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.

75. End of a Nightmare, part 1

Completely heedless of the life and death struggles that waged themselves tens of meters below the soles of the Merciless's feet, Cray continued along his ordained path, rampaging through the city streets with wild abandon. He had long ago lost track of Lacus Clyne and Cagalli Yula Attha... for all he knew he'd trampled them underfoot within moments of landing. He hoped that wasn't the case... that would be unsatisfying in the extreme. He was starting to grow bored though... smashing buildings and crushing cars and people was rapidly losing its novelty after about ten minutes of doing it. Sure, it was exhilirating and empowering, walking through the city like a god, crushing whatever he wanted whenever he wanted, letting people live or die as he saw fit... but it wasn't nearly so fun when he didn't have anyone to lord it over that really understood. He needed to beat someone into the ground and leave them begging for mercy on their knees before him... that would make everything so much better. Problem was, the only other mobile suits around were allies and well outside his range regardless. In a slight fit of pique he jammed one of his hands into the side of a nearby skyscraper, spillings tons of crumbled and broken masonry onto the streets below, like a man might tear through a snow sculpture. "Something interesting better happen soon or I'm going to do something DRASTIC!" Cray announced to all and sundry over his external speakers. He received no reply. He checked his sensors and scowled, noticing how all the tall buildings, made of concrete and metal, were playing havoc with his radar and other sensors... his radar barely reached farther than his cameras did while he was down on street level

Fortunately for the thousands of innocent and terrified people within the several block immediate radius of the Merciless, two such interesting things as Cray was looking for were rapidly approaching from the harbor area, flying just above the tops of the buildings. The Duelist led the Grand Buster by perhaps a half mile, though it was the Grand Buster that was doing the searching for the enemy, with its far superior sensor suite. Not that it was extraordinarily difficult to locate the Merciless... they just headed towards the most recent looking plumes of dust and smoke and within minutes the massive thermal contact that could only be the Merciless appeared on the Grand Buster's LRR screen. "Well, I won't say I'm looking forward to this engagement." Dearka commented sourly, eyes sweeping the ground below, tightly packed with all sorts of large buildings, ranging from hotels to office complexes to multi-story malls and shopping plazas. "I never really trained for something like this."

"Yeah, the ZAFT training scenario planners somehow neglected to include a mobile suit battle inside a city fully populated with civilians... I wonder why?" Ysak retorted sarcastically. "It's not like we're here because we have any other choice."

"Can't you just let me gripe in peace? That was a rhetorical complaint... it did not require an analysis." Dearka responded.

"Require or not, it received one. And no... you never let me gripe in peace... why should I favor you?"

Miriallia did her best to tune out their bickering, even if it was good natured... it was still a distraction to her and right now she did not feel she could stand any distractions at all. The last time she'd been in combat in Orb, she'd been safe... relatively speaking... aboard the Archangel, while her friends went out and did the bulk of the fighting. Now she was going up close and personal with the enemy in her own home nation... she was just glad it wasn't her home city, since her stomach was doing flip flops as it was. And this enemy was worse than any Coordinator she had formerly feared and hated... Dearka and Ysak and Athrun did not exult in the killing of their enemies... they were soldiers, fighting other soldiers, and death was just part of that equation... there was only rarely personal emotion brought onto the field of battle. Quite the opposite with Cray... with him, every battle was personal, every death a victory he had to announce and display to the rest of the world. And that was why he had to die... the sooner the better. "Coming up on the Merciless now... we're three miles out and closing. No sign that he has spotted us yet." she announced, swallowing an enormous dry lump that had suddenly appeared in her throat.

"So how do we wanna do this?" Dearka asked, his voice turning calm and serious as he transformed himself from the loving, kind and friendly Dearka she was so much in love with, to the fierce and cold ZAFT soldier she knew from the battles with the Archangel. "The Grand Buster isn't exactly equipped for close range fighting... more than half my weapons are no goes down on the city streets... he may not care much about civilian casualties, but I can't just go spraying fire around indiscriminately."

"I'm not sure you or I have a choice in that regard. We have to decide... is it worth the risk to ourselves and the civilians to limit ourselves when we fight him? Is it better to try and defeat him over a longer period of time or quick and bloody... which will result in higher risk to the civilian population?" Ysak replied. "Like you said, he won't be holding back... last time we fought we went all out and barely got away with our lives... can we do any less now?"

"Damn it. That fucker is using the city like a shield, even if he doesn't know it." Dearka swore. "Look at the destruction... why would anyone... no, no I won't say something so obvious. Because that's the sort of person he is, that's why."

"When there is no good option, you can only go with what you think is best. I think you'd know about that better than anyone else, Ysak." Miriallia said, her heart and voice heavy. "This is the Merciless... thirty meters of destruction and doom made tangible. We cannot hold ourselves back. It tears at me to say it, but we have to go all out and just hope we can bring him down before too much damage occurs."

