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.

69. The Death of a Hero

It was not a pleasant scene that her cameras finally revealed, now that they were close enough to actually pick out details. Miriallia adjusted the screens to gain as much resolution as possible... the Duelist was in very bad shape but it still appeared to be mostly intact. There was still a chance that Ysak was alive, though the placement of one knife was directly into the cockpit area, according to the diagrams of the Duelist in her cockpit. Still, she tried to maintain hope, for Dearka's sake if nothing else... Ysak was just about the best male friend he had, the closest to a brother Dearka had ever had. And given the very strained nature of Dearka's familial relationship, that was a very special distinction. Miriallia found herself frowning in more than a little anger... the giant mobile suit from the desert was standing with one foot pinning the Duelist to the ground while it beat its arms against its chest in a crude parody of some ancient movie she'd seen once as a child... she didn't remember the name but it featured a really big monkey, she remembered.

"Is he alive?" Dearka asked tersely from behind her as he fought to keep his hands steady on his controls, activating the Grand Buster's various weapon systems and confirming targeting locks. Miriallia thought about how she should answer. She hadn't received any real evidence that Ysak was dead... but the evidence for him still being alive was even less substantial. She was well aware that the wording of her answer could and most likely would have a direct influence on how Dearka was going to fight this battle. Kira and Cagalli were behind them, fending off the rapidly approaching Panama Base defenders, while Athrun was just behind them, prepared to either charge or hang back as Miriallia dictated. Why do I have to be in charge? she lamented for not the first time. I'm not even in the military any more... and now I'm in charge of what may turn out to be one of the bloodiest battles in recent history. "IS... HE... ALIVE!?" Dearka asked again, his teeth gnashing on each word. She didn't have to look at him to see his trembling lips, shaking fingers, dilated eyes or rictus snarl.

Do I tell him what I think, or what he wants to hear? Miriallia paused a moment more, still trying to make up her mind. She'd been sending signals to the Duelist ever since they got into communication range... but had received no answer. While with Ysak that was hardly indicitive of anything, it was still not an especially good sign. I'm not helping any by dragging this out. "I don't know, dear. His mobile suit is... mostly... intact. If it weren't for that knife to the cockpit area, I'd say I was sure he was alive. But there is that knife. Whether Ysak is alive or dead depends on a lot of things... where exactly the knife penetrated the cockpit at, how far it penetrated, other damage that we may not be able to see yet... I just don't know and there's no way we can tell until we get a lot closer."

"Get a lot closer... aye." Dearka snapped. "Get... off... my... FRIEND!" he shouted, loud enough to startle Miriallia, who knew what he was doing. He'd already targeted the giant mobile suit with all his weapons and on "FRIEND" he cut loose. Sixty missiles, one hyper impulse shot, twenty four hundred pounds of high explosive shotgun shells and two beams burst out of the Grand Buster, the combined recoil actually slowing the machine's flight down slightly. Athrun needed no second urging, releasing his flyer backs and swinging his shoulder railguns into the attack position while he jetted ahead of the Grand Buster, rifle blazing, to take the fight to the environs he was most comfortable with... close quarters. Cray shot a good percentage of the missiles out of the sky with his CIWS before they managed to get to him, and ignored the rest, which barely made the Merciless shake as they hit. He was forced to jump awkwardly backwards to avoid the hyper impulse shot and as such could not avoid the anti-armor shotgun shells, but again, the Merciless was so massive and its armor so thick he barely even felt it. The two beams he felt, burning their way through all three layers of his phase shift armor as they did... they must have hit a soft spot, though they lost much of their energy in the process and did not do anything like major damage.

"Was THAT the best you had?" Cray taunted with a hysterical cackle. "That was PATHETIC! You call that an ATTACK!? That's not an attack. THIS... this is an ATTACK!" Cray switched all his weapons over to interlock, so they would all be activated from one trigger. He thought for a brief moment and regretfully took the tactical nukes back out of the interlock... and then pressed the trigger. He was supposed to be in friendly territory right now, after all.

"This guy is way too heavily armed." Dearka complained. "Never thought I'd say that about a mobile suit, especially given what I pilot... but he has too many weapons." he reversed thrust and applied boost to his shoulder jets, slowing the Grand Buster down and spinning it sideways, out of the river of munitions that had poured out of the giant mobile suits far too prevalent weapon ports. Smoking brass shells the diameter of a personal pan pizza and the length of a man's entire arm clanged down in endless streams from the discharge ports of the gatling cannon on the Merciless's shoulders. The high explosive shells blossomed into flowers of angry red and orange flame and clouds of dirty black smoke whenever they struck a solid object, like the Grand Buster. Though unable to penetrate phase shift armor, each shell contained roughly twenty five pounds of high explosive inside... the sheer force of impact was enough to rattle Miriallia's teeth up in the cockpit.

"I need you to cover me for a little while, Ashino." Frost ordered. "My systems will not return to their regular functions for two more minutes."

"You sound fine." Ashino noted. "Your breathing is normal and you don't appear to be in physical distress."

"DO AS I SAY, YOU LITTLE BASTARD!" Frost demanded. "UNLESS YOU WANT ME TO KILL YOUR LITTLE WHORE, WHEN WE GET BACK!"

"Threatening me or especially Jean is not necessary. I was just making an observation." Ashino retorted, raising his shield to let several of Athrun's beam blasts carome safely off into the ground around him. He kept an eye on the two ghuul like flyer packs that had detached themselves from the enemies back just a few moments ago... after witnessing Frost's recent demonstration of the potential destructive capacity of detached weapon systems, Ashino would not let himself be taken off guard. "So it's a mental disorder then?"

"You think you're funny, don't you? Mental disorder... I ought to kill you and her just for that smart ass comment right there." Frost's voice had changed... he actually sounded weary... which was quite a thing, for Frost. "You have no idea how much concentration and willpower executing that attack takes... I have to force my mind to do the equivalent of the original marathon run while doing that. My physical functions are fine... but my concentration and reflexes are shot right now... I can barely move the Fury."

"Not like you to admit weakness... I could kill you, if you're really that weakened." Ashino skipped the Bane to the right, just barely avoiding two streams of autocannon fire from the flyer packs as they swept by at knee height while deflecting more beam fire with his shield from the opposite direction.

"You could... but then I can garauntee you... you'll never see your girlfriend again. You kill me and they'll worse than kill you... they'll kill her. Or maybe even take her into the program. Course, no one over the age of ten has ever successfully accepted the implants... but maybe she's the lucky winner, eh?" Frost came back, his voice almost dry with what, for him, passed as humor.

"She is not my girlfriend... ghr!" Ashino had taken his attention from the Righteous for a brief moment to add vehemence to his refutal and it had almost cost him... the red mobile suit had dropped its rifle and whipped out a beam boomerrang in that instant and tossed it directly at him... the beam blade drew a sizzling black line through the armor along the Bane's weapon arm... a miss, but too close a miss. "She's just a girl I bumped into at the festival!"

"Yes... that's why you fought so poorly against Ysak, right? So you could let the girl you just bumped into have more time to flee from Asmodeus. You don't fool me, Ashino. Were you not listening to me speak about love? You're exihibiting all the signs, little Ashino. You love her... you do. Don't deny it... I can tell when you're lying, even if you can't. Save yourself some trouble and just admit it... the sooner you do that, the sooner you can get to the fun part."

"I'm a little busy protecting your mad ass, Frost. Can we save this psychoanalysis... rich coming from a head case like you... for later?" Ashino retorted, trying to focus on the fight at hand... his opponent was likely Athrun Zala and that was a fight Ashino had to take seriously. Frost chuckled.

"Of course..." he dragged the word out several syllabels. "By all means, fight them off. Just remember... Markov... it doesn't matter if you win on the battlefield if your heart is at war with your mind."

Who am I fighting? It's not Frost... he's in the green and red one that is unaccountably hanging back. Athrun thought as he sent a command to his flyer packs, engaging their wingsabers, pulling out and activating his double bladed beam saber as he did so... it was time to take this fight up close and personal. This guy is cautious... he's not just spraying fire all over the place. He's got a plan of some sort, though what I still don't know. Figures. This must be Ashino. "I thought I told you I never wanted to see you again." Athrun tightbeamed to the white mobile suit with the black head.

"Athrun Zala... I thought so. I think I remember telling you... you can always hope, but hope is usually in vain." Ashino replied with a tight smile. "Care for another one on one? Maybe this time, Cagalli will stay out of it and we can really see who is better." Ashino found himself smiling... there was no more worthy foe on the battlefield than Athrun Zala, in his opinion.

