The Golden Age: Chaotic Cosmos

by Maderfole

Book 1 of The Golden Age trilogy. Peace is attained, but even worse chaos lurks just below the surface, waiting to consume the entire Seed cosmos in a war to dwarf all previous wars. The beginning of the epic story. FINISHED. Continued in Eden Disaster.

68. The End of Ysak?

Ysak ignored the almost petulant beam blasts and tracer fire from the Strike Daggers and Strike Crusaders that formed the combat air patrol over this section of the Panama base. After encountering the fighter patrol earlier that morning he had submerged the Duelist just below the ocean's surface and come on like that... too low for radar and just in the right position that surface reflections would confuse and muddle sonar systems. Admittedly it hadn't been a fun or easy transit... the Duelist hardly being designed for long distance water travel, especially with the photon cloak, but he'd preserved. Physical discomfort caused by crashing waves was so far down on his list of concerns it might as well not even be there. Now, just before entering the harbor area proper, where the detection systems were both more advanced and more tightly packed, so much so that there was no way he could continue his stealthy infiltration with any chance of success, he had powered up his thrusters and burst forth from the sea like some atavistic sea monster, barely a mile off shore of the base proper. Of course he had been immediately spotted and given a cease and desist order from the nearest mobile suit, but Ysak had just turned off his comm systems... his enemies had nothing important to say to him and he had nothing to say to them that didn't come out of a weapon muzzle. He called up a map of the base that he had downloaded from the Archangel's systems while he and Katie had been planning this little excursion... the Archangel's operational computer security hadn't been the most challenging either he or Katie had ever cracked and the maps and other detailed information, most top secret, that they had managed to prise out of the Archangel's storage banks would likely prove more than a little useful. Among the data they had downloaded were complete maps of the entire Panama base, the surface portions, the harbor areas, the dug in bunkers and even the parts of the mountains that were hollowed out as supply caches and aircraft hangers. Although not an entirely self contained environment like JOSH-A was, Panama was still much like an iceberg... the buildings and fortifications you saw on the surface were only the tiniest bit of the actual base, which was largely underground. Ysak oriented the Duelist onto a flight path that would lead him towards an almost entirely innocuous cluster of white painted concrete buildings, each about eight stories tall and a few hundred meters long. If it weren't for the four meter fortified walls tipped with razor wire that surrounded that section of the base and the top secret base maps he had, Ysak never would have guessed it was anything other than a bunch of administrative builidings, perhaps the sort that dealt with confidential matters, thus explaining the wall.

But on the maps... which were accurate as of four months ago, the most recent he was ever likely to get without hacking into the Earth Alliance military network itself, a patent impossibility, since the computers were self contained systems in highly secure bunkers on either the Moon or in the heart of the Atlantic Federation... the maps revealed that this collection of buildings was more that it seemed to the naked eye and even to most sensor systems. These buildings were actually the Panama headquarters for a defense contractor known as Cosmos Weapon Manufacturers... and it didn't take a genius to connect one Cosmos to another. Indeed, as Ysak had found out in far too personal a manner, the very head of CWM was also the worldwide head of Blue Cosmos... Cervantes Zunnichi. And not only was the owner of the buildings special, but the buildings themselves, while fufilling their role as administrative centers, also served as cover for the rest of the top secret project site, which included several mobile suit hangers, barracks for nearly five hundred troops and several deeply buried buildings just labeled "labs". There were several connections between the mobile suit hangers here and the more top secret sections of the mobile suit manufacturing factories buried under the nearby coastal mountains, including what looked like a recent series of constructions that formed a massive hanger, big enough for a small space warship. Ysak didn't really care about that though... he was concentrated on the living quarters and smaller mobile suit hangers... that was where he would find Asmodeus and Cray. Once he destroyed those to a satisfactory extent and assured himself that those two murderous bastards were dead, then he could turn about and get the hell back to where he wanted to be... in Katie's arms. Ysak left off studying the maps now that he knew where he was going and refocused on getting there in the first place. From his vantage point, at about two thousand three hundred feet in altitude, he could see the entire base spread out before him.

Off to his left were the harbors and naval facilities for the base, as well as several airstrips and assorted hangers, supply buildings and offices. Currently there were at least three aircraft carriers in the harbor, along with a score of destroyers and eight cruisers, at an initial estimate... a portion of the fleet that had returned from the Australian Maneuver. Ysak snorted... what a ridiculous name for a military operation... it sounded like something from a class B war movie. To his right were the army portions of the base, long rows of barracks's and training/parading grounds, huge buildings for the storing of war vehicles and dozens of mobile suit hangers. To his front and below was administrative offices and a large park, currently filled with what looked like some sort of festival or large scale party... even from almost a mile away Ysak could make out multiple stages, a large ferris wheel and several other rides, along with what looked like at least twenty thousand people. He smiled... that was good... the more soldiers partying the less there would be to get in his way, which meant there would be less for him to have to fight and perhaps kill. Beyond the adminstrative park there were more supply areas and eventually mountains, which concealed even huger supply caches and several launch strips for aircraft, along with dozens of defensive emplacements, many of which were now starting to fire at him. Winding in and around the mountain range was the new Porta Panama mass driver, still in the late middle stages of construction... it wasn't due to begin full scale operations for another two or three months yet, even though the Alliance was building it as fast as they could manage. The top secret project area he was headed towards was just beyond the edges of the administrative areas, on the army side of things and set well back from the coastline. Ysak dodged and rolled the Duelist through the barrage of enemy fire almost idly... he'd been good enough to stay out of this kind of harm's way for a long time now. He knew that he could activate the so called SEED mode if he had to... but he was now concious of the long term downsides to spending long periods of time like that... if he collapsed from exhaustion way out here in enemy territory that was the end of it for him. He'd wait until he was closer to his enemies... especially if he had to do some real fighting.

Eric cursed foully, as only frustrated soldiers could. The damned UFO... well, it was a mobile suit, but that really didn't narrow things down much these days, was harder to hit than an eight ball in a pitch dark pool hall. He'd given up trying to get a solid target lock on the slippery bastard and was just blasting away with the railgun and hyper impulse cannon... using the missiles would only be a waste, so he kept that part of his Strike Crusader's arsenal saved for later. He listened to his squadron chatter with gritted teeth... he wasn't the only person having issues with the enemy. Just his fucking luck, getting stuck with patrol duty on the day of the festival... maybe he and the guys shouldn't have TP'd that fat bastard of a colonel's house last week. But the bastard had it coming, shredding all those leave requests in public like that, just cause a few of the machines had been having maintenance problems. It had been bad enough initially, since his younger sister Jean had flown all the fucking way out here from New New York just to see him and now he was on fucking watch when he could have been showing her around the festival. But now, of course, he had to deal with this psycho, who was admittedly a damn good pilot, but suicidal all the same. There was no way a single mobile suit could take on all of Panama base. Well, he'd heard rumors of some monster MS that had pretty much wiped out the 12th Lunar fleet single handed, but Eric had learned not to put much stock in spacer stories... when they werent tremendously exaggerated they were just plain fucking lies. Eric keyed his comm panel again, hoping against hope that he could talk the crazy son of a bitch down... there was no reason this had to end in yet another senseless death. "This is First Lieutenant Eric Kellson, of the third squadron, 72nd Autonomous Core, calling the pilot of the unidentified mobile suit trespassing on Panama Airspace. I say again... halt your forward progress and power down your systems. This is not a joke. This is your final warning. Power down now or you WILL be destroyed. There is no way you can take us all on, I don't care who you think you are." The hiss of an empty comm line was his only response.

"I don't think he's listening." The laconic voice of First Lieutenant Allen Morton, his wingmate, commented from his squadron channel. "Fact is, I think he's purposefully ignoring us."

"You'd be the expert on that, I suppose." Eric couldn't resist a dig at his friend, even during combat. Allen's nickname was "Say Again" Morton...for his penchant for experiencing "comm difficulties, damn it" whenever he received orders he didn't agree with. "I agree with you though, he's being deliberately obtuse. At least he isn't shooting back at us yet." Eric frowned as he missed yet again... not by much, he never did miss by much, but miss he did.

"Course we ain't doing all that much to him either." Allen voiced his friends thoughts out loud. "The reinforcements are still about a minute and a half off... the rest of the boys were back round the other side of the mountains when this blighter popped out of the sea. Way I see it, unless we stop him good and proper sometime in the next thirty seconds, hes just gonna blow past us like we was old leaves and then who the fuck knows where he'll go from there."

"Where is he going, anyway?' Eric muttered, taking a few moments to try and plot a trajectory. His computer crackled and fitzed and then spat out an answer... but it didn't make any sense. "He's headed for the old top secret admin offices... the ones that civilian company uses for office space nowadays. Why the hell is he going there... there's nothing of military importance there."

"Plenty of civilians though." Allen noted darkly, serious now. "That flight path will take him right over the middle of the festival. That ain't no EA model MS either, you mark my words. Don't look like no ZAFT model either but it's damned hard to tell these days, given the number of new design's they're pumping out. Like those Efreet... shee-it!"

"ZAFT wouldn't target civilians... their public would crucify them." Eric replied, firing once again with his hyper impulse cannon, with Allen firing in concert to try and catch the enemy in a cross fire. The mobile suit braked in mid air, tumbled downwards almost a hundred feet and then righted itself and flew on, like nothing untoward had happened and it hadn't just dodged two nearly point blank shots from well trained pilots like they were nothing.

"I'm not so sure I'd still be saying that after Australia... them'd be none to happy about those nukes, I don't think. Bad fucking business there, man. Bad fucking business." Allen answered. "I don't think we can afford to take the chance that this here crazy son-bitch ain't after the civilians. Imagine the blow to morale if'n all those bands and whatnot got wiped out in the middle of the damn base... by god we'd never have another MWR event here again."

"Not to mention how torn up everyone would be with their friends and families dead..." Eric added, thinking of Jean. He hoped suddenly that she wasn't at the festival... though he knew it was unlikely... not much else exciting to do while waiting for him to come down off a six hour CAP. The unidentified mobile suit was now almost level with them, if a few hundred feet below, almost to the shore line. "I can't let that happen." He stowed the hyper impulse cannon and snatched out his beam sword, powering his thrusters up into a rolling dive for the enemy... not the most graceful of moves in a Strike Crusader, but it worked.