"I'll see if I can't lure him out into a more open area... perhaps onto one of the highways, where you can clobber him with less chance of taking out the buildings around him." Ysak said after a few moments pause. "I'll be taking this route." A cerulean blue line traced its way along the streets of the city before passing over the dot that was the Merciless before swining back around towards one of the major traffic arteries that brushed by the Government district of the city, of which the Merciless was just at the edge of.

"Understood. We'll be waiting here." Dearka placed a big green X onto the highway, a few hundred meters short of where the blue line crossed the multi-lane road. "I don't think I need to wish you luck."

"Save it for yourself." Ysak replied instantly, dropping down towards street level. "I make my own luck... though it would be more accurate to say I make unluck for the enemy. And today, Cray is going to be very unlucky indeed." He drew a beamsaber with one hand, warming up the chainsaw edge of his shield as he did so... it would be close work, right at his favorite range of battle. He landed and bounded forward, the Duelist taking ten meter strides as he ran along the streets full of abandoned cars, cloak flaring behind him like a tiny ribbon of night. The Grand Buster peeled away and descended in a long arc towards the highway, leaving Ysak alone and unsupported for the moment. The first blows struck against the monster who had killed Chanel were going to be his and his alone. Just the way he wanted it.

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Cray idly thrust the barrels of the dual hyper impulse cannon into the side of a building, tearing a huge gouge along it as he swung the heavy cannon forward and out, demolishing two floors and leaving the whole fifteen story structure leaning drunkenly forward about halfway up. He turned his torso to look down a side street and fired his six beam cannons, the greenish rays of heat energy carving molten trenches through the buildings and street, annihilating the unarmored civilian cars and trucks they happened to brush over in balls of fire and greasy smoke. Perhaps a hundred people who had been fleeing down this street went up in smoke and flames with the cars, their bodies ignited by the unimaginable heat, most dying before they even had a chance to voice their agony through lungs of ash. Cray rotated his torso again, almost one hundred and eighty degrees, facing another skyscraper, this one almost thirty stories tall... at least he never really had to worry about running out of new targets in a city. He smiled as he saw the horrified expressions on the faces of office workers looking out through the glass windows at the Merciless... plainly they either had not heard the word to evacuate or had elected to stay inside, thinking themselves safer there. A false impression he was glad he could relieve them of. The four 20mm CIWS guns in the head of the Merciless spun up to speed, while the other four CIWS guns mounted on his back also activated and began to swing about. Without further ado, Cray opened fire, the front CIWS raking the office building with hundreds of relatively small caliber shells, though each was more than enough to blow an armored human in half, while the back CIWS blasted away at the facades of other buildings and the street in random fire patterns, not really aimed at anything in specific.

Windows shattered in a hail of gleaming shards that fell like ice crystals to the streets far below, the deluge joined moments later by a rain of furniture, rubble, bodies and pieces of bodies as the explosive bullets hammered into the office building, walking back and forth along its entire length as the Merciless slowly turned its head. Hundreds and then thousands of people started flooding out of the ground level exits of the building, pointing and screaming as they tried to flee from their deaths. The paths of many of the panicked people brought them into the artifical storm falling down from the heights above, with people being crushed by desks and cabinets and cut to pieces by panes of glass that shattered like fragmentation grenades when they hit the streets. Most though ran away from the Merciless, filling the two lane street almost solid as they raced towards a T junction about two hundred meters ahead. Cray slowly turned, the CIWS guns silent for a moment as he adjusted his aim. Time seemed to freeze, a painting of atrocity just prior to commencement... the crowd of people, trampling their own friends and co-workers in desperation as they ran, the Grim Reaper's minion, the Merciless, almost gloating as its weapons spun and hummed in the morning air.

Cray's finger's were just touching the firing studs when a new variable entered the game. The Duelist, resplendent in blue and grey and white with orange highlights, its airy photon cloak floating around it like a shroud, came charging into view from the left fork of the T junction, skidding to a halt as it saw the Merciless and comprehended the situation. "Well now..." Cray breathed, pleasantly surprised. This wasn't something he'd been expecting, but come to think of it, he did have unfinished business with this person. The last time they'd met, Cray had enjoyed grinding the foe into paste beneath his feet, though sadly he'd been interrupted before he could finish the job. He did not see any allies of the Duelist around... good, he'd be able to finish the job this time, without distractions. Cray did not adjust the aim of his CIWS as the crowd of people slowed, unsure of which way to flee now that there was a Gundam ahead of them and a Gundam behind. They continued to move forward though, since the Duelist was far less threatening looking than the Merciless. "You've come to die, Ysak Jule." Cray announced over his external speakers.