"I don't think so... we just came for Ysak. Then we'll leave you alone... contrary to my wishes as that may be." Athrun replied, firing several times with his railgun, aiming high and slightly behind Ashino, trying to force him forward. Ashino was having none of it though, he lept back and let the railgun rounds bounce off his own phase shift armor, retaliating with several short bursts from his gatling cannon. Athrun was forced to dodge the shots... though unable to penetrate his armor, the sheer force would destabilize his flight and disrupt his attack... not something he could afford right now.

"It was foolish of him to come here alone. Why did you allow him to do such a thing?" Ashino asked, throwing the Bane into a headlong dive and shoulder roll to avoid the twin flyer packs as they came corkscrewing through his old position, red beam blades fiery on their wingtips. If he hadn't moved, they probably would have cut him in half at the knees and waist. Rolling to one knee, Ashino opened fire with his six shoulder mounted beam cannons... he didn't expect to hit Athrun, he just needed to keep him clear long enough for Ashino to recover his balance.

"With Ysak its not always an allow sort of thing." Athrun replied, using his shield to take two blasts and twisting his shoulders to skate between the others. "You know how it is, I'm sure... why do your superiors let Cray and Frost do such things?"

"Because... like me, they hate Coordinators." Ashino answered, triggering a long burst from his cannon, walking the shells towards, into and past Athrun's position. "And Coordinator sympathizers." Ashino fired his leg mounted missiles... not at Athrun, but targeting the ground at Athrun's feet. Panama Base was more underground than aboveground... there were tunnels and rooms everywhere under the surface base. One such tunnel was directly underneath Athrun's current position... just one of many mass conveyance train tunnels, but it served Ashino's purposes well enough... it was wide, more than ten meters deep and most importantly, close to the surface.

"That's not what Lacus and Caga..." Athrun started to say, when the ground beneath the Righteous's feet suddenly gave way with a tearing crumble and he dropped legs first into some sort of cavity in the earth. Athrun cursed his negilgence... of course there were tunnels all over the base... using them as pit traps was an obvious strategy. He'd been forced on the defensive... the fall had done no damage, but he was buried to mid calf in rubble and now Ashino had the advantage of higher ground.

"Miss Lacus is a special case amongst us BCPU's. For one, Frost has dibs on her... that pretty much means hands off. For two, she's under my protection as well... no one has yet understood me better than her... and I cannot let a resource like that come to harm." Ashino hit his thrusters as he spoke, soaring up to give himself a good firing angle down into the train tunnel. "And though I may have saved your fiancee from being raped, if you for one instant think I will hesitate to kill her now, today... you are sadly mistaken." Ashino hit all of his triggers again, filling the hole with high explosives and heat death.

"Kira... you don't really need my help here, do you?" Cagalli asked, fretful eyes watching Athrun pursue the white and black mobile suit down on the ground below. She turned back every few seconds to see if she could make an effort at keeping the incoming Strike Daggers, Strike Crusaders and assorted jets and tanks at bay, but every time she drew a bead on something, Kira always managed to shoot it first. Without killing it. It's pointless for me to be up here... I could be of much more use down there...

"Athrun doesn't particularly need your help either." Kira commented. "If you want to go help Dearka and Miriallia, that would be a good idea. But really... you have to let Athrun take care of his own fight. He can do it... he's just as good as me."

Try telling Lacus not to worry about you. See how that works. Cagalli thought sourly. "That's why I'm worried, Kira. You and Athrun are damned good... but you're not invincible. You can accept help, you know. I'm not deluding myself... theres no way I could take down one of those three guys... but I could make it easier for Athrun to do so. And then he would be free to help Dearka and Miriallia against the big one. And it's not like you need to keep me up here to protect me, little brother. I did just fine on the Kusanagi all those months without you."

"Frost is down there. He's not engaged, why I don't know, but he's down there." Kira replied, blowing the heads off another three Strike Daggers as he spoke. He heard Cagalli's sharp intake of breath and winced... he hadn't wanted to play that card, but he really didn't want his sister down in that ruckus... those weren't Naturals down there... them he would have been fine with. But for all her fire and determination and experience... Cagalli just did not have the skills to survive long against the BCPU's. Hell, Kira wasn't sure he and Athrun had the skills to survive long against all three BCPU's together.

"I'm not scared of Frost." Cagalli said with a loud gulp.

"That's funny... cause I am." Kira replied instantly, CIWS shots neatly holing the engine cowlings of a flight of four attack fighters as they screamed past. The pilots all ejected, to begin the long float to the ground on their white parachute equipped seats. "Listen... you want to go down there, I won't stop you. You're a big girl and a national leader, you can make your own choices. I personally advise you not to go... it's much safer up here with me and you'll be able to do a lot more good, since no matter what you think, you will be dividing Athrun's attention down there. If you think the aid you can give him outweighs that disadvantage... and it very well may, since I haven't seen you fight in a mobile suit for a long while now... by all means, help Athrun out. But if it doesn't... either help Dearka or get your ass back up here to me. Understand?"

"You have no right to take such an imperious tone with me, Kira Yamato. I don't need a lecture from you on how to help Athrun. Your concern is appreciated... but I'm going, since it is undeniable that you have the enemy reinforcements well contained." Cagalli told him. There... I won that one.

"Good luck and be safe then." Kira replied, infuriatingly calm. He paused just long enough for her to start her descent. "Little sister."

If we weren't in the middle of an important battle... Cagalli forced herself to focus as she descended to the ground. She'd lost track of Athrun during the heated conversation with Kira... but she spotted the white mobile suit with the black head about a hundred and fifty meters to her left, just starting a jet assisted jump into the air, all weapons oriented downwards into some sort of large hole in the ground. She may not have been a Coordinator, but she wasn't a fool either... the BCPU wouldn't be shooting into a hole unless there was a target in it, and she knew just which target that was likely to be. Oh, no you don't. Nobody is going to hurt Athrun... not while I'm around. Still, her reactions were just a few hairs slower than that of the enemy, and he fired first, stitching green beam blasts and dozens of high explosive shells as well as two flights of missiles down into the hole, which vomited fire and smoke like a small volcano. "ATHRUN!" Cagalli cried as her ion cannon shot ripped into the left shoulder of the Bane, blasting away two of the three beam cannons there and pushing the machine into an ungainly aerial stumble. Cagalli maintained her target lock, taking two steps forward and then firing her shoulder mounted missile packs at the just recovering Bane, which seemed quite shocked at the sudden attack from the side. The enemy used his CIWS to some effect, but was plainly still off balance because more than half the missiles got through and impacted, batting the big machine out of the air like a softball and sending it skidding painfully across the ground to bury its head and shoulders in a building, which promptly collapsed around the point of impact.

"You don't have to yell." Athrun chided her slightly as the Righteous rose on steady jets of blue flame from the hole. The shield was battered and scorched from taking five beams at once and there was a burn scar on the right hip from the sixth beam, but Athrun had weathered the well timed attack with only a few bruises caused by being bounced around by the explosions. "Thanks for the assist though. Kinda surprised that Kira let you down here, but who am I to argue with help like what you just gave me?"

"Kira's not the boss of me. Besides, its not like he needs any help and you do."

"Oh, thats good for my ego right there, thanks." Athrun smiled. "But seriously... be careful. The pilot of that machine is Ashino. He is not like the others, he fights with a plan, you'll have to be constantly alert, I won't be able to watch over you very much."

"God damn it, I can watch myself. I'm seventeen, so back off, you do your stuff and I'll take care of mine, okay? I'm sick of getting protected. I want to do some protecting too, you know!?"

"You got it... WATCH OUT!" Athrun started to say, before suddenly throwing the Righteous across the gap between them to take the two flights of missiles launched from the Bane's leg tubes on his shield. While they'd been talking the Bane had slowly been gathering itself, suddenly rolling to a sitting position and opening fire without even bothering to stand. The missiles probably wouldn't have seriously harmed the Strike Rubicon... but knowing that and just letting them hit anyway... no, not possible for Athrun.

"I'm not sure if I should be mad at you for just totally turning my argument on its head, or thanking you for the save." Cagalli said in a small voice. "He doesn't mess around, does he... that speed..."

"Don't have time to talk, sorry love." Athrun managed, as he rocketed towards the now standing Bane, flyer packs circling around to come in from the back. Ashino seemed to have had enough of ranged gambits... he dropped the gatling cannon and ripped out one of those strange, more slabbish shaped beam swords which glowed with green fire and charged Athrun back. Cagalli was just maneuvering to the left to see if she could line up some sort of shot when she noticed something that set her heart bouncing up into her throat. A too familiar green and red mobile suit had just stepped around a corner, half facing away from her, one hand out on a building wall as if to steady itself. Frost...