"Right behind you, man. I can't let yon squirrely bastard through neither... I haven't got to meet your sister yet." Allen replied, likewise rolling his Crusader into a dive, sword out and blazing. "Let's see if'n we can't force him to the ground... right now he's got the advantage of us, since these fat bastards aren't built for the aerial arena."

Ysak frowned angrily... those two Strike Crusaders just could not take a hint and leave him alone... they had ceased firing at him but were now diving down at him, beam swords out, shields front, almost like they thought they really had a chance of stopping him. Plainly they had no idea who they were facing. Maybe it wouldn't hurt his mission to inform them... the more people he could frighten or intimidate away, the fewer he would have to fight. He flicked on his comm board and scouted through recently recieved comms, quickly alighting on the channel that had been repeatedly trying to contact him within the last few minutes. "This is Ysak Jule, in the Duelist. Attacking Strike Crusaders, can you hear me?"

"Oh, so now he wants to talk." Allen commented wryly, maintaining his dive. "T'ain't so easy, chickadee. We gave you a chance to talk." Eric nodded agreement but could not stop himself from at least answering the guy... who didn't sound a whole lot older than his sister Jean.

"I hear you, Ysak. My name is Eric Kellson. I'm in one of the two Crusaders currently bearing down on you. I urge you one last, final time... power down your mobile suit and surrender... there is no reason for you to die here today." Eric pleaded.

"I cannot comply." Ysak replied. "I have unfinished business with two people here on this base. Once I have completed this business with them I will leave and bother you no further. I urge you for the first AND last time... cease your attack or I will destroy you. Both of you."

"Now listen 'ere, you arrogant SOB... we have you outnumbered and practically surrounded. There's two of us right now... in five minutes there'll be twenty and five minutes beyond that, two hundred. I don't care what sort of super-ace you think you is, theres no way you can survive against those sort of odds." Allen cut in. "We don't want no trouble... but we can't just let you fly in here, business trip or not." Allen looked at his instruments. "You have ten seconds to power down and land... if you fail to comply I will KNOCK YOU out of this 'ere SKY by FORCE! Do you un-ner-stand me?"

"In five minutes I will have done what I came here to do. If not, then I will likely already be dead. I do not wish to die... I have too much to live for. I understand your order, but I WILL NOT comply. The only way you can stop me is to shoot me down. Ysak Jule... over and out." Ysak cut off his comm board again. That had been a wasted effort. But he had made the effort... his conscience was now clear, if it hadn't been already. He waited for the Crusader's to get closer... to over commit...and then he sideslipped the Duelist to the side, turning a roll into a dive and then a loop that ended with him behind them and above them, as they scrambled to pull out of their missed dives, yellowish beam swords slashing at empty air in futile gestures. Ysak had no more time to waste with them. He activated his railgun and armed his twin 57mm beam rifle. He took aim and started the fight that would stay with him for the rest of his life.

"Goddamn he's good!" Eric swore again as he and Allen went careening through the empty space where Ysak had been just a few scant moments before. "He made us look like fools right there. Damn, but what I would give for one of those jet-wing Strike Dagger's... our Crusaders just can't match that maneuverability. The reduction in firepower would hurt, but all these weapons don't do me any fucking good if I can't even line up a good shot."

"Tell me about it." Allen answered, banking the unwieldy Strike Crusader around as he struggled to kill his downward momentum without stalling out. It was like guiding a boulder through the air... the simulators always made it look and feel easier than it actually was. Allen resolved to speak strongly with someone about that if and when he made it back from this fight. That started to look more and more problematic as the enemy finally opened fire, utilizing a high caliber railgun much like the one his Crusader carried on its right shoulder as well as a beam rifle that spat two beams at once. The first few shots bracketed him, chewing up dirt and flame in the outskirts of the park below... but Allen recognized that those shots were intentional misses, fired to help the enemy calculate which way he would swerve. It was a tactic not commonly used except by the best of the best... most pilots looked for quick kills, not sure ones. Allen sure didn't use it... he trusted to his targeting systems and steady hand... but all the very best aces and instructors always went on about what a great tactic it was. Allen could tell what a great tactic it was... he hadn't even dodged yet and now he was afraid to, because once the enemy got inside his head, it was all over. Hell, the bastard was already halfway there, just given how scared Allen suddenly was. "Uh... can you get this son of a bitch OFF MY ASS, PLEASE!?"

"Working on it..." Eric replied tightly, putting his lumbering Crusader through an approximation of a barrel roll, coming out face to the sky and somewhat pointed at Ysak, who was still perfecting his aim on the rapidly panicking Allen. Eric thumbed his railgun and missile triggers... not because he expected to hit anything, but just to distract the enemy long enough for Allen to turn around and be able to fight back. It was to no avail... the gatling mount on the left shoulder swiveled around and vomited forth a hail of small caliber beam blasts which shredded the flight of missiles into so much scrap, incidentally pockmarking Eric's Crusader along the shoulders and upper torso... just cosmetic damage but still scary... few pilots had the skills to not only shoot down incoming missiles but also manage to attack in the same motion. Eric was starting to get a very bad feeling about this... especially with reinforcements still most of a minute away. His railgun shot just bounced off the shield of Ysak's mobile suit... what had he called it... the Duelist. Meanwhile Ysak had finished zeroing in on Allen's Crusader... not really a necessary action, with the highly advanced targeting system the Duelist boasted, but Ysak had always been a bit old school with things like that. He was one of the few pilots who still used the manual target scope for ranged weapon fire, rather than just relying on the primary screen and targeting systems. His next railgun shot blew the right leg off the Crusader he'd been shooting at, while two seperate blasts from his rifle... four beams in total... blew through the upper and lower torso sections of the enemy machine, transmuting it from a boxy if still somewhat awesome mobile suit into an amalgamation of flaming metal junk.

Eric's face was white and his lips were tightly clenched over his gritting teeth... he'd heard Allen's death scream over the comm line and there was nothing he could do about it... Allen was gone. There had been no chance of ejecting either, not at this speed and certainly not with the cockpit facing the ground. The wreckage that had formerly housed Allen tumbled to the ground and exploded again as it rolled through a grassy parking lot filled with parked cars, touching off the fuel cells of several dozen cars, which spread further fire and debris in a wide radius. The destroyed Crusader gouged out a runnel of dirt nearly two hundred feet long before it slewed to a halt, not even slightly recognizable as a war machine. "You fucker." Eric muttered. He flipped the Crusader around again, ignoring the groans from the structure as he pushed the machine more than a little past design tolerances in his efforts to confront his friend's killer. He still had his sword out and he kept it out... this was personal now and he intended to finish it personal style. He rapidly closed the difference... too rapidly, he suddenly realized, unless the enemy machine was also closing with him. He barely brought his shield up in time to accept the shield charge from the Duelist as both machines fired themselves directly into one another, stunning both pilots and rupturing Eric's shield in a crunch of metal. Both mobile suits utterly lost their forward momentum and it was all either of them could do to regain enough equilibrium to land their machines on their feet and not their faces. They came down in yet another grassy field/converted parking lot, about eighty feet apart. Ysak squarely planted the Duelist's feet, careless of the cars he crushed beneath his feet and of the people running about like panicked ants behind and around him. Eric found himself with his machine down on one knee, torn and shattered shield hanging limply from his left arm, beam sword lying deactivated at his feet. He shook the broken shield off of his arm and picked up the sword hilt again, which promptly reactivated once it had reconnected to his battery power supply. He checked the reading... still had more than fifty percent power... good, he had a feeling he might need every last gasp of power his mobile suit had to give him.

"That's my brother's mobile suit!" Jean yelled in Ashino's ear, from where they lay almost underneath a large jeep like vehicle. Ashino had thrown himself over Jean the moment the first Crusader had hit the ground and exploded, well aware of the danger of flying debris. In doing so he had lost track of his mother and sister, who were now no longer anywhere to be seen or heard. Ashino shrugged slightly. Oh well, no loss to him. He thought about that for a moment, while dirt and metal flakes pattered down around him. Some of Lacus's words came back to him... he'd lost so much he didn't even realize he'd lost anything. He hadn't understood at the time, but it was suddenly a lot more clear to him. Here he was, with his only remainingly family possibly dead or injured... and he didn't even care. He was rocked... more stunned than a hundred powerful blows to the head could ever accomplish. Such emptiness within him... he didn't know what to do next. "That's my brother's mobile suit!" Jean cried again, as if he hadn't heard her the first time.

"Are you sure?" he asked, still half lost in thought.

"Yes, I'm fucking sure." Jean retorted angrily before gaining a modicrum of control over herself... yelling at Ash wasn't going to help the situation any. "Look, you can tell for yourself. It's got the emblem of the 72nd AC on the right shoulder and both thighs, just like it is here on my shirt. And my brother is in the third squadron, the second unit, thus the number's 3 and 2 on the left shoulder. I've seen it in the hanger before... that's my fucking brother's mobile suit!"

"He's in trouble then." Ashino noted, somewhat undiplomatically. He noticed Jean's scathing and frightened look. "Look... I've fought the guy your brother is facing down before. Unlike with Sam and Brian, I was seriously trying to kill him then. He's still here. I am too... but you have some idea of my skills. Your brother is in deadly danger if he continues to fight against Ysak Jule. He will lose."

"My brother's pretty damned good... he's got two GINN kills to his credit already and he always dominates on the simulator." Jean declared hotly. Ashino grinned without humor.

"Ysak is a Coordinator, one of the red elites. No, I'm sorry, I forgot, he's one of the Ace-Commanders... the white coats, now. He has fought in almost every major battle since Heliopolis, including the first attack upon Panama and the attack on JOSH-A. He was partly responsible for the destruction of the 8th fleet and the destruction of the space station Artemis. He has fought and survived against such notables as Mu La Flaga and the Archangel. I don't recall the exact number of Alliance kills he has to his credit, but let me assure you, it is a good deal more than two. If you were to compile a list of the top twenty most dangerous people on the Earth right now, he would be solidly on the list. I tell you this not because I admire the bastard... quite the opposite, I hate him quite strongly. But your brother is out of his league." Ashino told her. Jean's confident look faded more and more with each sentence, until she was near tears when Ashino had gotten to his loose guestimate of the number of Ysak's kills.