Ysak did not reply... he had nothing he wanted to say to Cray. Words could not come close to expressing his disgust and loathing for the BCPU and he did not struggle to try and confine his feelings to words. Actions would be his only conduit. Without waiting for the BCPU to make the first move, he opened fire with his mounted ranged weapons, six missiles jumping from his hips on jets of smoke, joining a yellow railgun tracer and a stream of small caliber beam darts. Ysak did not intend for such attacks to actually harm the Merciless, merely to anger his easily unbalanced foe by stealing the perceived glory of first blood. He brought up his shield and held it before him, launching the three beam tipped grapples to follow his munitions.

Cray did not bother to dodge as the railgun round bounced off his chest uselessly, the missiles detonating to similar effect and the beam darts doing little but scarring paintwork and dig pinpricks into his outer layer of armor. The beam grapples were a different story... those could actually cause damage. He used his CIWS to shoot down one, sending it crashing to the ground in the middle of the crowd, sending up a bow wave of pulverized flesh as it landed, beam tip whipping wildly from side to side. He dropped the Merciless into a crouch and jumped forward, letting one grapple pass high and to the right. The other he took on the upper right arm, feeling the tip dig in through the armor, but hit nothing vital and left nothing but a jagged scar on that arm. All the same, he promised to take Ysak's own arm as payment for the insult. The macro-molecular grapple cables whined as they were rapidly retracted back into the shield of the Duelist, the grounded cable inflicting more injury and death as it was hauled back through the crowd. Cray smirked... he was sure that such wanton violence would weigh heavily on the conscience of his enemy... who was one of those people to which casualties actually meant something besides points.

The Merciless stood up again, planting its feet widely as it braced itself for its counterattack. The anti-armor shotgun fired first, followed by a long burst from the shoulder gatlings and finished with a massive flight of missiles from the leg launchers. Over half the munitions did not make it to the target area, their mostly unaimed paths leading them to strike the street and buildings that lined it. The sound of cracking stone and high explosives filled the street like an avalanche thundering down a rocky canyon as multiple buildings crumbled and collapsed, thousands of tons of concrete and steel dropping onto the ground and spilling into the street, inundating it and wiping the crowd of people from existence like they had never been there. Ysak took the shotgun blast on his shield, the kinetic impact of the armor penetrating shells strong enough to push the Duelist back a few meters, its feet digging protesting ruts through the asphalt street. No sooner had he recovered from that attack than the Duelist was struck by dozens of 120mm cannon shells and Ysak got a dose of how Kira had felt at Carpentaria. Through skill and not a little iron determination, he kept the Duelist standing under the onslaught even as he was shaken like a stone in a can. He hit his jets and lifted the Duelist up and over the missiles in a long forward jump, instead of further rocking the Duelist the missiles destroyed two more buildings at the T junction, blasting them into hollow craters of burnt stone.

The Duelist came down about one hundred meters from the Merciless, its feet digging through the loose rubble that covered the street as Ysak continued his charge, beam saber igniting at last into a courscating blade of pink light, he held it high and kept his shield forward, looking for all the world like a charging soldier from thousands of years past magnified a thousand times on a modern scale. The 120mm railgun on his right shoulder spat continuous yellow tracers as he charged, the hypervelocity slugs of magnetically accelerated metal unerringly striking the mountainous Merciless on the chest, limbs and head, though to little discernable effect. Cray frowned in concentration, waiting for his weapons to cycle through their reloads. In the meanwhile he shifted the Merciless back a step and canted the torso downward to compensate for the rapidly closing target. Though the buildings limited his sight and mobility they also limited the mobility of his opponent... and while the Merciless was designed to not only deal out a beating, but to take one as well, Cray doubted that the enemy was nearly so redoubtable. He triggered his shoulder gatlings again, as well as his torso beam cannons, while he kept the hyper impulse cannons in reserve for a point blank shot, assuming Ysak made it that close.

Ysak hit his back thrusters, propelling the Duelist forward like a missile as he raced to reach the Merciless before it could re-orient its arsenal upon him. At such close quarters, if the Merciless could unleash the full fury of its armaments upon him, he knew he would not be able to stand up to it. High explosive shells rained down behind him, blowing craters into the street and sending showers of debris up like spumes of water. Ysak smiled a cold smile... the shells were all landing behind him, if only just... he was movng faster than Cray could target. Only a few more seconds and he'd be close enough to land a telling blow with his beam saber. Perhaps an arm, or maybe a leg he'd take... or maybe he'd just go for broke and try and bisect the giant mobile suit from groin to chest... that sounded better to him. The Duelist seemed to crawl forward as if pushing its way through a crystal clear liquid, the beam saber swooping low and then beginning to power upwards, aimed to take the Merciless right between the legs. Ysak's smug grin lasted less than a second longer, as suddenly, in a lightning fast motion, the Merciless's right arm dropped, leveling the dual 350mm barrels of the hyper impulse cannons it carried at the Duelist from less than thirty meters away. There was no time to spin, to bring the photon cloak into play. There was barely enough time for Ysak's fantastically nimble mind to even recognize the trap for what it was, and to desperately raise his shield to block his sight of the weapons as their muzzles started to glow red-blue with pre-discharge energies.