About two hundred meters away to the north and east, Dearka and Miriallia had managed, through an extreme amount of hard work on both their parts, to maneuver themselves to a position where they were standing over the downed Duelist. The Merciless stood about knee deep in the rubble of a building it had landed on about seventy meters away. They had accomplished their first goal... they had reached Ysak. The problem was, now they were pinned down and unable to move away from the downed mobile suit. If they moved to another position or tried to dodge, any shell or beam that passed them by would stand too great a chance of striking the disabled Duelist and while they did not know if Ysak was dead or alive, if the Duelist blew up, that would be a major mark in the dead column, which was not something Dearka was going to accept. The pilot of the giant enemy machine seemed to have realized their reluctance to leave their hard won position... but had yet to take advantage of it to the degree Dearka had been fearing... the Grand Buster had thick armor, but nothing like it would need to stop the blasts from the twin hyper impulse cannons, Dearka wasn't even sure if there was armor that could stop those. But the enemy hadn't deigned to use that weapon... it was just using its shoulder mounts and anti armor shotgun and missiles.

Cray was smiling... so, they were here to rescue the one known as Ysak. How nice. How utterly foolish. They thought they had been the ones forcing him away from their dead friend. But that was just him letting them see what they wanted to see. In reality, he had them right where he wanted them... all he had to do was use the hyper impulse cannon and they were done. But that wouldn't be any fun... it would be over far too quickly. Cray knew he was sacrificing tactical advantage for his own pleasures, but he'd never been able to stop himself. His smile grew wider as he opened a comm channel. "This is Cray, in the Merciless. Talking to the green and tan mobile suit who thinks they've accomplished something."

"Did you kill Ysak?" Dearka's hard edged voice replied almost at once. Cray smirked... so that was who it was. He didn't know this one well, but he did know he was one of the ones whos girl was promised to Cray.

"I certainly did my best. But no, Frost killed him. Do you see any knives on the Merciless? No... no knives here." Cray chuckled as a sudden idea blossomed in his mind. That would be fun... "Of course, we don't know if he is actually dead... we were about to make sure when you showed up. But tell you what... I'm not an unreasonable man... lets make a deal, eh?"

"What sort of deal?" Dearka asked, suspicious... what was that monster planning?

"You may not believe me... but I am an honorable man, when I choose to be. This is the deal. I'll give you one attack. If, during that attack you can knock me from my feet... you can go and take your friend with you. I won't stop you... I'll go fight elsewhere. How does that sound?"

"Too good to be true." Dearka replied at once.

"Oh, you haven't heard my terms though." Cray sniggered. "If you cannot... well... well... you still get to take your friend away. But you'll be leaving Miriallia here with me. Doesn't that sound like a fun game?"

"Yeah fucking right. No deal." Dearka snarled. Miriallia held up a hand to stop him. She made sure to turn off the comm system this time. "Mir... I can't do that. Not even for Ysak. Not even for anyone."

"I'm not asking you to do it... I'm asking you to agree." Miriallia replied. "I don't think Cray will keep his word either... if nothing else it will give us one free attack on him... his arrogance is staggering but we can take advantage of that. He has us cold, Dearka. He can kill us any time he wants to... and we cannot stop him. Why he is offering us this chance is beyond me... but he is insane, remember. Of the three of them, I'm actually scared of him the least. I understand his motivations... he wants to have sex with me, and then kill me. And while that is utterly gross and abhorrent to me, thats nothing compared to Frost or the confusion I have about Ashino. If all we have to do is promise to fufill his desires in order to allow ourselves a chance, we should do it. It's not like we'd ever actually do it... you couldn't get me out of this cockpit with plastic explosives, not with him out there."

"You make sense. Still, it turns my stomach, even if we are lying." Dearka shut up when Miriallia shushed him.

"You still there, Cray? This is Miriallia Haw. We agree to your terms. We don't know why you offered them, but we agree."

"Well..." Cray was taken aback... it had been more a taunt than anything he really expected to work. But hey, if they were stupid enough to trust him, he'd get to shoot them down and have his little game too. The game was rigged in his favor anyway, with the Citadel array he could take any strike they could dish out without even feeling it. He strode out of the building, letting the masonary tumble away from him like a child walking through a sand castle. "I agree too then. I look forward to entertaining you, Miriallia."

"I doubt anything you could do would entertain me." Miriallia retorted. Just because it was her idea didn't mean she had to like it.

"I don't usually get complaints." Cray responded... course that was usually because the girl in question was comatose or catatonic afterwards, but why spoil the surprise? "I'm ready whenever you are."

"This is going to take some very precise timing." Dearka said, after Miriallia cut off comms again. "From what Waltfeld's sources in ZAFT say about this thing, it has a lightwave barrier it can project around itself... kind of like a much smaller version of the Umbrella of Artemis. It's proof against both beams and munitions... while its up it would take a strategic nuke to damage him. Of course he probably can't see in or out while its up either. He'll probably activate it just as we fire, but I'm betting it can't be activated consecutively. This is not going to be good for the machine, we'll fire the anti armor shotgun and the rest of the normal weapons when he puts up the barrier, but after those are negated, while he's taunting us and dropping his shield, we'll be loading and firing the Earthshaker. We won't have time to put down the stabilizers, which would give the game away anyway. Sound good?"

"I'll do what I can to distract him over the radio too. If we don't make this work... I love you very much, Dearka."

"We'll make it through this... and right back at ya, Mir." Dearka said with a sincere smile. He hit the transmit button. "Here you go, Cray... eat this!" and fired all of his weapons. As predicted a shimmering blue-aqua barrier of crosshatched light beams appeared around the Merciless, effortlessly deflecting all incoming attacks. "Damn, thats a nice shield." Dearka commented to himself. He dropped his anti armor shotgun and hyper impulse cannon, using one hand to sling the Earthshaker up and around into firing position while the other snatched a shell out of the ammo hopper and slammed it home into the open breech. The lightwave barrier dissipated over the course of the next two or three seconds... like he'd hoped it was not a fast reuse type thing. The Merciless held out a hand, stepping closer to the Grand Buster, unheeding of the Earthshaker cannon, which Dearka carefully kept pointed down in a nonthreatening manner, like he'd already fired it or something.

"I'll take my reward now, if you please." Cray said, the smile on his face almost glaring in his tone. "Just step into my hand, Miriallia and I'll soon show you things you never even dreamt could exist." his grin stretched... how utterly foolish of them. Almost too foolish, now that he thought about it. He forced himself to remember that this was a coordinator he was up against here... and a red elite at that. And while Cray loathed Coordinators, he had never been trained to underestimate them. Outperform them, yes, but not underestimate. His smile was starting to hurt now, it was so wide. So... they thought they could trick him... didn't they. He scanned the gargantuan caliber cannon that the enemy mobie suit was holding slackly in its arms. Thermal images came up cold as ambient. Of course... how simplistic... they hadn't fired everything they had, because they had realized that the Citadel array took some time to cycle between off and on. They were planning to use the big gun on him... it was obviously still loaded, as the gun would have been hot had they fired it recently.

"H-hold on. Just a moment." Miriallia replied, forcing what she hoped sounded like a fearful hitch into her voice. "I-I... just need... need to say... goodbye."

"You can say goodbye from over here... we have radios for that." Cray retorted, casually selecting the Grand Buster and Duelist with his tertiary targeting icons, the ones that controlled the missile launchers in the Merciless's legs. At this range there would be no time for anyone to react to the missiles... not even Frost could dodge them all from less than twenty meters away. He ws careful to disable his targeting locks... no sense in warning the enemy by locking on and from this close he hardly needed to guide the missiles.

"It's... it's not that sort of goodbye." Miriallia said in a tearful whisper. Those few acting classes and drama club during high school finally came in handy after all. Cray lost some of his smile.

"Hey now... don't go wasting yourself on the Coordinator anymore. You've got better people to be reserving yourself for. Besides... its not like theres much chance of it going anywhere with him... don't you know that like half of all 2nd generation Coordinators are neuters?" Cray told her, his voice growing cold and sharp. Dearka snarled silently... half was a major exaggeration, but there was always that chance, that he was in fact sterile. It wasn't something he liked to think about, not since he'd brought it up back in Switzerland, but it was always there, lurking in his mind. His hands trembled on his controls... it was almost time.

"With Dearka it is never a waste." Miriallia replied with mixed anger and pride. "All right... I'm coming over. You're letting Dearka and Ysak go, remember."