"Well then what do we do? I don't wanna see my brother get killed!" Jean said fiercely. Ashino nodded.

"I don't want to sit here and watch him die either." he told her. He rolled to his feet and broke out the window the jeep with an elbow, unlatching the driver side door in a single motion. He pulled himself into the vehicle, unlocking the doors with the press of a button as he went. "Get in the jeep... we need transportation."

"But this isn't your car... how are you going to..." Jean trailed off as she looked at him speculatively. "Special Forces?" she asked as she climbed into the passenger side door, just as her brother brought his crusader to it's feet not fifty feet away.

"Special Forces." Ashino confirmed, tearing the key port cover off the drive column and extricating the wires inside... luckily this was an older model, which still had wires from the key ignition to the starter and alternator... newer vehicles had wireless connections and were thus almost impossible to hotwire without specialty equipment. Within seconds the jeep's engine was roaring with power. Ashino adjusted the car seat all the way forward and down, so that his legs could reach the gas and brake pedals. To see over the dashboard he had to practically stand, but it wasn't like he needed to go far... just a few miles. He probably could have run the distance as a last resort, but that would mean leaving Jean behind in the middle of the fight... and for some reason the sensation of her lips on his kept him from just abandoning her to the mercy of the battlefield. A note for his book, for sure, once he had the time. "Hang on... I've never actually driven this class of vehicle before outside of simulators."

"Where are we going?" Jean asked as Ashino shifted into reverse, gunned the engine and brought the bulky jeep out into a wide reverse turn, ending only when his rear bumper crushed the front end of a sports car in the row behind him. "Damn... that's a good six thousand dollar repair bill right there... hope you really are rich, Ash."

"He can take it up with my boss." Ashino replied, grinning just slightly at the thought of some luckless bastard trying to explain to Asmodeus how Ashino owed him money for a car repair bill. "We're going to my mobile suit. My... comrades... will probably already be scrambling but if they aren't I will. If I can prevent it, I won't let your brother die, as long as he can hang on for a few more minutes."

"I hope he can... I think he knows he's outclassed though, judging by how cautiously he's moving... he's never this cautious in the simulators." Jean said with worry, watching her brother square off with Ysak as the fight began to recede behind them.

"Much harder to die terribly in simulators." Ashino noted. Jean punched him in the arm... and then rubbed her smarting fist. Ashino kicked himself mentally... comments like that, true as they may have been, were probably not doing much for Jean's mental state. Why he cared was another issue altogether, another one for the notebook. A memory of those soft lips again... when was that going to get out of his head?

"Why?" Jean's question caught him off guard as they left the parking lot and swerved onto the road that lead back towards the project area.

"Why what?" he asked, keeping most of his attention on getting the most speed out of the car while also dodging... and sometimes not dodging... the other, generally smaller cars that were flooding onto the road as thousands of people attempted to flee the battle zone all at once.

"Why help me? Why beat up Sam and Brian? Why go to all this trouble to save my brother, whom you've never met and don't know? Why all this, for me, someone who's last name you don't even know... someone you've only known for about a half hour now? Why?" Jean asked. "Is it because I kissed you?"

"I don't know. Maybe." Ashino muttered. Jean coughed in surprise. Ashino gave her a look out of the corner of his eye. "Don't misunderstand me, Jean. I have no physical attraction to you I know of. As you say, I barely know you and don't know your brother at all. By all rights, by all my training and conditioning, I should never have gotten even slightly involved with you. Certainly I should have left you back in the parking lot... it might actually have been safer for you. But for that kiss... it's affecting me... can't get the memory out of my head. Making me do things that are counter to my training and conditioning... and its not even hurting me. Huh... imagine that, I didn't even realize that till now. Don't ask me why. I do not know. I am very poor with emotional things. Females often seem to know more about how I am feeling than I do myself. Certainly one in particular seems to have figured more out about how I feel than I even know now and she barely knew me for any longer than you yourself do."

Jean digested that for a few seconds... the gates to the project facility were in sight now, only a mile or so further down the road... less than a minute away at this speed. "I won't pretend I have any idea about what you're talking about. I know even less about you than you know about me. That incident with the woman and the child... your mother and sister that you recognized but did not know... yeah, that was more than a little wierd. Your fast scabbing wound... your speed and strength and toughness... I don't know what's up with those either. I do know that I feel very strongly for you... not in a romantic sense, though theres some of that too... but in a sympathetic sense. There's a lot of pain in your past... so much you've lost, much of which you don't even seem to remember losing. I think I want to find out more about you, later, after my brother is safe and things are back to normal. You think we can do that?"

Ashino took one hand off the wheel and started pressing buttons on his belt pager, which had started to vibrate the moment he'd gotten out of range of th ECM being deployed by both mobile suits. He glanced over at her and nodded slightly. "I will do what I can to ensure that as well." He paused a moment more. "I don't suppose we could also..." his voice trailed off. Jean misunderstood the pause for a polite gesture. She smiled slightly to herself.

"Don't worry about it Ash... I wasn't lying when I said there was also a romantic attraction from me to you. You save my brother's ass to and let me assure you, a kiss will be the least of the rewards I'll give you."

Ashino shifted slightly and shrugged. "Thanks, I guess. But I was going to ask if I could find out about you too... just talking. I need help figuring out the whole human-emotional type thing and I was hoping you could be that help." Jean stared at him, mouth and eyes agape. Boy, had she ever misread him and put her own foot into her mouth just then... offering him kinky rewards when he wasn't even asking for them.

"S-sure t-thing, Ash." Jean replied, hastily trying to recover from her embarassment. She turned her eyes back to the road and choked out a screech of panic... the gates were still shut and they were less than a few hundred feet away... still moving at greater than ninety miles per hour. And these weren't chain link gates... no, these were solid steel security doors, the kind built expressly to keep even large, multiton speeding vehicles on the public side of the doors. Certainly the jeep wasn't going to be busting through them anytime soon. But her fears proved unfounded as the doors slid open to either side on well oiled hinges with more than fifty feet to spare. Ashino slammed on the brakes before they even crossed the threshold, throwing them both forward against hastily buckled seat restraints as the jeep's tires squealed and smoked, bringing them to a halt just shy of the steps leading into the primary office building. Ash already had the door open and was standing outside by the time she had even unbuckled her seatbelt. A thin, pale man wearing a white lab coat cam charging out of the office building, a clipboard clenched tight in one hand, glass perched on his nose and a sneer of mixed panic and prissyness on his face.

"BCPU 4, where the FUCK have you been? We've been paging you for nearly..." the man looked at his watch. "... nearly three minutes and forty seconds now. Where the hell did you get off to? You're a disgrace to the program... you were supposed to launch a minute ago! You're holding everything up!" the doctor continued with a mighty frown. He noticed several more things out of place. "That's not your uniform! What the HELL is this? Those are civilian clothes! You know you're not allowed to wear civilian clothes. You know what the punishment is for wearing normal clothing, don't you?"

"I know it's irrelevant at the moment." Ashino replied calmly. "I was supposed to launch a minute ago... why are you delaying me further?"

"Don't get lippy with me, you freak!" the doctor snapped. "Now that the Doc is dead, I'm the head of the BCPU project here. I'm not nearly as tolerant as the Doc was, you'll find. You'll do as I say and not give me any backtalk about it. I want this to be clear... you are a THING, not a PERSON!"

"What the fuck is this guy's deal, Ash? He's not your boss, is he?" Jean asked quietly. Ashino considered that.

"No... technically he's not my boss. He's just part of my support crew who think's he's my boss. Thanks for asking me that... I might not have realized that without your prompting."

"Who the hell are you?" the doctor asked Jean, moving towards her with one arm pointing angrily. "Why the hell are you here? Are you even cleared to be here? Guards, guards, arrest this girl! Arrest this... ugh!" the doctor was stopped in mid tirade when Ashino drove his fist into his solar plexus, driving all the breath from him and leaving him writhing in agony on the ground.

"Nobody touches Jean." Ashino commented to the doctor. He turned to Jean and beckoned her onward, into the building. The first floor was mostly meeting areas, reception rooms, secretary offices and a snack bar. There was also a bank of elevators... Ashino led the way to the second from the left, which, like the others, featured a security keypad. Though this elevator only went down, not up. Ashino typed in his security code and then pulled Jean into the elevator behind him, before the door could close to lock her out. For a moment he thought the elevator would freeze, but apparently someone important had decided that if Ashino felt strongly enough about keeping Jean close that he would assault a senior staff member, it was probably best to keep humoring him for the meanwhile. The elevator dropped fast and far... descending more than a hundred feet in less than four seconds.

"Woah." Jean commented as her stomach flipped slightly. "WOAH!" she exclaimed when she saw what the newly opened door of the elevator revealed... an entirely underground mobile suit hanger... a big one too. The elevator had stopped about two thirds of the way down from the top of the hanger... there was still a good fifty foot drop to the floor of the hanger, where scores of jumpsuit clad men and women were scurrying about in extreme haste. The hanger was far from empty too... four mobile suits almost completely filled the available space. These mobile suits weren't of any model that Jean recognized... and she'd memorized the recognition charts her brother mailed to her... she was proud of him and wanted to know as much about him and his job as possible. Plus it gave her something to do when looking at live news feeds and recordings of battles. She'd often compare notes with her brother via email to see if she could make out more enemy specifications than he could from the same tape. They weren't ZAFT models, that was for sure... well, the one farthest away had a few ZAFT features... but they were certainly not any sort of Strike Dagger or even Strike Crusader variant. The first one in line was short, its head being barely at the level of the catwalk the elevator had stopped at. It was painted in splotches of crimson and dark green, reminding Jean for some reason of blood spilled on tarplin. The one after that was huge, towering at least fifty feet above her position, which was about at waist level. The purple, silver and black mobile suit was festooned with massive weapons of all sorts... more than she could easily recognize, including two massive back mounted cruise missiles. The third in line was of a more normal size, about sixty feet tall, with a white painted body and a black skull like head. Finally, the last mobile suit, the one with the wings and ZAFTish features, was painted white, blue and red. "Individual paint schemes... you really are in a special unit, Ash." Jean breathed. She whirled when she heard someone clearing their throat in frustrated exasperation.