The hyper impulse cannons fired and the effect was tremendous. Normally designed for medium to long range attacks against hardened targets such as base defenses and capital warships, the effect of both beams striking the Duelist at a range of less than twenty five meters could not be overstated. Ysak had been charging forward at almost two hundred kilometers per hour, a seventy five ton war machine charging for all it was worth. The hyper impulse beams themselves had very little mass, and even allowing for their significant percentage of lightspeed velocity, they really couldn't exert that much physical force on an object... unless that object was like Ysak's shield, which did not simply disintegrate like most materials would. It flexed and warped and bent and charred, but did not give way... the price of this resilient resistance was the entire forward momentum of the Duelist being almost instantly negated and indeed transferred into backwards momentum, the Duelist's legs swinging forward and running out from underneath it as it's torso was slammed backward by the impact of the shield. To an idle, objective observer, it might have appeared humorous, as if the Duelist had stepped on a giant banana peel and slipped, before being propelled backwards like a leaf riding the stream from a fire hose as the hunger power of the hyper impulse beams pushed at the shield, trying in vain to devour it and the rest of the mobile suit.

The Duelist finally touched down about fifty meters away from the Merciless, finally ejected from the rapidly dissipating beam blasts... the Duelist did not make a graceful landing, instead falling onto its back heavily and half skidding-half rolling for more than ten additional meters as the ground friction soaked up the momentum of the gundam. It finally came to rest, half lying on its side, its back to the Merciless. Ysak lay slumped in his cockpit, alive and mostly unhurt, except for a terrific case of whiplash and a blood filled mouth from where he'd bitten his tongue and the inside of his cheek during the impacts. He could not do more than just sit there twitching for a few moments as his body struggled to come to terms with the events of the previous few seconds... he hadn't put that much stress on himself... well, not for a very long time, his mind unable to come up with a comparable trauma at that moment. Finally though, after what seemed an eternity but was probably less than five seconds, he regained voluntary control of his motor functions and he made the time to do a very brief check of the Duelist's systems as he endeavored to roll the machine to its feet. He had just gotten to one knee when a sledgehammer struck him right across the front of his body.

Cray had not been idle while his opponent had been struggling to collect himself. He'd been busy making sure all of his weapon systems were primed and reloaded... and for once, aimed. He'd been privately surprised that the Duelist was intact at all... that was some shield they had made for the enemy, even if it was mostly trashed now. But still... there were multi hundred meter space ships that would have been easily atomized by that attack, and his opponent only had a damaged shield. But Cray reminded himself that even though the enemy had survived that attack, the advantage was all Cray's now. The enemy was disoriented, grounded and right in the middle of his targeting icons... there were few more fatal situations to be in. He demonstrated this to Ysak by waiting for the Duelist to almost get to one knee before blasting him with the anti armor shotgun, the high explosive-armor piercing shells obviously failing to penetrate the phase shift armor, but at such close range the impact would not be too much less than Ysak being kicked by Cray himself, right in the chest. The Duelist went down again, again skidding and rolling, though this time Ysak used the momentum of the roll to bring the Duelist back to it's knees. Cray smiled... his opponent was skilled, he had to grant him that. Most pilots would have given up the ghost already... Ysak was just fighting harder. Cray's fingers started to tighten on the triggers of the beam cannons, gatling cannons and missile launchers. He didn't think Ysak would be able to roll with this one.

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"Ysak! Are you all right? Do you need assistance?" Dearka's concerned voice came over Ysak's come system. Ysak gritted his teeth, unwilling and actually unable to spare a moment to toggle his own comm switch to reply. He liked Dearka as much or more than any person in the universe, save for Katie and his mother, but somehow his friend always managed to pick the very worst times to call him, right when Ysak really didn't want to talk to anyone, didn't even want to think about verbal communication, in fact. Right at this moment, talking was one of the farthest things from Ysak's mind. The Duelist had yet to receive any major damage, though impact damage would soon become a real likelihood if he kept getting hammered like this. For that, Ysak was thankful, as it meant he didn't have to worry about damage control as well... he could still focus on the primary goal... killing Cray. He closed his eyes ever so briefly, momentarily entranced as he watched a shining blue seed drop through the emtpy vastness of some great void before striking an unseen surface and exploding in a shower of blue and silver sparks. When he opened his eyes again, though he could not know it, they had become washed out orbs of azure, windows into a hurricane of rage and determination.