"Oh, don't worry about it. I'll let them go away. Far, far away." Cray said almost cordially. How far is hell anyway...? He tightened his fingers on the tertiary triggers. Instead of the cockpit door opening up, the Grand Buster's arms came up, the gun swinging up to point directly at the Merciless's chest from just a little less than twenty meters away. Cray found himself staring into a barrel that looked wide as a cave... he resolved to salvage the weapon from the enemy after he destroyed them and have one made for the Merciless. It looked absolutely wonderful. "You must think I'm some kind of crazy idiot..." Cray whispered, hitting his triggers. One hundred sixty missiles came corckscrewing out of their launch tubes along the Merciless's legs, the combined backthrust actually causing the monstrous machine to tremble slightly. The missiles reached cruising speed within a quarter second and impacted their targets less than a half second later... still a full two tenths of a second faster than Dearka could hit the Earthshaker trigger. For Cray it looked like the green and tan mobile suit was bodily picked up by the explosive rain and hurled backwards like a man might toss a doll, while the disabled Duelist was bounced up and down like it was trapped between two trampolines, piecies of combat knife and internal components spalling off like flakes of dried blood. For Ysak, still pinned to his cockpit seat by the knife tip, it was more than just slightly uncomfortable. His screens were all off line because of battle damage and while his armor and some internal systems were still operational, along with his reactor, most everything else was done. Communications... targeting... cameras... cockpit controls... even the ejection system was off line. He had heard the battle raging over and around him... plainly some form of help had shown up and driven the BCPU's away from him... he could tell that because he was still alive. But what sort of help he had no idea... could the others have followed him? But that was crazy... only slightly less crazy than him attempting to attack the entire base all by himself. Because his screens and sensors were offline, he had no way of knowning when the missiles were coming, much less any way of bracing himself. The knife tip ground against the garrotte handles, pushing them so hard into his chest that it drew blood. He heard his top two ribs crack under the repeated bounces and his head was ringing so hard he could barely think or see.

For Dearka and Miriallia, it was not unlike getting hit by a speeding truck. One moment they were sitting upright in their cockpit seats, both praying that their desperate gamble would pay off... the next Miriallia had seen the missiles leave their tubes in blooms of fire and exhaust and before she could even open her mouth to say something to Dearka, who had just finished bringing the Earthshaker to bear and was about to pull the trigger, the eighty missiles fired at the Grand Buster seemed to impact as one. Dearka's hands flew off of his controls as he was whiplashed backwards by the missile impact and then his arms cracked painfully down onto the control surfaces when the Grand Buster came down on its back with all the grace of a dropped mountain. His helmeted head slammed back into the padded headrest hard enough to stun him and it felt like his seat straps had cut bloody weals across his chest, which had gone entirely numb. For a moment he could do nothing but stare at the sky through the camera screen, his mind blank as it struggled to recover from being shaken around so violently. He groaned and tased blood in his mouth from where he'd bitten his tongue and lip during the whiplash. His neck was already starting to hurt and he was sure it was nothing compared to the soreness he'd feel later. If there was a later. He craned himself forward. "Miriallia?"

There was no response. He forced himself to lean even more forward, so that he could see down into the copilot's seat in front of him. Miriallia had weathered the impact even less well than he had. Upon initial impact she had been slammed almost straight backward into her seat, throwing her arms out to the sides. She'd rebounded in midair before they hit the ground and had been whipcracked both sideways and down so that her own head and impacted twice, once upon the radar screens to her side and then again, harder, on her own head rest. The second blow had been inconsequential... the first had torn her helmet off her head and knocked out like a light thrown against a wall. The edge of her helmet had laid open her forehead and scalp as it was torn off and a steady trickle of blood soaked her hair and flowed down her face onto her flight suit. Dearka's eyes widened... she was breathing shallowly and with a slight hitch... she might have some form of internal injury from force compression. That was not good at all... they were hundreds of miles from the nearest friendly medical facility. And in the middle of combat. This second fact was quite undeniably demonstarted to Dearka when the Merciless hove into view, straddling the downed Grand Buster, the twin barrels of the hyper impusle cannons like twin hellish mouths pointed right at his face.

"See... now that was stupid of you." Cray admonished. He was sad that it had to be this way... he could have used a girl right about now. But he'd had enough playing around. And there was always whatshername... Ashino's girlfriend. He hit the hyper impulse triggers... just as three sniper cannon blasts from the circling Liberty impacted his back and side... blowing off one of the two right shoulder gatling cannons and wrecking the launch mechanisms for the tactical nuclear cruise missiles. The impact and subsequent detonation of the gatling cannon ammo pushed his aim up and to the side, so that the beams just melted right through the left shoulder of the Grand Buster and dug a seventy meter long and ten meter deep trench through the ground... instead of blowing the tan and green machine into slaggy scraps. Kira had no more aid to give though, as he was being hard pushed to delay the oncoming enemy reinforcements... he may have been Kira Yamato, but there were scores of mobile suits and jets incoming, along with entire companies of ground armor on the way... there was only so much he could do. Dearka needed no further pushing... he recognized a last chance when he was given one. The yellow seed dropped and burst in his mind, sending tingling bursts of energy along every nerve in his body, like they'd all been dipped in concentrated lemon juice. He clearly saw the blood welling from the four inch cut along Miriallia's scalp and he used the rage that built up inside him as a result to further fire up his reactions. He had to do this right the first time, because Cray was already recovering, three remaining gatling cannon aiming up at Kira, firing as they were brought to bear along with the anti armor shotgun, while the hyper impulse cannons were already recharging as they swung back to cover the Grand Buster.

The Earthshaker had bounced free of the Grand Buster's grip during the fall, but had landed almost right next to it, it being too massive to fly far. Dearka snatched at it and swung it up and around, simultaneously kicking downward with both legs, using the Merciless's enormous feet as a wall to push off from, sending the Grand Buster screeching along the ground like a massive plow, scooting nearly ten meters on its back before friction caught up to it and stopped them. It was hardly an optimal firing position, but it was the best and last chance he'd ever have for ending this fight. Dearka centered the Earthshaker on the Merciless's upper chest and head, holding the massive weapon as steady as a man might hold a short stick, even without the aid of the stabilizers and computer programs. "..." he opened his mouth but no inspiring words came out. What was there to say, anyway? He hit the trigger. It felt like getting hit with the missiles again. But twice as bad. Without the aid of the stabilzers and any sort of recoil space, there was nowhere for the gargantuan backwards force of the Earthshaker recoil to bleed off in. The artillery cannon hammered backwards like a great piston and crushed the Grand Buster's upper right arm and shoulder as flat as a pancake, amputating the limb, before pounding out a crater five meters deep and ten across in the hard packed earth, leaving the cannon pointing upwards at an angle like a leaning obelisk for a few seconds before gravity reasserted its hold and brought it crashing to the ground with a sound like a building toppling. The force of the impact from the Earthshaker recoiling into the ground rolled the Grand Buster almost fifty feet sideways, ending up on its face, covered with nearly a foot of dirt and dust. Shaken around like a pebble in a can, Dearka never got to see the result of his shot.

Kira had a birds eye view of the whole scene though, involved as he was in evading the Merciless's fire and the incoming fire from the regular military. His surprise attack had bought Dearka and Miriallia perhaps two seconds of time... less than he wanted but all that he could do. By his rough estimate he'd already disabled more than thirty mobile suits and twice that many armored vehicles and jets... but that was about a fourth of the forces he was currently facing, and more were scrambling all the time. The truth of the Earth Forces advantage of numerical superiorty was really being driven home... here they had just lost so many troops at Carpentaria and there were still so many left to engage him. He'd been watching Dearka and Miriallia ever since he'd blasted Cray and he saw what unfolded as clearly as anyone did that day. The Grand Buster drove both of its feet downwards into the Merciless's ankles, causing the giant war machine to totter back off balance while the Grand Buster slid away on its back, pushing up a huge mound of dirt and debris as it plowed across the soft ground and asphalt roads. In mid slide, the Grand Buster had snatched up its artillery cannon and had brought it to bear on the Merciless, which was just adjusting its weapons to aim at the Grand Buster's new location. This time Dearka got the drop on Cray and fired first.