"Who is the young lady, Ashino?" Asmodeus asked wearily. He had just climbed up to the catwalk from the hanger floor. Frost and Cray were at his heels, both already flight suited and ready to go. "And why is a civilian in my top secret hanger?"

"This is my boss." Ashino muttered to Jean. Jean studied the man... there wasn't much to him. Average build, average height, average weight... greying hair, still black mustachios. There was nothing on which to hang her eyes. Not until she saw his, anyway. The pale, icy blue eyes that froze her right in her spot like freezing beams of emptiness. She shivered... never had she imagined eyes like that existed... that something as simple as a gaze could affect her so much. She felt more self concious and out of place than she ever had before in her life... it was worse than suddenly finding oneself naked in front of all your schoolmates. "This is Jean... she was with me when the Duelist grounded itself in the park outside the festival. It wasn't safe for her there, so I brought her here." Ashino replied calmly, meeting Asmodeus's gaze firmly.

"Very well. I can tell we'll be having another discussion on security policies in the future, but theres little use crying over spilt milk now. Get out of those clothes before one of the doctors has a heart attack and get into the Bane. You three are going to eliminate this foolish Coordinator before he gets any closer to here... and here he is coming. He wants me, I know. And probably wants Cray too. Foolish... stupid... childish." Asmodeus shook his head with each word. He tossed Ashino a folded flight suit. Ashino wasted no time in stripping off his shirt and boots. He was unbuckling his pants when he noticed Jean's look of astonishment and embarassment. For some reason this gave him pause... not long, but enough for his boss and peers to notice.

"Ashino's got a girlfriend!" Cray said mockingly. "Ashino's got a girlfriend!" Asmodeus just sighed and placed his hands over his eyes, already dreading the future... it was plain to his experienced eye that there was some attraction between Ashino and this girl Jean... mostly from her to him, but Ashino had paused too. There was nothing in the protocol books for BCPU's about this situation... it wasn't ever supposed to happen. If it had been Cray or Frost it would have been easy... just wait a week or so and they'd kill the girl off or discard her for another. Asmodeus doubted Ashino, for all his impartiality and emotional coldness, was the sort of man to casually discard a female he had some feelings for... much less kill her. He'd heard testimony from Frost and Cray... dubious sources, sure... but testimony nonetheless about how Ashino had reacted to Lacus Clyne. But nor could Asmodeus take matters into his own hands and just get rid of the girl... if Ashino had not paused that would have been an option, but pause he had... which meant there was feeling. And where there was feeling there would be memory... and with memory came attachment. And with attachment would come retribution, if harm came to the girl. This was precisely why BCPU's were never allowed to have personal possessions. But again... it was a little late now. Nothing for it but to contain the situation by keeping the girl secure and regrettably alive until Asmodeus could figure out a workable solution.

"Nice nail marks, Ashino." Frost said almost casually as Ashino pulled on the flight suit. "Wouldn't know it from looking at her, but she seems to be pretty feisty." he switched his attention to Jean. "You like being hurt... don't you? I can hurt you, if you'd like."

"Wah... what... the fuck?" Jean stammered. "What sort of question is that, you little runty midget?"

"Little runty midget... she's got a mouth, she does." Cray cackled. "Don't she, dwarf?" he asked Ashino. Ashino ignored him. "You got yourself a mouthy, girlyfriend of Ashino. Be careful though... theres more use for mouths than words and if you keep being insulting I'll be more than happy to show you some of them."

"Stop this NOW!" Asmodeus's voice cracked like a whip. "Continue your verbal needling AFTER you have crushed Ysak Jule into bloody paste."

"You're no fun." Cray whispered. Ashino fully zipped up his flight suit as Cray and Frost began to board their mobile suits. He looked over at Asmodeus.

"She'd better be alive when I come back. If she isn't do not mistakenly believe I will not kill you, not even if Frost himself is protecting you."

"Why, Markov... it's almost like you don't trust me." Asmodeus said with a bare hint of a grin. "Don't worry yourself... you're still too valuable to Mr. Zunnichi's plans for me to risk having to put you into the hospital just because you felt like you have to protect your girlfriend."

"I trust you, sir. I trust you to do what's best for Mr. Zunnichi and yourself. That's all I trust you to do... anyone who trusts you to do more is fooling themselves. I warn you again... do NOT harm Jean. You will answer to me for anything bad that befalls her while she is in your care. She is not my girlfriend. She's... my... psychologist, I suppose you could say. Now trust me, sir. You'll much enjoy the improvment in my attitude and performance as long as she's around."

"Is that a promise, Ashino?" Asmodeus asked, speculatively. He hadn't realized Ashino was the sort who'd try and cut a deal. Interesting.

"You can regard it as a certainty, if that's what you are asking. I don't make promises... the word of a BCPU means nothing to Naturals, this I know." Ashino replied. He headed for the Bane but was stopped by Jean's hand on his arm. He could hear Cray snickering from inside his cockpit and he could feel Frost's stare eating into his back.

"Save my brother, please." Jean said one more time.

"If it is at all possible, it will be done." Ashino replied. He started to walk again but again allowed himself to be stopped by her hands on his arm.

"Come back alive." Jean whispered. Ashino smirked slightly and leaned closer to her.

"It is difficult to come back dead, in my profession. Don't worry about me... this battle is not big enough to be my end. Remember that, no matter what happens. And DON'T trust Asmodeus. As soon as you can, get out of this base. Run away. Do not remain here any longer than absolutely necessary. If you are here when I return, you will never leave here again, alive. You're resourceful, I think... you'll find a way out." Asmodeus cleared his throat again. Cray could be heard giggling and Frost's silence was almost loud enough to hurt. "Don't worry about finding me...I'll find you." Ashino left her with that and boarded the Bane, strapping himself in and conducting the fastest preflight checkoff he'd ever managed. he watched through his external cameras as Asmodeus escorted Jean off into the depths of the base... hopefully eventually to one of the surface rooms, from which she could work out some sort of escape. Most of the security on the project was directed at keeping people out, not in... except for the actual BCPU quarters and labs that is. If need be, Ashino would help her escape, though he hoped it would not come to that... if he was back it would mean Frost and Cray were back too... and they would complicate things far too much for his comfort. Cray may have mocked him and Frost may have kept his silence... but Ashino was no fool... they were jealous of him... jealous that a girl was actually willing to be with him, not out of fear but out of... dare he think it... love. If they could, they would kill her... after they despoiled her, of course. Ashino put that out of his mind... right now he had a brother to save.

Eric was not having a good time. He'd been on the defensive for the last few minutes... heavily on the defensive. He'd thought he was saved when the remaining four mobile suits of the 72nd AC third squadron had showed up two minutes ago... racing in from the north with all guns and missiles blazing. It had certainly looked impressive and probably would have shaken a lesser opponent enough to at least slow him down... four strike Crusaders could unload a serious amount of firepower. Ysak, however, didn't even slow down in his constant forward grinding. Eric had been doing his best to dodge the railgun and beam fire from the Duelist with more success than he'd hoped... he hadn't sustained any crippling damage yet, but it had been really hard on the cars and property around him... a crowded festival parking lot was hardly an optimal place for a mobile suit battle. The reinforcements had not lasted long. Captain Vance was in the lead and also the first to die. Ysak absorbed his hyper impulse shot on the cloaky thing that hung from the back of the Duelist, soaking up thousands of megawatts of energy like it was water into a giant sponge and deflected the railgun shot with his shield, the deflected shot utterly disintegrated a luxury sedan instead of the Duelist. His return fire was short and efficient... just like every other movement Eric observed the son of a bitch make. No wasted effort, no wasted time... just pure, murderous efficiency. The twin beam rifle melted two holes right through Captain Vance's cockpit, sending the still flying Crusader in a wobbling spiral towards the ground, where it impacted in the food court area of the festival... luckily mostly evacuated... and bounced, landing again right at the base of the ferris wheel and mangling the support structures, causing the stately amusement ride to fold over into itself like a collection of straws.

Captain Fredricks, the squadron XO, had been next to go, his Crusader enveloped by a cloud of small caliber beam blasts from the gatling mount on the Duelists's left shoulder, it burst through the cloud smoking from so many small black holes it looked like the machine had some form of plague. Six missiles corkscrewed out of a launcher on the Duelist's left hip and headed for Fredricks like sharks for bloody water. The resultant explosion of mobile suitand missiles gouged out a shallow crater nearly twenty meters in diameter, wiping the area clean of cars and people like a rag wiping upa dirty counter. By this time the remaining two members of the reinforcement squadron, Lieutenants First class Jondervan and Second class Emelia Holden, had closed to the point where they could land with swords drawn to take the fight to the enemy. This did not improve their chances of victory, in fact they probably would have been better off staying at long range, since the Duelist did not have much of anything for long range combat... Eric noted that all of its weapons seemed configured for short and medium range combat... even the railgun was more an extension of a punch than a actual long range tool. Eric had executed one of his own trademark moves, switching his beam saber from right hand to left much like a knife fighter switching hands, he brought his hyper impulse cannon up into his right hand again and stomped closer to support his squadronmates... dangerous, maybe, but if he could get close enough, to within point blank range, there would be no way the enemy could dodge or deflect the hyper impulse cannon blast.

Jondervan went left and Emelia went right, Jondervan slightly leading, CIWS guns in both their heads chattering 20mm shells at the Duelist in a bid to distract and disorient the pilot, who just let the small caliber ammunition deflect harmlessly off whatever armor it was that he had... whatever it was it wasn't even being marked by the bullets. Jondervan suddenly jammed on his thrusters, throwing his Crusader in a sudden charge to the right, sword extended like a lance... a move that had caught more than one ZAFT pilot completely flat footed, not expecting such a rapid directional change from a big mobile suit like a Crusader. Ysak let him get close before spinning the Duelist into a crouch on one leg, letting the beam sword slice through the air about a meter over the Duelist's head, he then brought the Duelist rapidly back up to a standing position, landing what amounted to a spinning side kick as he rose which stopped Jondervan dead in his tracks and in fact sent him stumbling a pace back, right through a line of middle class SUVs. Still pivoting, the Duelist's right arm came up into line with Jondervan, rifle already aimed and ready. It fired twice, one paired shot blowing Jondervan's arm off at the shoulder and the other again boring straight through the cockpit area, turning Jondervan himself to bloody steam in less than a heartbeat. Jondervan's Crusader did not fall, instead standing there like some great weary giant who had fallen asleep on its feet. Emelia wasted no tears on regrets, she just charged right in, beam sword raised for a mighty downward chop at the Duelists left side, while Eric had taken aim with his cannon at the Duelist's right side from less than fifty feet away and fired, yelling at Emelia to get out of the way. Their attack was a thing of beauty... Ysak could not take flight to dodge the beam blast because Emelia was all over him... neither could he bring his shield around to take the blast without being struck down by Emelia. But Eric had forgotten about the cloak.