He watched the individual barrels of the four gatling cannon on the Merciless's shoulders smoke as they spun, counted the missiles in their tubes on the mobile suits massive legs and almost felt the heat of the six beam cannons on the torso as they neared firing energy. This next attack aimed at him was a finishing blow, the munitions would shake him and keep him pinned while the beams speared through his armor and roasted him alive. He declined to allow this to happen. The Duelist rose from its knees to a full fledged upwards jump seemingly without making the transition to standing first, bounding over the first flights of missiles as they hammered the ground where he'd formerly knelt. Before gravity could once again claim the Duelist in its weighty grasp, Ysak hit his torso and leg mounted retro thrusters, shooting the Duelist backwards and upwards, vaulting the six green lances of the beam cannons by less than two meters. Rotating in midair because the torso thrusters were more powerful than the ones in the legs, the Duelist completed a complete backwards somersault, pirouretting through the hail of 120mm cannon shells splintering the air all around it, taking barely a few glancing hits in the process, some so minor the shells actually deflected off rather than exploding. Ysak landed in a crouch about one hundred meters from the Merciless, discarding his half wrecked shield and drawing his twin 57mm beam rifle in the same motion.

The Duelist rose to its feet, sword still blazing pink fire in one hand, cold gunmetal rifle held confidently in the other, slightly torn but still proud cloak wafting gently around it in a stray breeze. "No, I'm fine. Everything is under control." Ysak finally replied to Dearka.

"Glad to hear it. Looked like he had you on the ropes there for a while." Dearka endeavored not to sound relieved, but Ysak knew better.

"For a while he did. A very brief while. Maybe a second or two. Maybe. You know me, I can't help but make the other guy look good. Just look at what I did for Kira." Ysak joked.

"Yes... of course. Him kicking your ass every time you met after we descended to Earth was merely a clever part of your strategem to lure him off balance." Dearka rejoined, deadpan. "You could have taken him any time you wanted to, of course."

"Naturally. Still can, you can be sure. Hell, even Cray is now right where I want him. He thinks he's winning... I'm going to be relying on you to help me show him he's dead wrong." Ysak smiled.

"Ready and willing, my friend. Just you bring our prancing giant over this-a-way a few more blocks and we can both give him the sort of surprise we'll never tire of telling stories about." Dearka signed off. Ysak maintained his confident smile only as long as the comm system was on, before returning his face to a mask of grim concentration. Proud words or not, though his situation was much improved over what it had been less than a half minute before, he still couldn't quite shake the fact that even with Dearka and Miriallia on his side, Cray still had them practically outnumbered and certainly outpowered all by himself. Still, he'd never been one to let long odds get him down... they just made life that much more interesting. He juked the Duelist a pace to the side, dodging more incoming fire from Cray, who'd been staring in stupefied surprise at Ysak's sudden burst of agility. Ysak felt his smile return slightly... for once it was Cray who was fighting a foe who's capabilities he did not fully understand. Well, maybe not for once, but Ysak doubted Cray knew that Ysak was capable of the same berserk mode Kira could use.

"Is that the best you can do?" Ysak taunted over the open channel, bringing up his rifle and firing several hyphen like shots of green heat energy at the Merciless, each shot striking clouds of sparks from the machine's multilayered phase shift armor as they penetrated a layer or two before finally petering out, leaving nothing but ugly black scars in the paint to mark their impacts. He wrinkled his nose slightly at seeing his attacks deal so little damage, but he forced himself to recognize the fact that despite his inclinations and wishes, this fight would not be one decided with just a few shots or one or two sword swings. he and Dearka would have to whittle away at Cray, let him exhaust his ammunition and patience, let him start to make rage driven mistakes... then they could capitalize on his errors and bring him down hard. Assuming he didn't do the same things to them first... Ysak could not deny the rage pulsing inside him like a stoked fire... he had it under control for now, but he knew what his temperment was like... it wouldn't exactly take the end of the world to flip him out and leave him charging right into Cray's guns for what would probably be the last time.

"You've yet to even scratch the surface of what I can do." Cray replied, his voice weighty with intent. "You talk big for blue-eyed baby with half a face and only half of your girlfriends still alive. From where I'm standing, it still looks like I'm ahead in our little game. I drew first blood back at JIHAD and you've been playing catch up ever since. What was her name again? Something French?"