And what fire it was. The muzzle flash from the Earthshaker lit up the day like a new sun, a flare of light so bright it was visible from all corners of the base and even perceptible to the naval picket ships thirty miles out to sea. The report of the weapon going off made it live up to it's name, blowing out every window in a one kilometer radius, blowing leaves off of trees for a similar distance and raising a cloud of dust and grit from the ground in a circle nearly one hundred meters across. Coming almost simultaneously with the report and muzzle flash came the far greater explosion of the Earthshaker shell as it struck its target. Now, the Merciless was protected by not just one layer of phase shift armor, but three different layers, laid in a crosshatching pattern for reinforced strength. Phase shift armor in general made explosive based weapons almost entirely useless... three layers made the Merciless the closest thing to immune that had ever been seen. But the designers of Phase Shift had never factored in a direct hit from a two hundred centimeter artillery cannon... such a weapon would only be found on massive capital ships anyway and would never be fired at a mobile suit in all probability. The explosion from the Earthshaker shell completely vaporized the top layer of PS armor across ninety percent of the Merciless's body area. Pieces of shell casing were heated to near plasmatic temperatures and while no larger than a human fingernail, they penetrated the Merciless like a hail of stars. The force of the shell impact lifted the three hundred ton war machine nearly ten meters into the air and threw it more than forty meters through the air before it touched down again, flipping completely over to land on its face. A tide of fire and white hot shrapnel followed the expanding blast wave, ripping the ground into a holocaust of fire and smoke and impact craters in a ten meter radius around the point of impact, while the blast wave smashed into several buildings and caused them to partially collapse.

Ysak, in the Duelist, had just finished recovering from the missile impacts when a sound like the entire world beign smashed into pieces came from seemingly right above him. It was the loudest thing he had ever expereinced... so loud he could only feel it, not hear it. His helmet faceplate cracked in several places, while his control screens blew out in flurries of glass particles... he was unable to contain a shriek of panic and brought his hands up to cover his face... he knew well what could happen to someone when the screens blew up. But Erica Simmons had planned for that and the covers on the screens of her mobile suits were made from glass that did not shatter but instead broke down into a bead like form when exposed to extreme force. The rain of glass particles bounced off his hands and shoulders like snowflakes before tinkling down into the various crevices in the cockpit area. It wasn't until he looked at his hands and realized he could see them that Ysak realized that the force of the explosion had ripped the knife right out of the wound it had torn into his cockpit, leaving an enormous gash that light was spilling in from. Slowly, cautiously, feeling his way like a feeble old man, Ysak brought the nearly disabled Duelist back to its feet, peeking out from his cracked faceplate through the gash in the cockpit wall, since all of his instruments were dead. He couldn't see much of anything besides a dust cloud that was billowing all around him like he was back in the pestilential desert sandstorms.

Cray was down and out. The Merciless was still intact... in body anyway. All the exterior weapon and sensor mounts had been scoured off by the fiery blast wave or riddled by the shrapnel that had followed. He basically had no armor left on the front half of the Merciless and had lost a good portion of the back armor as well. The internal systems of the Merciless looked like the pieces to a jigsaw puzzle that had been re-arranged by a blind man... almost everything was in a slightly different position than it was supposed to be in, which had caused massive system failures and the emergency shutdown of both power reactors. The pilot noticed none of this, being blasted nearly comatose by the force of impact, he was still twitching slightly, fingers pulling the triggers of the controls he'd ripped off of the control panel when he was hit, unable to relinquish his grip fast enough. Dearka was also stunned almost into unconsciousness... but the glowing seed sparkles in his mind pulled at him, reminding him that he had still a greater purpose to fufill. He'd done the easy part... now he still had to rescue Ysak. And there was Miriallia to think of... he needed to get her to a doctor ASAP. He groaned and gritted his teeth and slowly brought the Grand Buster into a sitting position, trying to sort through the dust cloud. Had he done it? And at what cost... the Grand Buster was missing an arm and he was intentionally avoiding looking at the damage report screens... he didn't need that sort of shit right now. A shape started to materialize out of the dust cloud... a mobile suit. There's no way that can be Cray. No one could have gotten back up from a direct hit like that so fast. No one... Dearka told himself... but he still found himself bracketing the shape with his remaining weapons... he could not afford complacency now, when he was so close to victory.

Cagalli could not take her eyes off of the green and red mobile suit that had just entered the battle between her, Athrun and Ashino. Despite her strong and proud words to Kira earlier, she found herself frozen, trembling with anxiety as she faced the new foe, who neither Athrun nor Ashino seemed to have yet noticed. Perhaps for good reason, as both were well engaged in a stamping, circling dance of flashing beam swords as they fought and pushed for the slight edge that meant everything in such close range fights. Athrun's wing flyers were orbiting around the two mobile suits, wingsabers glowing as they waited for an opening to dart in on. But after nerly three seconds, seconds in which Frost did nothing but stand there and watch the battle between Ashino and Athrun, Cagalli found her courage reasserting itself. Maybe he hadn't noticed her yet... maybe there was something wrong with him. She considered that and smiled slightly... well, something wrong with him besides the usual stuff, anyway. In any case, she couldn't very well shoot at Ashino now that Athrun was in a sword fight with him. She oriented on the Fury and started firing, even before she got a target lock. Knowing this opponent, a target lock was almost useless anyway. Well... most of the time anyway. Right now Frost seemed to be having real trouble evading her fire. She wasn't hitting him, but she was getting very close, blowing holes in the building where he'd rested his hand, sending the Fury reeling backwards, feet moving furiously to retain its balance. Cagalli brought up her other arm and opened up with the twin beam gatlings as well, sending scores of twisting green energy darts at the Fury, burning craters into the streets and buildings all around it. She fired her shoulder missile launchers as well and was shocked to the bone when five of them actually hit the Fury, sending it staggering back and to the side like a drunken brawler.

Frost gnashed his teeth in frustration as he did what his overwrought nervous system would allow him to do to mitigate the damage from the incoming fire. He supposed it was almost funny... here he was, easily the most deadly person alive on the planet, and he was getting his ass handed to him by a girl who was less than a babe compared to him in almost any way. If it wasn't for his damned pride in using the Web, he'd have already put an end to her and her damned boyfriend as well, who was doing a bang up job of keeping Ashino busy. Frost contemplated calling for Ashino's aid, but the mere thought left an ashy taste in his mouth that he found quite disgusting, plus he doubted the BCPU 4 would be able to break away for a while yet... Zala was all over him right now. He could feel himself getting faster and more in control with each passing second... but it was still at least a minute or two before he would be back to anything approaching normal. He activated the beam deflecting pods while they were still attached to the Fury's chest and back, creating a torso shield that deflected the greater majority of the incoming beam and ion blasts. he tried to fire back, but his hands kept twitching and jerking, sending his return fire pitifully wide and short.

Cagalli didn't know what was up with Frost, but she was determined to make up now for all the terror and pain he'd caused her and her friends over the course of the last eight months or so. The memory of him holding the scapel to her neck down in the Doc's lab was blazing like fire in her mind... she'd always hated being unable to control what happened to her and that had been the worst... knowing she was powerless to save herself. If Athrun hadn't been as amazing as he always was, she would have died then. And she hadn't been able to do a thing to stop it. The shame was almost unbearable. Noticing that her beam and ion blasts were being deflected, Cagalli brought those weapons down and took out the beam lance. She wasn't well practiced with the weapon, but she knew the basics well enough. Unlike a sword, which was mainly used for slashing, the beam lance was best used as a thrusting weapon, though you could slice with it if you were good and knew what you were doing. Cagalli eschewed that tactic though, hitting her thrusters and charging forward, lance extended, aiming directly for the middle of the Fury. Frost managed to fall backwards at the last second, so that the strike only grazed him, but enough force was imparted by the charge to knock the off balance Fury from it's feet. Cagalli found herself overwhelmed by her fear, anger and surprise... so much so that she quite forgot any sort of rational approach to combat. Screaming incoherently, she slammed her beam lance down at the Fury repeatedly, hammering at it like she was choping at a extremely tough log.

Eric Kellson hadn't been able to do much of anything since he'd staggered back into the battle zone. All of the fights were taking place at such a speed and ferocity that he wasn't sure he could have kept up even if his Crusader was in pristine condition, much less the near wreck it was now. He'd watched Ysak in the Duelist fight off the three allied mobile suits and while Ysak had not made it look easy, he had done it, which was a feat Eric couldn't see many of his contemporaries being able to boast of, especially considering the skill and power of the three unknown allied mobile suits. Then he'd witnessed the unbelievable attack launched by the green and red mobile suit, with the cage of bouncing beam blasts. Private Eric thought the attack was a bit flashy for a soldier to use... it looked like something out of an action movie. But it had been undeniably effective, stripping freedom of movement from the Duelist and then climaxing in a whirl of motion so fast he couldn't track it, but which ended with the Duelist lying defeated on the ground with more than a couple of knives sticking out of it. And then four more unidentified mobile suits had dropped out of the sky and engaged the three unknown allies. Well, three of them had anyway,while the fourth seemed to be doing what Eric had previously thought impossible, tying up every last bit of the reinforcements singlehandedly while his friends fought on the ground below. Eric had noticed with a shiver that the mobile suit up in the sky was not only holding almost eighty mobile suits plus jets and armor at bay, but he was doing it without destroying a single one of them. He forced himself to concentrate on the here and now... the green and red allied mobile suit had just been floored by the pinkish red one with the beam lance and was getting the shit kicked out of it on the ground. The allied mobile suit with the black skull head was too busy trying to stay alive against the other unknown red suit to intervene. It was up to him.