The Duelist spun again, pivoting so that it brought the edge of its serrated shield... which was now spinning rapidly with a banshee hum, like a giant chainsaw blade... up, into and through Emelia's left wrist, just behind her own shield, cutting the entire hand off as neatly as a butcher slices through a steak. Still turning, the Duelist's cloak floated out like a wide banner and enveloped Eric's hyper impulse shot, the cloak flashed with light so bright Eric still had spots in his eyes even through a camera lense and a polarized helmet... but it absorbed the shot again, just like it had the last one... no fluke then. Emelia's downward slash ripped past the newly narrowed profile of the Duelist, missing by a matter of feet, while the right shoulder railgun on the Duelist swung over to blow a good sized chunk out of her Crusader's left side, sending the machine staggering to the right, where it was tripped by one outstretched foot of the Duelist and sent falling headlong. The Crusader landed on it's weapon arm, snapping the limb off under its own weight and bounced... that was all it had time to do before Ysak's spin brought the rifle around again, already aimed and blew six molten metal rimmed holes through the Crusader's back and sides, the resulting heat transfer caused the machine to bloat like a day old corpse before deflating inwards like a poppped balloon as the insides mostly melted into slag. during Emelia's death Ysak had not been idle... his left shoulder gatling mount had been steadily peppering Eric with its small beam blasts... each individually not much threat but the number of shots were really starting to chip away at the armor on his limbs and head. Completing his one hundred eighty degree pivot with his shield now pointing at eric, Ysak trigged one of his shield grapples, sending a plasma tipped grapple spearing out at the shocked Crusader pilot, who had plainly never seen a weapon like that before. Eric tried to dodge the harpoon line, but it seemed to be some sort of guided projectile, looping in on him even as he shifted to the left. Instinct brought his right hand up, causing the grapple to impact on and tear through his hyper impulse cannon instead of his torso. The half charged weapon, notroiously unstable, immediately exploded in a thunderous shockwave of shrapnel and light that ripped Eric's railgun mount right off his shoulder and detonated the remaining missiles in the other shoulder launcher, throwing his Crusader into an awkward sideways spin that had him rolling through the parking lot like a kid taking a tumble down a hillside. Everything went dark for Eric.

Ysak's eyes darted about, checking his scopes and cameras... cameras did not detect any remaining enemies nearby, though his scopes showed at least fifteen more mobile suits, mixed Daggers and Crusaders, quite hotly inbound on his position, ETA sometime in the next four minutes. Sensors also indicated the imminent arrival of most of a company of heavy armored tracked vehicles and missile trucks and he could already see what looked like two squadrons of attack jets circling around overhead, mustering their nerve. Ysak frowned... it had taken him far longer than he had estimated it would to take care of the six Crusaders... the pilots, even though Naturals, had fought well, coordinating several different attacks against him that might have even claimed his life at an earlier point in his career. His success margin was slipping further into the red with every passing second. He put the Duelist into a foward lope, headed once more for the innocuous buildings that housed the two men he hated the most in the entire world. Vladimir's garrotte bumped against his chest with every step the Duelist took, constantly reminding him again and again that his purpose here was not to get into a protracted fight, like he almost had been with those Crusaders... he had to watch himself, less he allow his anger to get the better of him and force him to start attacking everyone that got in his way, which would slow him down far too much. He was only a mile and a half away now... Ysak ignited his thrusters, tossing the Duelist into a five hundred meter jump forward, allowing him a bird's eye view of the target compound... good thing too, because otherwise he would have missed seeing a huge section of parade ground levering down and sliding to the side, revealing the gaping mouth of a large mobile suit hanger. His foes were coming out to meet him. That was both a good and bad thing. Good because it meant he would get to kill Cray that much faster... bad because then he'd have to kill Frost and Ashino too, before he could get to Asmodeus, who would doubtlessly cower in the bunker.

Eric slowly swam his way back to full consciousness... his head hurt abomidably and his helmet was missing. His cockpit was pitch dark, his instrument panels in emergency damage shutdown. He could feel wetness on the side of his head and along his jaw... plainly he'd taken a few hard knocks in his fall. He was hanging at an odd angle from his seat restraints, which meant that the Crusader was lying on its face or side... he didn't remember which... he remembered the hyper impulse cannon going off like a bomb right next to his face, but the time between that point and whenever now was was just a blurry haze of alarm sirens and incomprehensible camera images of sky and earth. He fumbled around in the pitch dark cockpit until his hands found the emergency power override switch, which restarted as many of his instruments as still functioned, even though they were shutdown because of battle damage. He saw the flicker as his main camera's came on, but the cockpit still remained mostly dark except for switch telltale lights and winking alarm lights... the Crusader was lying face down then. He cutout the alarms and slowly pushed the Crusader to a kneeling position, using his hands to awkwardly wipe several hundred pounds of mud and dirt off his Crusader's torso and head, clearing his camera eyes to some extent so he could actually see. Now that his cockpit was lit again he took a moment to check his status... what he saw made him wince and say a pray of forgiveness to any god that may have been listening... by most rights he should have been dead. Battery power was down to thirty percent and slowly lowering... he had an electrical short in the battery that was draining his power and several of the depowered cells had cracked, leaking caustic fluid into several other interior systems... which would explain why his air conditioning and cockpit lighting no longer functioned. His left shoulder was pretty much gone, though the arm still worked well enough and his right shoulder was likewise pitted and scarred, with a jagged hole where the railgun had used to be. His armor reading showed more than sixty percent denudation along his right side due to the cannon explosion and one ankle was locked in place. He was leaking lubricating oil at the rate of two gallons per minute and his entire ECm package had smashed itself to pieces in the fall. CIWS were offline due to multiple jammed bullets in the ammo feeders, the cockpit hatch was wedged shut and he could smell smoke from several small electrical fires in his long range sensor package. He still had cameras, still had most of his motor control, at least for the next few minutes until the lube oil ran out, still had power for the next few minutes as well... most importantly he was still alive and mostly unharmed, except for a laid open cheek and scalp. All of his weapons were offline or destroyed, except for his beam saber, which was still tightly clenched in his left hand. He transferred it back to his right hand as he brought the Crusader to its feet.

The enemy was almost a mile away, closer to the administrative compound than to him. The Duelist was just coming down from a jet assisted leap, cloak fluttering out behind it like angel wings or the tabard of some fantasy knight. It was one of the most stately sights Eric had seen in his adult life... he shook his head and frowned... he must have at least a minor concussion... he couldn't let himself get distracted by aesthetics. He scanned his cameras around, noting again with a pain filled grimace the wreckage of his five squadronmates. A tiny fearful voice was ringing in his head like an alarm bell... "five of them, six counting you and you haven't even touched him yet; you're doomed, Eric, doomed"... Eric shook his head again, he couldn't let his fears get to him either... he had to keep trying. That was what soldiers did, they didn't give up until either they won or they dropped. His eyes alighted upon Emelia's severed hand, still clutching its shield. He trudged over and prised the shield she would never use again from her mobile suit's severed limb and hefted it in his left hand. Now he felt almost well armed again. "Where the FUCK do you think ye're going?" Eric muttured. "C'mon back here you bastard... I ain't done wit you yet. T's not over till the last man's standing." He started his Crusader forward in a sort of half charge, half stumble. He was still most of a mile away from the Duelist when three new mobile suits entered the fray... not from the direction of the rest of the base, like Eric would have expected, but rocketing directly upwards from within the administrative compound on huge pillars of thruster fire. Each machine was different and none were any sort of Earth Forces model he'd ever seen or heard about, though they registered as friendly on his IFF. The three new arrivals landed almost as one, surrounding the Duelist in a triangular pattern, with the giant suit behind and to the left, the normal sized one behind and to the right and the short mobile suit to the front.

Now was the time, Ysak knew. Now was the time to fight with all he had... because if he didn't he was going to die. He did not allow himself to deceive himself... these would be the three toughest opponents he had ever faced. He'd been fought to a standstill by just one of them, the one with the black skull head, back in the desert. But that had been a near lifetime ago... the Ysak of now was not the Ysak of then. He considered his comm board and then forced his hand away. He was an assassin... assassins did not speak to their targets. What would he really have to say anyway... what could Cray have to say to him that he would want to hear? Nothing. Nothing at all. Ysak fingered Vladimir's garrotte again, finger tracing the slight indentations of the scratched in initials. A... F. Time to meet your master, Cray. Ysak swung his targeting icons around... he knew that Cray was not the pilot of the short green and red mobile suit... that was Frost. But he wasn't sure which of the other two was Cray... either the one with the black skull or the giant with all the weapons. Ysak reconsidered, calling to mind the number of weapons Cray had carried with him while hunting them down in the jungles outside the Blue Cosmos facility. It was obvious from that which machine Cray piloted. Ysak pivoted the Duelist to face the giant mobile suit, which towered to more than twice his height and was easily five or six times as massive. A flash of pride overwhelmed his higher mind and he keyed his comm board for the open channel. "This is Ysak Jule, in the Duelist. Do you know why I am here?"

"This is Craydon Louis Thresher, in the Merciless." Cray replied with a nasty giggle. "You're here because you want to die... just like your pathetic little girlfriend did."

"Let's just get this over with." Frost cut into the channel. Ysak couldn't help but flinch a little at the sound of that voice... he did not have nearly as many traumatic experiences at the hands of that particular psycho as some of his friends, but he couldn't deny that he was afraid of Frost. But Ysak was not one to let his fear rule him... he was afraid of a lot of things, he forced himself to admit. Many of which he was master of. "I have other things to do."

"You should not have come here, Ysak." Ashino said sourly.

"Yeah... you interrupted Ashino's date." Cray said, giggling again, slowly trailing off into an angry hiss. "Always you guys get between us and the girls we love."