"I'll remind you when you're dead." Ysak snarled, firing several more shots at Cray, to similar effect as before. Cray retorted with another blast from the recently recharged hyper impulse cannons, though this time the effect was far lss spectacular, in his opinion anyway. The Duelist skipped to the side again, whirling to let its photon cloak sweep outwards into the paths of the beams. Frustratingly, though the cloth flared so brilliantly white it hurt even his eyes to look at it, it did nothing more than that, the unknown material of the cloak completely absorbing all the massive heat energies of the blasts like a sponge soaking up a tiny trickle of water. Within seconds it had even returned to its normal royal blue color, like nothing at all had happened. Ysak forced himself to laugh loudly over the comm line, before firing three more shots into the Merciless, one scorching a scar much like Ysak's own across the Merciless's oversied head. "Looks like I'm not the only one with half a face now." he commented before gunning his thrusters and jumping the Duelist up and over a line of buildings to land a street over and closer to where Dearka was lying in wait on the highway.

"You think you're funny!? Laugh at THIS!" Cray bellowed, control slipping a few fractions more. He didn't bother to pursue directly, just wrenched the Merciless's torso around a little and made a quick trajectory calculation in his head. He opened up with his shoulder gatlings, firing through the buildings Ysak had just vaulted, the high explosive shells chewing through the middles of the ten to fifteen story buildings in less than a second before bursting out the other side to strike across the next street in a horizontal rain of blossoming fire and shrapnel. Ysak ducked and dropped the Duelist to its knees to avoid the attack, letting the munitions pass over him to strike other buildings across the street, blowing out their facades in showers of glass and stone. He cursed to himself as he saw more than a couple brief spurts of crimson flying through the air... some of the buildings had been at least partly occupied. Like a row of sand castles kicked by a petulant child, the buildings between the Merciless and the Duelist crumpled and collapsed in a huge pall of dust and smoke. Ysak forced himself not to dwell on the fates of the civilians likely all around him as he fought... he couldn't be concerned for their welfare now, couldn't afford the distraction. The best thing he could do for them was to bring the Merciless down as fast as possible, and that meant drawing Cray's ire continuously.

"You're certainly good at blowing up buildings. They teach us to be just a little better than that up in the PLANTS though. We generally don't consider someone even slightly good unless they can hit a moving target, you see." Ysak pointed out... who'd have ever thought that his talent for irritating other people with his unkind observations would have a practical battlefield use?

"No Coordinator can say such things to me and live." Cray promised. "After this is done, I'll tear your heart out with my bare hands and stuff it down my pants, then make your girlfriend lick the blood off me. How's that sound?"

"Like something like a non-entity like you would say." Ysak replied, fighting to keep the revolted hatred out of his voice. He fired blindly through the dust clouds several times. "You've a long way to go before you kill me though and you might want to concentrate on that before you go and make any plans for Katie." As he talked, he sprinted the Duelist along, turning a corner to put more buildings between him and Cray. "Speaking of way's to go, your's is getting longer by the moment, at least as long as you sit there like a speedbump."

"Keep talking, Coordinator. One of us is going to end up eating their words today and I promise you, I have little experience in redigesting my thoughts." Cray answered, taking long, street jarring strides forward, moving through the rubble of the buildings like a man might wade through shallow surf. He burst through the dust and smoke like a juggernaut being birthed from chaos, only to find the street empty before him. "You talk a lot of shit for someone who's always running away!"

"Don't make excuses for your sloppiness and sloth. Why must I be to blame because you're slower than a drugged tortoise?" The Duelist popped back around the corner for a moment, firing several shots that missed the Merciless narrowly before ducking back out of sight again. Cray's return fire took that entire corner of the building off in a landslide of debris, but frustratingly his shots did not strike home against his opponent. Cray jogged the Merciless forward, its gargantuan weight knocking several meter deep craters in the ground as its feet came down like pistons. He rounded the corner, body swingout out wide to compensate for the relatively sudden change in direction, left shoulder and arm digging into the buildings on the other side of the street, dissolving their facings like spun sugar. The Duelist was visible at the end of the street, perhaps two hundred meters away, just rounding yet another corner. Furious, Cray laid waste to everything in sight, his unleashed firepower almost vaporizing two full city blocks. He grappled with himself for control, finally jerking back into a slightly calmer state, soothed by the jets of fire and geysers of smoke his fierce bombardment had replaced the boring vista of buildings with.

"With aim like yours, you wouldn't even make it into the ZAFT artillery corps. Honestly, your instructors must be embarrassed for you... you didn't even come close to me." Ysak seethed inwardly with all the senseless deaths he had witnessed. He wasn't exactly the most sentimental of people... he'd killed his fair share of people both unwilling and unable to resist, though he hadn't known it at the time... but he'd never enjoyed massacre and slaughter for their own sake. When he fought he did not go out with the intention of killing every enemy and destroying every mobile suit... he went out to fight and drive the enemy back, by inflicting casualties on them until they gave up. If they all died before they gave up, well, he wouldn't cry any tears, but he'd prefer not to just annihilate them. Well, most of the time anyway. He had to admit, there were a few times when he just wanted to kill anyone and everything he saw, but they were relatively few and far between and he only acted on them rarely. He was almost to the highway, just one more street to go.