Cagalli was so focused on killing Frost she did not deign to pay attention to her other screens. She was so close... a few more blows and she'd batter past that annoying shield and then it would be over. All those nightmares she had... all of the ones Lacus and Miriallia and Katie had... they'd all be gone, cleansed in the red fire of her beam lance as it boiled Frost into a mist of blood and body parts. hat was what she was thinking when Eric's Strie Crusader barreled into her from behind, knocking her so that she fell directly on top of the Fury. She was too close to use her beam lance and the rest of her weapons weren't aimed right. She screamed in frustration as she kicked her way off the Fury and tried to roll to her feet. She was so close... she couldn't let the monster get away now. She'd gotten to her knees before she was forced to make a desperate block with her shield to prevent Eric from splitting her in two with his beam sword. She swore in incredulity as she saw her new opponent... its shoulders were pretty much gone, it was leaking oil like a sieve and its armo was so battered it looked more like scrap metal than armor. The Strike Crusader kept hammering in at her, not letting her get her balance and not allowing her to get the room she needed to wield the beam lance properly. Despite its battered and beaten condition, Cagalli had to aceede that the pilot was quite skilled. Earlier in her career he would have been a serious problem. But now... after she'd spent months in combat alongside Athrun, Dearka and Miriallia... well, she wasn't just your average natural pilot either.

Sidestepping a downward cut from the Crusader, Cagalli brought the Rubicon down into a crouch, pivoting on her ankles the entire time so that by the time she was crouched her back was to the enemy. The moment she hit the full crouch she stood up again, angling her shield out so it was parallel to the ground. She completed her turn and brough the edge of her shield slamming up into the torso of the Strike Crusader, knocking it back a step and opening a new rent in the armor. She opened up with her head mounted 20mm CIWS guns, rattling dozens of shells off the front and sides of her enemy, until he brought up his shield and was forced to take yet another step back. Though nothing like a threat to the Strike Rubicon or even a Strike Crusader normally, Eric was well aware that his armor was more a name than an actuality and he couldn't afford to let any bullets get inside through the holes in his defenses... it would be unbearably embarrassing to be taken out by a CIWS. By the time he'd lowered his shield, the pink mobile suit had skipped backwards far enough to bring its own beam weapon into play and Eric found himself on the defensive, it taking all he had left in him to avoid the unending deluge of jabs and stabs from the beam lance. He'd once again picked a fight he was a little out of his league for. He had just parried a thrust that had nearly sneaked under his shield to take off a leg when alarms started blaring in his cockpit again. He jerked around, looking for where the attack was coming from. But it wasn't an attack. His lube oil had finally run out, and the battery leak had worsened... as he watched the last of his power reserves vanished, the LED screens turning off as the indicator reached zero. His entire mobile suit died around him, exhausted of power... he couldn't see his beam sword flicker and sputter then collapse inwards on itself, but he knew it was happening. He squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the blow that would finish him.

Athrun was frowning in concentration. Ashino knew his way around a sword fight quite well... better than Athrun had been expecting. In Athrun's experience, most mobile suit pilots focused primarily on using their ranged weapons, neglecting to spend much time at all practicing with the melee side of a mobile suit's arsenal. This was partly the fault of training... soldiers had not fought hand to hand in wars for centuries, except in the most exceptional of cases. But it also seemed to Athrun that many people just had a natural aversion to melee combat. It was more frightening than ranged combat, perhaps, since you could not deny that you were in the middle of a fight, rather than just playing some very real game. In any case, he usually found that he had a significant advantage against even skilled pilots as soon as he brought the fight to close quarters, where instinct and hair trigger reflexes decided things, not targeting systems or weapon firepower. Given the loadout of the enemy mobile suit, with its heavy gatling cannon, leg missile launchers and shoulder beam cannons, Athrun had thought that Ashino might be hurting a bit on the melee side of things. He had been wrong. Though his beam sword was shorter than Athrun's, more like a beam machete than a beam sword, Ashino was undeniably skilled in its use and apparently not at all afraid to get up close and personal, chopping and hacking away with the rectangular bladed weapon. Athrun had been puzzled as to why the weapon looked like it did initially, since beams had no weight, it wasn't to provide additional mass. He had found through experience that the beam blade of the Bane, though no heavier than a normal beam weapon, was more highly powered and more solid... for lack of a better phrase. Several times, Ashino's blade had bent Athrun's own and once it had nearly cut through it, disrupting the magnetic field that contained the plasma of the sword until Athrun had disengaged and dodged out of the clinch.

Athrun had noticed Frost's arrival onto the battlefield with a small corner of his mind, and he had also noticed Cagalli orienting to take care of the situation. Frankly he wouldn't have blamed her if she had just run away, she was no match for Frost and everyone knew it. But no, she had stayed with him and kept watching over his back. The small part of his mind that was paying attention to that sent a few waves of warm pleasure through his body... he truly was just about the luckiest man alive. He'd been shocked when she'd taken Frost down and was hammering at him while the BCPU just sort of writhed on the ground, unable to get away. Is it really Frost in there? There's no way the Frost I know would be taken down so easily by Cagalli. Hell, he fought both Kira and I to a standstill last time we tangled... and that was two on one. But she certainly seems to have the situation well in hand. Athrun turned his nearly full attention back to the fight on hand. He dipped his left shoulder and brought his shield in tight, using his legs to propel himself at Ashino, bringing the shield up and out to slam into Ashino's shield, locking it up and to the side, while Athrun rotated his sword hand one hundred eighty degrees and stabbed downwards with the right blade of his bouble bladed beam saber. He scored a slight hit, charring the armor into a fused scar along the right torso and leg of the Bane, but Ashino slid backwards and out of the weapon path before he could do more than surface damage.

Displeased with himself, Ashino chided himself into greater efforts. That was the third time Athrun had marked the Bane during this fight, and Ashino had only managed to hit his foe once, when he'd fallen down into the hole, and that damage was superficial in the extreme. Combat stiumlents were pumping through his blood and his emotional training was turning his vision red with bloodlust. Usually Ashino would choke back on those feelings... he liked to be in control of his actions, but perhaps right now that fine contol was not what he needed to win this fight. Truth be told, Ashino wasn't fully comfortable in this melee arena. He could fight in it just fine but it wasn't his mode of choice. He liked being at medium range, perhaps fifty to a hundred meters... close enough for pinpoint weapons fire, but far enough away that he could use his sharp mind and tactical sense to maneuver his foes as he saw fit. At distances of less than ten meters or so he felt slightly unclassed by Athrun, whos grasp of melee combat was quite beyond Ashino's... he'd only survived this long because of his enhancements, not because of any particular skill for swordfighting. He just wasn't creative enough to be a true swordfighter... Athrun had yet to come at him with the same attack twice, while Ashino's attacks had been limited to just a few different types of thrusts, slashes and short chops. Athrun also used his shield as much more of an offensive weapon than a defensive barrier, using it to slam and push and block Ashino's vision with regularity. Ashino smiled a thin smile... his own shieldwork was not nearly as impressive but perhaps it was time to set foot on a slightly different path. Out of sword range for a brief moment he dropped his own shield, freeing up his left hand. More accurately, freeing up the power leeching attachments in the fingers of that hand.

Athrun raised his eyebrows when he saw that Ashino had dropped his shield. What is that canny bastard up to? Why would he drop his shield... its been just about the only thing keeping him in the fight. There has to be a reason... a second weapon, perhaps? But why wouldn't he have been using that from the start? Athrun diverted his wing flyers into a slightly wider circle, noting that they would need to return to the Righteous to recharge within the next two minutes. In the meanwhile, he had them target Ashino with their dual 75mm autocannon. If he wants to rid himself of some protection, it would be rude of me to let him get away without rueing it. Shell explosions walked their way along the flanks and sides of the Bane, unable to penetrate the phase shift armor. But they don't have to... they just have to make him pay attention to them. Just a little. THERE! Athrun had noticed a slight shift in the Bane's stance, a centimeter lowering of its weapon hand as Ashino's attention slipped for a moment to track the wing flyers. He needed no further urging, blitzing forward with jets blazing, shield up and high, poised to come down to block or crush, while the beam sword was low and angled slightly to the side, lined up to bisect the Bane from left hip to right shoulder.

