he'd try to ponder more about love... that seemed to extended the duration of the good feeling. He heard stamping footsteps approach from upslope... two pair. Relaxation was over... Cray and Frost would be wanting answers.
Author's note: I've just finished a year of school... nuclear engineering school and I'm going on leave until the 28th of August. This will probably be the last chapter I post until at least the 20th or so, maybe longer. I'll still be writing but I won't have internet until then. So I guess you people will just have to wait a bit, since I won't be keeping up my normally furious pace. Thanks for all the reviews... I'll probably be asking for more specific reviews as the story progresses... of course feel free to comment on anything which catches your fancy as well... the only thing I like more than having people talk to me about specific things I've written is doing the writing in the first place.