The reaction to his words was even better than he'd hoped. He'd struck some kind of nerve, apparently, because Cray roared like a stuck bear and charged, firing his weapons rapidly but with extreme inaccuracy. "Nobody insults the Doc! How dare you speak ill of the most decent man I know? He's like a father to me! He is a father to me! You just insulted my father, you fucking Coordinator. Now, you're really going to get it!"

"He's no more your father than I am." Ysak retorted. "He was a warped and evil man who experimented on children, modifying their memories and shaping their minds to suit his own ends. I don't know who your father is, but the Doc he isn't."

"Shut up! What would a Coordinator like you know? You're nothing... no one! You're the people that are warped and evil! You deserve everything I'm going to do to you, because you people are inherently guilty! Can't you see that? That's why you all have to die... and thats why I enjoy killing you!" Cray ran the Merciless entirely through a semi intact building, ignoring the clanks and clunks as the concrete and stone tumbled down his shoulders and torso like a man plunging headfirst through a icy snowbank. He'd come through much closer to the Duelist this time, obviously surprising Ysak slightly, as the Coordinator was slower to react, catching a piece of Cray's shotgun blast along his left torso, stumbling backwards a few steps before regaining his balance and pivoting around to duck around yet another corner.

"I'm not hearing anything new and interesting from you. Why don't you just toss in "For the Preservation of our Blue and Pure world" and be done with it? That about sums it up, as far as I'm concerned!" Ysak countered vehemently, reciting the hated Blue Cosmos catchphrase with bitter venom in his tone.

"You continue to mock me even as you flee from me!?" Cray slowed his headlong pace, taking his time, letting his weapons cycle back to full readiness again. "You'll run out of buildings to hide behind eventually... I'm quite prepared to raze this entire island if need be. I'm even looking forward to it, you might say."

"Don't you think that might damage your bosses golden image in the minds of the people? Oh wait, that's right, they hate him already. My bad."

"Cervantes doesn't give a rats ass what the people of Orb think. That should be obvious. If they get uppity again after this... well, bullets are cheap, as they say." Cray snickered. "I can always do my godzilla impression again... believe me, I get quite the kick out of it."

Just a little further and that won't be the only thing you get a kick from. Ysak thought darkly, seeing the highway in his rear screens, its eight lane path cutting a wide avenue of cleared space through the heart of the city. He backed the Duelist up slowly, watching the corner with gun aimed. Cray surprised him again though, not bothering to round the corner at all, instead just firing his hyper impulse cannon straight throught the building, sweeping it around like a short lived blade of incandescent light which cut through the buildings like a red hot scapel through butter. Ysak barely dodged in time, the armor on the outer surface of his left arm bubbling and running molten a little bit as it soaked up the heat. He fired back through the decapitated building on reflex, but the tumbling detrius caught most of his shots, and those that did pass through the dust were lost to view with no visible effect whatsoever. Ysak paused and strained his eyes and sensors to try and locate Cray... he couldn't afford to lose track of him for too long, because if the Merciless suddenly popped out at him without him being ready to dodge, it would be all over... Ysak did not think Cray would allow him even a fractional chance at regaining his feet again.

Finally, his keen eyes noted a flash of purple and silver through the thinning cloud of dust. It took him a near fatal second to realize that the Merciless wasn't in hiding or in the middle of some move of subtle trickery at all... Cray was standing right in the middle of the street, in the same position he'd been in when he'd destroyed the building... he'd just been waiting for the dust to clear so he could fire again. Why he'd waited now, when he'd just blazed away before was beyond Ysak, but he did not like this new, slightly more cautious Cray. The more wild and reckless the BCPU became the better the chance they would have to kill him, and the inverse was true as well. He thought this as he threw the Duelist into wild evasive maneuvers, dodging backwards, almost stumbling away from the unleashed arsenal of the Merciless as Cray opened fire. Lances of beam fire cracked the pavement at his feet, boring glowing red tunnels through the ground. Shotgun shells struck his armor and detonated without penetrating, instead transferring enough kinetic force into the Duelist's backwards stumble to turn it into a backwards fall. A howling rain of 120mm cannon shells shrieked by overhead as he fell, reducing half the highway to a ruin of blast craters and rubble in a heartbeat. The Duelist struck the ground on its back and skidded onto the highway, ending up lying almost in the middle of the empty road, about halfway between the buildings on either side.