But Ashino's attention had not slipped because of the wing flyers, which he ignored much as a man ignores buzzing gnats, since their fire could not hurt him. No, he'd been allowing his rage to get the better of him just a little, to start acting more on instinct than logic. He saw the attack for what it was... if he blocked the sword he'd get the shield to the head, and the phase shift armored shield would almost certainly hit hard enough to do some sort of serious damage. And now that he no longer had his own shield, if he did not block the sword he'd get chopped in two. Or there was option three. Ashino countercharged, bringing himself in low as well to reduce the amount of room Athrun had to maneuver his sword in. He kept his sword low and inside of Athrun's and he engaged their swords, pushing th longer and slimmer blade safely out to the side. The shield started to come down and Ashino put the Bane into a slide tackle, legs entangling with the Righteous's and free hand flailing up to catch the shield hand by the elbow as the Righteous tripped forward and fell onto the Bane with a crash that caused several of Ashino's secondary screens to spark and short out. He brought his beam sword back around and tried to cut at Athrun, but the angle was bad and he couldn't get any force into the blow, the beam particles skittering shyly away from the golden glow which seemed to surround the Righteous. The power leecher was drawing thirty megawatts of power out of the Righteous... in about a minute he'd have enough charge to fire the Mjolnir cannon. That was too long. He dropepd his beam sword and wrapped his other arm around the Righteous, pinning its sword arm to its side as Athrun tried to rotate his wrist to bring the twin blades of the beamsaber to bear. He was now drawing sixty megawatts and had only to maintain his hold for thirty seconds.

Athrun swore mightily... he'd fallen into a well laid and executed trap, or so it appeared. He'd thought Ashino off guard and foolish for dropping his shield, but now he understood, since his reactor overpower alarms were wailing at him as the Bane leeched power directly from him into some extremely large capacitators. He'd heard Dearka and Ysak talk about this weapon... after stealing enough power the Bane would fire what amounted to a supercharged bolt of lightning from the projector on its chest, a short ranged attack with enough power to cut right through a hillside after two or three mobile suits. What he did not know was how long it took to charge and that was really what he needed to know. He struggled to break free of the grapple, but lacked the leverage in his current horizontal position, with one arm of the Bane wrapped around his torso, its legs tangled in his and its other arm holding his shield arm by the upper arm near the elbow. His mind raced, trying to figure some way out of this predicament. As was all too often the case for Athrun, being the self reliant and independent person he was, he completely neglected to think about his closest and most likely source of aid, who was paying more than a little bit of attention to the trouble her fiancee was in. Cagalli had been about to turn back to finish Frost after the Strike Crusader suddenly succumbed to its wounds and powered off, but then she'd noticed the exchange between Athrun and Ashino that had them grappling on the ground. It was really no choice at all... she could finish off Frost, who had just recently recovered his feet and was staggering away... or she could help Athrun, who for once looked to be in real trouble, unable to attack the mobile suit that had him in some sort of half bear hug.

"ATHRUN! Don't move!" Cagalli ordered over their private channel.

"Cag-Cagalli? Where did... nevermind, you were here all along, right?" Good situational awareness, dummy. You had backup in the area this whole time and you didn't even think to use it. Way to trust. Way to plan ahead. I thought I was past this sort of individualized thinking. "Did you get Frost?" Athrun asked, before noticing the Fury stumbling away down a street, heading for the building complex it had launched from, which was about an eighth of a mile away. His mind retracked itself. "What do you mean, don't move?"

"I mean DON'T MOVE! Not even a little bit." Cagalli said firmly, trying to hide her nervousness... she was confident in her accuracy and the worth of her targeting systems... but there was normal confident and confident that she could shoot into a grapple without hitting the person she loved most. She was the former, not the latter. Stowing her beam lance, she had taken out the ion cannon again and was circling around, trying to find the best position to take her shot from. It wasn't easy... the Righteous was slightly bigger than the Bane, and it had fallen on top of it in a way that covered most of the vital areas almost completely. She had something of a shot at the head and upper torso, but she didn't want to take that unless it was absolutely necessary, since if her aim was off even a little, she'd blow the same piece right out of the Righteous.

"Well, whatever you are doing, please hurry up. He's draining power from me and then he's probably going to shoot me with some sort of lightning bolt. You remember, he tried to do it to Ysak back in the desert. I think I might have a little more trouble dealing with it though, lacking the photon cloak as I do. I don't know when he'll have enough power to take the shot and I don't really want to find out." Athrun said, immediately doing his best to keep the Righteous as still as a statue.

"You seem calm. Calmer than I would be." Cagalli noted, frowning as she realized she could find no better shot. Grimacing, she brought up the ion cannon and did her best to target the face of the Bane, aiming right between the reddish camera eyes that glowed in the black skull like head.

"My life is in good hands. Shouldn't I be calm?" Athrun replied instantly, knowing that he could not let Cagalli begin to doubt herself. Though most people thought of her as a extremely fiery and independent person, he knew that she privately agonized over every major decision she made, unless you pissed her off or scared her, in which case she would go right off the cuff. She was still a seventeen year old girl, somewhere inside her, and she had some confidence problems when it came to pinch situations like this, because she feared the consequences of failure so much. "Just think of this like our little escapade on the rooftop in Pearl Harbor. I'm out of touch right now, Cagalli. It's up to you to jump."

"Right..." Cagalli took a deep breath and dared to close her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again she felt much better. Just like the roof. Come on, Cagalli... you made that jump look easy. Now you just have to do the same here. Just keep your hand steady... steady... target locked... steady... her finger pressed down lightly but firmly on the trigger, sending a lance of dark greenish ionized energy out of the barrel of the ion cannon. The ion particle beam arrowed past the Righteous's head and neck, missing by less than a quarter meter... close enough for the beam to be slightly disrupted by the Angel Halo as it passed. The slight disruption wasn't enough to affect the power of the beam, though it did throw the aim off a little. Instead of blowing the Bane's head off, the beam struck right at the junction of neck and shoulder, half severing the head and causing an explosion that all but shattered the left shoulder of the Bane. Ashino's Mjolnir capacitors had reached full charge just as the ion beam hit him, throwing his hands off the triggers and causing almost half of his status board to light up cherry red with warning lights. Vital systems, including his main computer and targeting systems, had been damaged by the hit. His moment of distraction cost him, as the Righteous finally managed to find a bit of levarage and it burst free from the embrace falling off the Bane and quickly rolling away. His rage flared like a ember igniting inside him, but Ashino forced it back down... he'd let himself go on instinct before and it had helped a little, but not enough that he felt the need to give in again. Right now it was time to retreat. Still lying down, Ashino hit his thrusters, sending the Bane careening along the ground, throwing up a huge rooster tail of debris and sparks until he finally managed to gain some altitude.

"I knew you could do it." Athrun said, masking a sigh of relief.

"Don't lie to me. I can tell. But thanks for trying." Cagalli retorted, wincing as sweat dripped off her forehead and into her eyes. She had just opened them again when a huge flash of light came from behind them, followed moments later by the sound of a hundred thunderbolts and a wall of wind so strong the Rubicon was rocked back and forth until she widened her stance. Athrun was almost thrown back to the ground from his knees when the blast struck, he caught himself on a building instead, putting his arm almost halfway through the evacuated structure. "What was..." Cagalli started to say, when an even huger blast of light and noise slammed into her and sent her stumbling backwards, arms up to block out the light. She found herself in the middle of a scream, which she did her best to cut back on, since her comm channel to Athrun was still open.

"Everyone is still alive." Kira's calm and determined voice suddenly said over the radio. "Dearka hit Cray with his artillery cannon, thats all. Ysak's alive, though he's barely standing. He and Dearka are retreating... Miriallia apparently took a knock during the fight and she might need medical attention." Kira tried to keep his voice neutral, but Cagalli knew he was seriously worried... anything that could hurt a pilot enough to require medical attention was probably pretty serious. And it wasn't like they were very close to help, either.

"With the Earthshaker. That's all? You make it sound like a spitwad." Athrun said dryly. "So... how many pieces is Cray in?"

"One as far as I can tell... but he's not moving either."

"Wow, they really build those Earth Forces mobile suits to last." Athrun said, amazed. "So, retreat is the order of the day?"