"WHAT?" Ysak cried, shocked so mad he couldn't even swear. "I should think that would be what I should say, given all the things you've done to me and mine! I know you... you don't even have the concept of love in your twisted heart."

"I would not be so quick to judge, Ysak Jule." Frost retorted, shifting forward a pace. "Seeing Ashino with that girl... it's revealed something to Cray and I. Say what you will about us... we do love people. I would say my love for Pink is quite the equal of the bastard Yamato's... if not stronger."

"That's the most obscene lie I have ever heard." Ysak replied, aghast. "Kira's is not one of my better friends and neither is Lacus... but the love they have is one of the most constant, strong things I have ever seen. To even begin to equate your sick lusts with that sort of commitment is to demean the very word "love"."

"That would depend how you defined love." Frost stepped forward another pace, twitching the Fury's fingers in time to his own. "If you defined it as tenderness and gentle care and softly spoken words and all that romantic bullshit, then yes, you're right, I would be lying. However, if you define love as commitment to the person, the willingness to sacrifice yourself just to be with that person, loyalty of body and mind and purpose, physical desire and mutual attraction... then I speak truly when I say that no other living being loves Lacus Clyne as much as I do."

"That... what... no... eh... fuck... huh?" Ysak stammered, thrown totally off guard.

"You don't understand... thats okay. I'll enlighten you. Too bad you won't be able to spread the word... I would dearly love to see Yamato's expression if you ever got to reveal this to him." Frost said calmly. "Think of this and reply truthfully. Can you think of any person who relentlessly pursues Pink like I do? Who targets her to the exclusion of all others, like I do, even at the cost of damage to myself? Is that not commitment? Do you doubt me when I say that I would gladly be shot a hundred times if I could only be with her for a minute... that I would cheerfully be beheaded, as long as I had gotten to be with her for just a few seconds? We are both dedicated, mind and body and soul, to the bringing of peace to this world and its surrounds... our methods are wildly different, but our goals are the same. I don't think you need a lesson in physical desire... you are as aware of her beauty as any other man is, the soft skin, the pink hair, the cornflower blue eyes, those innocent smiles, the shapely limbs and body... no, there is no denying her beauty."

"No... no... even if you can twist your words to justify yourself, I'll never believe you love Lacus. And I'll certainly never be convinced there is any degree of mutual attraction between you two." Ysak refuted, grimacing under Frost's relentless barrage of almost truths... at least, Ysak hoped thats what they were.

"Oh really? Is it not true that opposites attract? Is it so hard to believe that two people, totally different from each other... one the personification of mercy and gentleness and forgiveness... the other the personification of hate and fear and death... could actually be attracted to each other? If you asked her, I'm sure she would deny it vehemently... but you and I know better. There is always an attraction to that which is beyond your comprehension... curiousity killed the cat and all that. If she really, truly hated me as much as you think she does... why does she want to give me the one thing I truly desire? Is not the giving of desired gifts something done between people who like each other... or at least do not hate one another?"

"The one thing you truly desire?" Ysak snarled, incredulous.

"Of course." Frost took another step forward, putting his hands on his sword hilts. "She wants me dead. Lacus Clyne... the person who never kills, the queen of forgiveness and gentle mercy, a living saint by all accounts, who wouldn't hurt a fly if it bit her... she wants me dead. She'd do it herself, if I gave her the chance. Tell me I'm wrong, Ysak Jule. Tell me I'm lying. If you can. Tell me that isn't mutual attraction. I want her dead... I want to kill her painfully and gloriously... preferably after I take her as a man takes a woman. She wants me dead... she would kill me personally and I don't think she'd complain if it was messy and painful either, do you? I cannot think of a higher compliment and greater gift ever to be given by anyone than to be the one person that Lacus Clyne killed of her own free will. Do you see where I'm coming from, Ysak Jule? Can you see my love for Pink? Can you still doubt me, truthfully?"

"..." Ysak couldn't make a reply. That in itself scared him. It would have been easy to deny Frost, to say he was lying, to call him insane and a psychopath. But it wouldn't have been completely true... well, not from the perspective Frost had just revealed. As Frost had laid it out, it did make some sense of a sort. More sense than Ysak would have thought the bastard capable of. Frost truly did love Lacus Clyne... if in a way that ninety nine point nine repeating percent of the world would instead define as maniacal hatred. Ysak wasn't sure if this insight was a good thing or a bad thing... on one side it was always helpful to know how your enemy thought... on the other, now Ysak was so off balance that it was starting to affect his concentration. If there could have been a last thing he ever expected, Frost confessing to love Lacus Clyne, even compiling a somewhat rational arguement to defend the proclamation, would have been very close to that thing.

"Yeah!" Cray cut back into the channel, though he had very little idea just what the fuck Frost had been talking about... but he couldn't let anyone know that. "I mean hell, I love your girlfriends too, Ysak. I woulda fucked them first if I could have, but circumstances denied me. Though I will say, that Chanel girl had a really smoking hot body man... you lucky bastard."

"That was the wrong thing to say, Cray." Ashino muttered to himself as Ysak's incoherent scream of rage drowned out the comm channel. He'd been glad of Frost's uncharacteristic talkativeness... that much more time for Jean to slip away from Asmodeus and make good an escape. How exactly he would find her again, he did not know, but he was confident he'd figure something out. Ysak's eyes were closed... because he was watching his very own blue seed slowly fall through the infinite expanse of his own mind, to strike an unseen floor and break into a billion glimmering sparkles of light. His eyes snapped open like missile port shutters revealing their contents and he could hear his gloves creaking as he death gripped his controls. He could feel a bestial snarl on his face and could hear his heart beating slow and steady in his chest, completely at odds with his outward appearance.

"This ends now." Ysak promised, jamming his thrust pedals to the floor and taking aim at Cray... not that it would be easy to miss the giant machine. Frost reacted in an eyeblink, tearing out his swords and igniting them in one motion before charging forward like a blood maddened bull. Ashino brought up his 120mm gatling cannon and carfully sighted in on the just beginning to charge Ysak. Cray spooled up his shoulder gatling cannons and brought his anti-armor shotgun and hyper impulse cannons to bear on the pathetic little mobile suit now flying at him. Eric continued his slow march towards the battle, awed at the sight of the single Duelist standing firm against the three seemingly towering Earth Forces machines. He hadn't understood any of the conversation he'd overheard on the public channel... but several of the voices... especially that low, breathy and eternally cold and calm one... really set him on edge. He did not want to meet the guy that talked like that, no sir. There was a moment more of peace... and then the firestorm blossomed into existence.

At just about that time, thirty miles off the coast from Panama Base, the frigate AFNS Humphrey, stationed out there as a second early warning line to complement the long range radar flights and sonar buoys, picked up an incoming flight of unknown contacts bearing down on its position at high speed. In the two minutes and fifteen seconds it took for the Humphrey's battle computers to positively identify the incoming contacts and fully activate the frigate's weapon systems, it was already too late. One of Athrun's flyer packs swooped low over the deck, wingblades blazing, cleanly removing the frigate's sole 75mm rapid fire cannon turret. The second flyer pack dived low and twisted, dragging its port wing through the water just behind the frigate, neatly bisecting the rudder and rendering the craft's course almost uncontrollable. The Humphrey responded by loosing flights of anti-air missiles, but none of the missiles made it more than halfway to their targets before being blasted out of the air by Kira's CIWS guns. More precision CIWS fire from Kira disabled the missile launchers without killing the crew nearby and then the ship was defenseless except for a few anti-personnel weapon mounts. The captain and crew could do nothing but futiley try and send off distress and warning signals through the Grand Buster's comprehensive comm blackout as they watched the flight of four mobile suits jet by overhead. One was blue, black, red and white with gold trim, one was green and tan with orange trim, and two were reddish in color and holding hands for some reason... an incogrous image in more than one sailor's eyes. The two flyer packs circled around and re-attached themselves to the Righteous, boosting it and the Rubicon's speed back up to normal levels. Athrun and Cagalli had been running the Rubicon off spare power from the Righteous the entire flight in order to extend Cagalli's combat time with her batteries. It had slowed them down a little, but a single extra mobile suit might make all the difference, so no one had said anything.

"Anything yet?" Athrun asked Miriallia. She looked at her screens again, though her eyes were practically glued to them anyway.

"No... wait, yes. I'm picking up lots of activity. LOTS of activity, I mean like more than fifty mobile suits in the air and more joining them all the time. And they're all headed towards one place. Right here." Miriallia placed a glowing dot on a map screen and downloaded it to all the other machines. "The Archangel's maps show that they're all headed for the CWM administrative offices and the secret portions of the base built underneath them."

"Not really surprising that Ysak would head there... thats where he's most likely to find Cray and Asmodeus." Dearka commented to her. God damn it Ysak... you coud have asked for my help... not like I would have stopped you. ...Okay, so maybe I would have, but still! We're supposed to be friends!

"What of Ysak? Any sign of the Duelist?" Kira asked. Miriallia hunted through the thermal and radar contacts.

"I don't know. There looks to be a major battle ongoing near the target location... theres too much thermal energy and debris for me to get a good contact. Though if I had to guess, I'd say Ysak's probably somewhere in the middle of that scrap."

"Good guess." Cagalli said dryly. "I don't suppose we're lucky and he's actually got his communication system on, are we?"

"No, I'm afraid not. If he does have it on, he's either being jammed or just plain ignoring my calls." Miriallia replied.

"With Ysak thats not all that unlikely. Especially given his current emotional state." Dearka chipped in. Damn it, Ysak... if you've gone and gotten yourself killed I'll never forgive you. Especially for something stupid like revenge. I thought you were better than that. "I'm am so going to punch his lights out when we get back to the Archangel."

"Funny how often you guys say that... and then you just end up crying and hugging him when you really get back." Miriallia observed. Dearka opened his mouth to retort but she cut him off. "You may talk tough, Dearka dear, but I know you're really worried. It's okay... we all are. Ysak may be a mean spirited, grouchy son of a bitch most of the time. But he's OUR mean spirited, grouchy son of a bitch. And now our problem child has gone and shoved his head into the lion's den and started taunting the occupants and its up to us to save him. Discomfiting, unpleasant and frightening as it may be, that's what friends are for. And we're all his friends, even if he won't always admit it."

"I'm still going to punch his lights out. Seriously." Dearka said sternly.

"No, you won't." Miriallia countered. "And here's why..." she cut him off again. "For one, Ysak might not be in very good shape... he might need immediate medical attention. If you hit an unconscious and bleeding man, even Ysak, I can promise you, you'll be sleeping alone here in this cockpit until you turn thirty. For two, Katie is going to be there and if she sees you lay a single harmful finger on Ysak, she'll probably castrate you with her bare hands. For three, Vladimir will be there... if HE see's you lay a single harmful finger on Ysak, he'll do something so horrible to you I can't even imagine. For four... "

"I GET IT! I WON'T HIT HIM, GEEZ!" Dearka cried. "You really know how to take the fun out of everything..."

"Oh yeah, thats me, the spoilsport. I never let you do anything." Miriallia said with a sniff. "Leastwise if it doesn't have to do with your hands and MY body, that is."

"Woah, woah, the comm system is off right?" Dearka flailed. "That better have stayed within this cockpit. Little case of battle hormones, eh? Damn that came out of nowhere." He paused. "Not that I'm complaining."

"Kinda surprised me too. Battle hormones, definitely." Miriallia replied, refering to the name she and her friends had given to the way the heightened tension before major battles always seemed to turn them on sexually. None of them were sure why it happened... you weren't likely to find a group of pilots who hated fighting more than them, there was no reason they should get turned on at the thought of going into battle... but it happened. Maybe it was the fact that their lives were in immediate danger, activating some sort of biological instinct to mate first, to ensure life continued on or something weird and atavistic like that. Miriallia didn't know and there were no people on the Archangel any of them felt comfortable asking, not even Murrue. Certainly not Waltfeld or Kisaka and definitely not any of their parents back in Antartica. But asking or knowning or not, they all felt it, even Kira and sometimes Lacus.

"Well... try hang onto those for the flight back, once I can safely put us on autopilot, okay?" Dearka told her. She looked at him incredulously.

"There's no room in here for that!" she protested. Dearka looked at her with a devilish twinkle in his eye.

"There's always room for that." he refuted. "Trust me... you're not the only one who's feeling it... the thought of just the five of us going up against Panama all by ourselves... yeah, just a tad bit nerve wracking there. Not to mention the possible enemies." he continued, careful to omit any specific names to avoid ruining the mood. "What's the point of having a tandem cockpit if you can't use it to your advantage every once and a while?"

"Battle first... sex later." Athrun's voice was almost unrecognizable with choked back laughter as it crackled over the comm system.

"I thought you said the comm system was off!?" Dearka said to Miriallia, his eyes bugging... he'd just said way more than was polite across an open channel... where all his friends could hear.

"I never said that... you just asked me if it was and assumed that it was. Damn it, Dearka, now look what you've gone and done!" Miriallia accused him, more than a little embarassed herself... she'd thought she toggled the switch to off, but apparently she hadn't.

"What I'VE GONE AND DONE!? YOU..." Athrun didn't hear the rest of that little spat as he turned his own comm system to the secondary band, where Kira and Cagalli had gone the moment they had heard Miriallia's first verbal slip. "It's safe now." he told them.

"That's good. How did it turn out?" Cagalli asked. Athrun clicked to the private channel between the Righteous and the Rubicon.

"I wish we had a tandem cockpit." He told her.

"Wow... I hope we don't have a sudden storm on the way back." Cagalli replied. "Wouldn't that be an embarassing mess to sort out... high speed turbulence plus no room to maneuver plus Dearka's dirty mind equals... wow."

Why do I feel suddenly exlcuded from several interesting conversations? Kira thought with slight disgruntlement as he listened to the hissing static of yet another empty comm line. Why his friends always switched to private comm channels whenever something juicy came up was beyond him. Sure, he'd had a few bad reactions back in Switzerland... but a lot had changed since then. He was a lot more mature now. More experienced for sure... it wasn't like it was some big secret what he and Lacus were up to in their cabin most nights. Sure, he'd been embarassed about it at first... I mean, it hadn't been his first time, but it had been for Lacus and it might as well have been for him, given his awkward nature. But now... now, hell, everyone did it at some point in their life... else there wouldn't be any babies. I can stand a little dirty talk from my friends. Hell, I probably know more about it than Dearka and Miriallia do. ... ...Okay, so more than Miriallia does, anyway. Of course, it is hard to judge... Lacus and I don't really do much of that other stuff I used to hear about from my friends... and I'm not about to ask Dearka for suggestions or explanations. Hmm... theres an idea... maybe I can ask Cagalli to ask Lacus, they're good friends they'd... no... no way. I will not have Lacus talking with Cagalli about my sex life... thats a disaster waiting to happen. For that matter I don't even know what Cagalli and Athrun... GOD DAMN IT KIRA, STOP THIS LINE OF THOUGHT! Just concentrate on the here and now... save Ysak, get out of Panama with everyone alive and intact, fly home and THEN worry about havng a nice long bout of sex with La... DAMN IT! Kira's half daydream was interrupted by the blaring of lock on alarms... they were at the battle zone.

Down on the ground, things were not going Ysak's way. Not even slightly. If he'd been fighting just Cray, it would have been hard enough... for all his insanity and misplaced bravado, Ysak cold not deny that Cray knew his fucking way around a mobile suit... especially one custom built for his combat strategy. The closer he got to the Merciless the more firepower it brought to bear on him, until he was either inevitably forced to retreat or physically knocked backwards and to the ground by some massive impact or other. His photon cloak was already tattered and rent in several places due to the anti-armor shotgun and four 120mm gatling cannons. Ysak snorted a curse... four 120mm gatling cannon... that was just crazy... no machine save space warships should carry armaments like that. It was just stupid... but undeniably effective. Then of course there were the six beam cannons, the dual hyper impulse gun, the anti armor shotgun and the plethora of missile tubes and CIWS guns... Ysak couldn't, for perhaps the first time in his life, actually get close enough to attack an opponent with his sword. His rifle he'd lost early on, near the end of the first barrage, when it had blasted twice, both times ineffectively at the massively armored Merciless, before at least six 120mm shells had struck it and blown it from his hand in shards. Now he was forced to use his railgun and 25mm beam gatling to snipe at the Merciless to depressingly little effect as he circled, always looking for a slight hole to dart in and finish the fight... all he needed was to get within sword range and he knew he could end the fight just like that. It was the getting to sword range that was the problem.

No.. the real problem was staying away from Ashino and Frost, actually. Ashino stayed at medium range, always at some odd angle that Ysak would never quite expect him to be, blasting away in short, controlled bursts with his single 120mm gatling cannon and shoulder beam cannons... not always even aiming at Ysak, but just firing to narrow down his movement options and push him into Cray's fire. It ws almost like the BCPU was trying to prolong the battle. Frost certainly wasn't trying to prolong anything... Ysak could not stay still for more than a second or so at a time, or the Fury would be all over hm. Ysak had made the mistake of letting the Fury get within sword range just once, about thirty seconds after he lost his rifle. He'd almost died, then. Ashino was fast and smart and used tactics well. Cray was fast and had overwhelming firepower and an aim that really wasn't as terrible as you might think. But Frost...he defined speed and agression... Ysak had shot at him several times but had now given it up as a wasted effort, even in SEED mode he was starting to get the feeling he might be a little out of his league when facing off with the little psycho. The Duelist sported twin smoking beam sword scars, one on the right torso below the shoulder stretching down to the left hip and the other just below the left shoulder, stretching down to the right hip, crossing the other in an "X" pattern. Another foot closer and those beam blades would have been in his cockpit and he'd have found out how Nichole felt, rather than just sweating at the close call. His mind was racing... desperately trying to think of some strategy that would save his ass and get him the victory... but nothing was presenting itself. Unlike the last batch of these bastards, whom he'd fought in the last war, these three actually used a little bit of teamwork... he never saw them shooting at each other anyway, not intentionally. Ashino was actively supporting his two more aggressive brethren, actually doing more to bring Ysak down just by cutting down on his options than even Frost was accomplishing with his constant head on attack.

Cray was smiling... his ammo meters still showed more than sixty percent full and he was as yet undamaged... the puny weapons the Duelist mounted couldn't penetrate his triple layer phase shift armor. Of course, there was the annoying little factoid that despite all his skill and firepower, and the more than considerable help of Ashino and Frost, Ysak was still alive, even after almost two minutes of fighting. Cray was disappointed in himself... this should have been way over already. Ashino was glad for the skill Ysak was showing... the longer the foolish Coordinator stayed alive, the longer Jean had to escape. And better yet, Frost nor Cray had yet noticed that Ashino wasn't trying as hard as he might have to kill Ysak... he'd certainly passed up on more than one or two sure kill shots already, but they were too busy trying to kill him themselves to notice. Frost actually found that he was getting more and more annoyed as the battle wore on. Normally he'd have enjoyed a fight such as this... indeed, only a few weeks before, back when he had no idea of his destiny, he'd have been immensely enjoying himself. But now... now, this fight, fun as it was to fight a Coordinator... it didn't serve his purposes at all. It was just a pointless... nearly pointless, since death was never pointless... but almost worthless fight. Ysak Jule meant nothing to him... sure he was someone who would have to die eventually, but so would everyone else. This fight did not bring him any closer to his goals. And so, Frost was fed up. It was time to end this. For real.

Breaking off his pounding pursuit of the Duelist for a moment, Frost deactivated his swords and activated his Celerity system. Arms pumping like the pistons in a racing motor, he snatched up and threw all of the armor-schneider combat knives strapped to the chest of the Fury... not at Ysak, but upwards, at a slight angle. They would come back into the equation later on... at least twenty seconds down the line. He detached his six wire guided geschmeidig-panzer beam deflecting pods, which though not specifically designed for operation in atmosphere could still be utilized there if you were skilled enough. And Frost was skilled enough... the trick was to keep them constantly readjusting position, so that they never stalled out. The pods spread out to near the end of their tethers, a good fifty meter range for each. He spread them out wide and then angled them just precisely so... Ysak was of course too busy trying to take advantage of Frost's apparent negligence so he could kill Cray to take notice. Ashino did notice what Frost was up to and realized the gig was up... he'd seen Frost use this manuever before in simulators... it was truly awe inspiring. Ashino backed off and found himself next to the battered and half broken Strike Crusader piloted by Jean's brother, which had finally managed to limp its way into the battle. Frost ignored the new arrival as well... this tactic took all of his enormous concentration and skill to pull off... it wasn't easy, even for him. He drew his two 57mm beam rifles, one per hand and took careful aim, deactivating the Celerity switch as he did so... no need to strain his system just yet.