"We got what we came for." Kira acknowledged. "I don't see any reason to continue intruding on Panama."

"What about Frost and Ashino? We can't just leave them alone, can we? They're both here, vulnerable. We won't have a much better chance of finishing them off for a long time." Cagalli protested, sighting in on the two mobile suits that were standing inside the enwalled complex they had deployed from, probably right at the lip of the launch bay.

"The Grand Buster and the Duelist are in rough shape, I'm nearly overwhelmed up here, but if you think you can take care of them in the next minute or so, please do. Longer than that and you should just spend your time getting out of here." Kira replied.

"You sound like you want me to do my best to kill them?" Cagalli asked, bringing all of her weapons to bear. "Isn't that counter..."

"It would seem that way... but Lacus and I have agreed... the BCPU's are too dangerous to both us and the greater cause for peace. Lacus think's she can get through to Ashino, given time and the opportunity, but I have my doubts. Frost and Cray are beyond hope. The best thing we can do for them would be to end their pain as quickly as possible. If there was any other way..."

"You'd be using it, yeah."Athrun cut in, his wing flyers reattaching themselves to his back. He brought out his rifle and aimed his railguns. Cagalli and Athrun opened fire as one, slowly walking backwards towards the sea one pace at a time. At an eighth of a mile and opening, their shots were not the most accurate, but Ashino and Frost were not the most agile targets either, since Frost was still recovering and most of Ashino's control systems were malfunctioning because of battle damage. The fateful shots actually came from Cagalli.

Jean had been left in a room on the third floor of one of the adminstrative buildings by Asmodeus. The room was usually used for storage of some sort, as evidenced by the few boxes and packing detrius scattered over the floor. It had three windows, all unopenable and facing towards the inner courtyard of the complex, which had levered out of the way to allow the mobile suits to launch, and a single door allowed people into and out of the room. This door was locked and it had remained locked and shut despite Jean's best efforts to first pick the lock using the credit card trick and then kick it down. She'd been in there for only a few minutes, but it felt like an eternity, especially given Ash's last warning to her. She didn't quite know what to think, but she did know that she was scared of the plain looking man with the icy blue eyes who had walked her up here without a word and then locked her in without a single look back. She kicked the door another time, but it refused to give way. Frustrated she went over to the windows and looked outside. She hoped Eric was okay. Ash had promised to look after him, and she believed Ash meant what he said, but in battle there were so many things that could go wrong. She watched as the short green and red mobile suit came limping up to stand near the hanger bay lip. She thought it odd that it was limping, as there was no battle damage she could see. Less than a minute later Ash appeared, jetting down from the sky for a very rough landing next to his comrade. He was battle damaged... the head half blown off, the left shoulder all but gone and several large burn scars along its torso and arms.

Barely had Ash landed then he came under fire again. Long range fire judging by the inaccuracy, but it was one thing to be calm about such things when you were looking at them over a news screen... quite another when you knew the person being shot at, could see them being shot at, and were in fact being shot at yourself due to the inaccuracy of the fire. Small caliber beam blasts stitched their way into the building she was in, melting through windows and blowing torso sized chunks of seared masonry out of the walls. Three beam blasts entered the room she was in, all through the window to the left of the one she was standing at, melting through the thin glass like it wasn't there at all before impacting on the back wall and door, blowing the door to flaming splinters and sending chunks of burned plaster flying like chaff. Jean had screamed and thrown herself to the floor as the beams came in... even though they were small caliber, she could feel the heat as they passed more than five feet away, it felt like she'd placed her whole side on a grill for a moment. She patted her shirt and felt where the cloth had singed slightly. That was too close. Barely had she returned her riveted attention to the outside world when the unthinkable happened. Ash had just finished turning his mobile suit around to return fire at the unseen enemy when a darker green beam... not a beam rifle or cannon blast but something else, struck him directly in the chest, dissolving away the armor like a suger statue hit with a watergun. Apparently the impact was enormous too, as Ash's mobile suit staggered back until it's heels were on the very brink of the drop into the hanger. But the real killer came when four missiles streaked by, seemingly slow enough for Jean to count the red serial numbers painted on their sides before they struck Ash's mobile suit in exactly the same spot the dark green beam had, burrowing through the little armor remaining before detonating inside the mobile suit.

Ashino found himself at peace. Before he'd been angry at being tag teamed by Athrun and Cagalli and he'd been eager to retrieve the spare weapons stored in the hanger so he could return to fight on his own terms, especially with the Mjolnir cannon already charged. But then he'd spied Jean looking out at him with a hopeful expression from the third story of one of the adminstrative buildings surrounding the inner courtyard and his anger had fled like it had never existed, replaced instead by a contentment he'd never felt before. He wished he could tell her that her brother was safe, but there was no way for him to communicate with her. He'd been just aout to turn and "accidentally" break out the wall of the room she was in so she could escape when the incoming fire from Cagalli and Athrun started striking him, Frost and the buildings around them. The fire was not very accurate, but was actually more of a problem for that, since while Ashino could deal with being shot at, he doubted Jean was anywhere near happy about it, and the thought of her being killed by an errant beam brought his anger back worse than before, boiling through his blood. His heart had actually frozen for a moment in dread when he saw the beams pentrate the windows into her room, but found himself smiling again when she reappeared at the window a moment later, eyes still on him. He had just turned to start returning fire when one of Cagalli's ion cannon blasts caught him full on the chest, just below the cockpit region, blowing through the armor and eating away at the vital systems underneath. The Bane staggered back a few steps, until he was just at the lip of the hanger bay. No other place to retreat. His main screen unfuzzed just long enough for him to see the missiles inbound. He tried to dodge but his controls failed to respond, the main computer having at last given up the ghost.

He didn't hear or see the explosions, but he certainly felt them, as the missiles detonated inside the vitals of the Bane, holing the reactor, causing it to enter an emergency shutdown, destroying the leg driver mechanisms and worst of all, destabilizing the Mjolnir capacitors. Huge arcs of whitish-purple lightning crawled out of the hole in the Bane's gut and danced over the rest of the machine and the area round it, melting glassy trenches in the tarmac and buildings. Overbalanced by the repeated impacts, the Bane toppled backwards into the hanger bay. Everything seemed to freeze for a moment. Ashino found himself looking into Jean's eyes and Jean found herself looking into the glowing red camera eyes of the Bane, knowing that Ash was looking back at her. Something that Ashino could not identify flashed between them at that instant, rendering him completely calm and almost happy. "Is this... love?" Ashino asked as the Bane shudded and shook in midfall, small pieces sloughing off like dead skin while the still discharging Mjolnir capacitors had finally reached a critical point of destabilization. As one the capacitors, each the size of a human torso and charged with millions of amps of current, exploded with the force of bunker busting bombs, shattering the high tensile titanium alloys that composed the Bane's skeleton like they were made from spun glass and causing the entire machine to burst open like an overcooked lobster before detonating in a flash of fire and sound that threw the Fury from its feet to roll for ten meters across the tarmac, while simultaneously blowing out every last remaining window in the entire compound and utterly scouring the concealed hanger of all forms of life. Secondary explosions rumbled up from underground as the spare weapons and ammunition stored in the hanger cooked off in series, sending plumes of fire and smoke rupturing up through blazing cracks in the ground as the entire sublevel of the facility started to implode in on itself from the damage.

In her third floor room Jean recovered herself from the floor to which she'd been thrown by the force of the explosion. Unmindful of the blood trickling down her arms and forehead from the myriad glass cuts she'd received when the window blew in, she rushed back to the window, staring aghast at the inferno raging below her. The flames were shooting thirty meters into the air above the hanger and the smoke cloud seemed to stretch higher than the mountains and was growing steadily. Of Ash and his mobile suit there was no trace... not even wreckage, though of course it had probably fallen to the bottom of the hanger... which was a surer death sentence, if anything, since explosions and fresh flames came roaring up from below with near continuous frequency. She found her eyes were wet, yet no tears would come. She did not want to acknowledge the fact that the charming, shy and generous man she only barely knew was dead, blasted to pieces when his machine was annihilated by enemy fire. Such things weren't supposed to happen to the good guys, to the knights in shining white armor. Yet the proof that it did was blazing merrily right in front of her. She did not know how long she stood and stared with blurry eyes at the pyre of Ash before some instinctual part of her mind reminded her of Ash's warning and took control of her body, moving her, still in her numb haze, out the shattered door and into the corridors and stairways of the building, which eventually lead her outside and into the rest of the base, where she disappeared into the ruckus without even a trace... much to Asmodeus's weary disgruntlement when things finally calmed down enough for him to check up on her.