Cray noticed one of the shield pods drifting past his backside cameras and quickly divined just what was about to happen.. He felt giddy... he'd only ever seen this done in the simulators... it was almost an honor to see it in real life. "The floor is yours, Maestro Frost!" Cray said with wicked glee... lets see the bastard Coordinator get out of this alive! He jumped the Merciless up and back, out of the forty or so meter radius defined by the six constantly moving shield pods.

"I have a very bad feeling about this..." Ysak muttered to himself. "Why did they disengage... they had me on the ropes..." A threat warning blared into existence on his screen... target lock! He juked the duelist down and to the side, just narrowly avoiding taking two beam rifle shots to the side of the torso. That had been close.. he hadn't even been able to get the shield up in time. Who had... Ysak saw the Fury, standing about forty meters away, guns out... uncharacteristic for Frost, Ysak thought... and blasting at him as fast as the triggers could be pulled. Ysak forced himself into more evasive maneuvers, even though he was really starting to get tired. all the beams blasted by him closely... he needed to shape up or he might actually start getting hit. And then he did get hit... a graze along the shoulder, an impact on the left ankle, three or four shots hitting the photon cloak. But he hadn't had any threat warnings... no indications that he'd been flanked... and the EA didn't have mirage colloid equipped mobile suits yet... at least as far as he knew. He scanned behind him and his jaw dropped. He hadn't been flanked... not in the common sense anyway. No... instead those pods that normally were attached to the Fury where floating around in a complex pattern, all around him. Every time a beam blast missed Ysak on its way out from Frost, one of the pods dipped or spun into the path of the shot and deflected it up and away, where a second pod would deflect it again, to the side and a third pod would change its course again, sending it right back at Ysak. Ysak couldn't believe his eyes... Frost was actually banking his own misses back at Ysak, and catching those misses and sending them back and so on and so forth. Each shot bounced at least twice before coming back at him... it was beyond his skills, even in SEED mode, to keep track of all the bouncing beams, especially since Frost kept shooting more of them into the trap to replace those that eventually grounded out on the ground or buildings or Ysak. It was all he could do to dance a desperate dance of evasion... one that grew less and less effective as more beams kept coming in.

Frost had actually named this attack, in a fit of exceptional hubris one day... the Web of the Warped. Phase one of the maneuver was now in full flow... it was time to up the ante. Still firing, still maneuvering his deflection pods, Frost fired all eight of his guided beam grapples, his hands flying back and forth from three different sets of controls in what an observer would probably think of as convulsions of some sort. He wove the grapples through the bouncing beams, sweat starting to stand out on his brow, eyes staring intently... this was when it started to get hard. If he wasn't careful he might shoot off his own grapples before they could hit the gyrating but mostly immobile target. There was nowhere for Ysak to move to... it was all the silly Coordinator could do to just dodge in place. If it hadn't been for the photon cloak, it would have been over already. The eight beam tipped grapples seemed more like organic tentacles than any technological items to Ysak's disbelieving eyes, as he watched them snake through the beam blizzard towards him. Everything was slowing down... even more so than was usual for combat situations... this wasn't going to go well for him, he knew... he'd gotten feelings like this before, always right before major accidents or other painful incidents. This promised to be a little more than painful though. He dodge the first grapple... dodged the second... the third... two beams struck him in the back, only partially negated by the threadbare holes in the photon cloak they slipped through, the impact threw him forward, out of the path of the fourth grapple, but the fith and sixth changed course... one penetrated his shield and wrapped around his left arm, the other took his right foot off at the ankle. Grapple number five started to retract towards the Fury, pulling the Duelist even farther off balance. Three more beam blasts struck him in the back, one even penetrating the armor, though no vital system was breached.

Grapple number seven flew right down the barrel of his right shoulder railgun, tearing the weapon right off cleanly. Grapple number eight did the most damage though... it struck the Duelist right where the right arm met the right shoulder and half severed the limb, leaving it hanging limp, sparking, flaming and dripping lubricants like blood. The beam saber fell from the suddenly loose grip of the fingers on that hand and clanged on the hard ground below. Ysak gritted his teeth... he could still fight just as well with a sword in his left hand, but that would mean dropping his shield, which was probably the only thing besides the tattered photon cloak keeping him alive right now. This was a bad situation... he tried to jet forward, out of the trap, only to get blasted backwards by two fresh beam bolts from the Fury which blew off his hip mounted missile tubes...quite deliberately, Ysak could not help but feel. Those could have killed him, but Frost wanted to play a little. That wasn't strictly true... Frost's gloves were starting to get slippery with sweat and his aim had wavered slightly, but it was of no matter...he was actually starting to get some of his old good humor back. This was the first time he'd used the Web of the Warped off the training range or simulators and he was really doing it under battlefield conditions... he knew he could of course, but video's of this would be everywhere across the EA soon... it would even serve his goals, by making the common soldier realize just how powerless they were to stop Frost. He continued to withdraw grapple five, pulling the Duelist forward and to the side, pulling its shield away from its body. Well, that was the plan anyway, until Ysak dipped the shield for a brief instant and used it's chainsaw edge to sever the grapple cord, which brought a snarl of disleasure to Frost's face. He forced it away... he couldn't get mad now, not at the start of the most critical phase three. Frost activated the Celerity system again... he'd need every last fraction of speed for this part of the maneuver. His veins pounded with the blood flowing through his system... he was actually sweating pink sweat, the normal fluid tainted with his blood as it overexceeded the flow capacities of some of his circulatory system.

The Fury lifted off and fired a slew of beams from its rifles as it rose...once he reached his apex he wouldn't be able to replenish the beams in the Web anymore, so he needed to fill it as much as possible. He reached his target point and dropped his rifles, hands darting out to either side to grab the sudden rain of spinning silver objects just now descending from their heavenly flight. This was the finale.. if he could pull this off... why, he'd have to figure out some way to reward himself... to be truthful, he'd never pulled off the full attack before, even though he had it planned out. He fired his grapples again, the seven remaining and sent them down into the Web again, following the throw paths of the armor-schneider knives he was throwing as fast as he could catch them. Now, it was well known that the armor-sncheider knives could not penetrate phase shift armor like the Duelist sported. By themselves, anyway. It was a lesser known fact that the knives had exceptionally high heat tolerances and could in fact take direct beam strikes without breaking. As the knives penetrated the Web perimeter, Frost lined up a bouncing beam directly along their flight path, so that the beam enveloped the knife and struck just marginally ahead of it... and while the knife absorbed most of the beam energy, enough remained to penetrate the phase shift armor, thus allowing the knife to penetrate as well. Frost only managed to envelop about one out of every three daggers... but it was enough, especially combined with the already bouncing beams and the grapples. Ysak couldn't figure it out... he saw the knives incoming, but there was no way normal knives could penetrate phase shift armor... but then they did. He heard them tearing through the vital systems located just above the cockpit, saw his camera's blank out as a knife pierced the Duelist's head from ear to ear, felt the left leg just stop working below the knee... and smelled the scent of his own shock and fear as a knife blade came right through the middle of his primary screen, still glowing red hot from the beam impact. The blade slammed to a halt with a terrible noise and a irrestistable impact that threw him hard against the back of his seat... Ysak did not see it stop, his eyes were shut as he prepared himself for death... his chest felt like it was being cooked over a fire but the pain didn't seem to be getting any worse. He cracked open an eye... the knife had stopped... with just the very tip touching him, right on the chest... the razor sharp and red hot blade had penetrated his flight suit like it was nothing... but the twin metallic handles of Vladimir's garrotte were made of stronger stuff and had prevented him from getting cut, likely to a depth of more than a inch or two. Instead, the handles were conducting the heat from the blade, which hurt, but not nearly as much as getting stabbed AND burned would have been.

"Nailed it..." Frost said triumphantly, panting in pride and released concentration... he felt like he'd just run twenty miles uphill in full gear. Within seconds his breathing had regulated and his body had returned to normal functionality. The Duelist was down, if not necessarily destroyed. Its right foot was missing, its left leg was gone below the knee, its right arm was half severed and limp, its left arm was pinned to the ground by four knives, its head was split by two knives, two knives pierced it's chest and more than a dozen beam blast holes glowed cherry red and soot black along its torso and sides, from where last minute beams had found their marks.

"YOU ARE THE MAN!" Cray celebrated. "THAT KICKED ASS!"

"That was impressive." Ashino admitted. He glanced across at the Strike Crusader he'd been safeguarding... doubtless the man inside could hardly believe his own eyes. Ashino sighed... he'd prolonged the fight as long as he could... now he could only hope Jean had managed to slip away. He slipped his gatling cannon onto its back mount and drew his ES06 wide bladed beam sword... the same model Frost used. "Now to make sure." Ashino said, moving over to stand over the defeated Duelist.

"Hey, hey hey... this is my enemy here... I get to finish him off!" Cray protested. Ashino looked at him and thought about it, then nodded. That much longer for Jean...

"He's all yours."

"Thanks." Cray lumbered forward, slinging his weapons as he did so. He put one giant foot on the Duelist's chest, just below the knife that was sticking out of the cockpit area. "I've always wanted to do this..." Cray said, careful not to put much weight on the Duelist... he didn't want to crush it yet. "Look guys... I'm King Kong!" Cray shouted, beating the Merciless's chests lightly with its closed fists as he posed with one foot on the Duelist.

"You're such a child." Ashino said, though he was smiling in amusement... it was an apt image in his mind. He was still smiling when he finally noticed the incoming enemy fire alarm twinkling on his status board. "Aww shit." Ashino swore, which was very rare for him.

Author Note: Hope you're enjoying this, coming up on the end of a story arc here in the next two or three chapters. Still got about half the stroy to go though. Yes... thats a lot, and it will be a while. But it WILL get done. Very grateful for all the in depth reviews so far, looking forward to many more (in depth is the best, but any will do), best christmas gift anyone could give me would be to see to it that I have more reviews than chapters for once. Thanks.