The Merciless took two steps forward and the missile launchers on its legs belched huge clouds of smoke as they exhaled their payloads. Missiles fell like hail around the prostrate Duelist, their warheads unable to penetrate its armor but in its vulnerable position, they did not have to, as the force of their impacts and detonations bounced Ysak around so much he was unable to regain positive control over his machine. Helplessly stunned, he could do nothing but watch as the Merciless strode confidently onto the highway to stand a few lanes short of where he lay on the ground. All the weapons swung down to cover him... the shoulder gatlings had just started to fire, their first shots blasting him around even more violently in his already abused cockpit, when Dearka finally made his move. He had not spent the time between when he and Ysak had split up idly... he'd been busy siting the Grand Buster into a fine firing position, partially shielded from the Merciless by a curve of highway embankment, the Grand Buster crouched on one knee to prevent a smaller target and to provide a more stable firing platform.

Dearka did not hold back, though inwardly he cringed at the collateral damage he was causing as he opened fire with all weapons. His shoulder beam cannons tore small chunks out of the side of the Merciless, though according to Miriallia's projections, they had not struck through more than armor layers. The missiles from his hip and shoulder launchers bunched up with his own shotgun shells to strike the Merciless high on its right side, sending the giant mobile suit teetering to the left, rocked by almost a dozen tons of high speed explosives impacting it all at once. The thirty meter machine overbalanced at last and tipped over like a mountain falling, speeded along by the 250mm hyper impulse shot that struck its right leg, igniting the missile launchers on that leg, sending them up in a terrific explosion that laid that leg almost bare of armor and collapsed buildings on both sides of the highway with the force of the blast. Unfortunately, though the leg was badly damaged, it was not destroyed and the Merciless quickly proved this fact by clambering back to its feet hastily, almost as if embarrassed by its fall.

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Cray spat pink slimed spittle from his mouth, not even caring that it splattered the inside of his helmet and smeared along some of his screens. He was genuinely angry, and not only at the enemy. He'd allowed his anger and hatred to take control of him again, just like he'd done in JIHAD, when he'd been tricked by Ashino. He'd been played for a fool, and he'd played along blindly, like a lamb on a string. Of course Ysak wouldn't confront him without backup... he'd tried that in Panama and only just barely avoided dying because of it. Hating the Coordinators or not, Cray could not allow himself to underestimate their intelligence... they would know a bad strategy when they experienced one, and they'd come up with a newer and better one for next time. Whereas he hadn't changed at all. He was in the unenviable position of playing catch up to the enemy now and that made him very angry indeed. He was made to be better than this. He tested the right leg gingerly even as he scanned his screens, looking for the Grand Buster, which was the only enemy mobile suit that carried an anti-armor shotgun like his own. The leg servos were scorched and laid bare, but the limb still worked well enough and supported its share of the weight and so Cray knew he'd been very lucky. He could have very easily lost the limb and then he'd have been almost entirely at their mercy as they flanked himand blasted him to pieces.

Sure enough, the Grand Buster crouched half hidden behind a curve in the highway about five hundred meters away, its hand held weapons lying on the ground beside it even as it dragged the massive artillery cannon on its back into firing position. The Duelist, which had been at his feet, helpless again, just moments before, landed from its quick flight right next to the Grand Buster and started blasting away at Cray with its beam rifle again. Cray had to smile and shake his head... Ysak certainly was tenacious... beat him black and blue and he'd still keep coming back for more. Cray liked that attitude in a target... it made it a lot more fun for him when they didn't run away. Amber warning lights flashed on some of his panels, indicating minor damage to several non vital systems from the repeated beam impacts, but Cray ignored them for the moment... he knew the Merciless and a few beam blasts weren't going to breach its armor just yet. The Grand Buster was just slamming home the car sized artillery shell when Cray opened fire again, hosing down both enemy mobile suits with all his might. It was tough to get a good bead on the Grand Buster, half hidden in cover as it was, but Cray knew that at least some of his attacks had to be hitting it through the huge smoke and dust cloud that sprang up between him and his targets. He did not fool himself into thinking that the attack had been enough to take down either opponent... they wouldn't be that easy.

His hand slammed down on the lever that activated the Citadel array built into the torso and limbs of the Merciless just scant seconds before the Earthshaker artillery cannon spoke in its monstrous voice, cracking concrete in a ten meter radius around the Grand Buster and shattering windows for hundreds of meters around as the cannon hurled the multiple ton shell at the Merciless, faintly surrounded by a storm of sparking blueish light. The shell struck the lightwave barrier and detonated, the force of the explosion slightly indenting the nigh indestructible energy barrier before being redirected around the unbreakable object, rivers of fire and concussion flowing outwards to strike skyscrapers and other buildings bordering the highway. When the blast and smoke cleared, there was a three meter deep and thirty meter wide crater around the Merciless, with cracked and torn up pavement surrounding the crater for almost a hundred meters in all directions. Cray peered out through his lightwave barrier, his cameras struggling to maintain resolution through the energy interference. He thought he could see the Grand Buster, either reloading or swapping it's weapons out, but he could not see the Duelist. His hand hovered over the off switch for the Citadel array... he knew Ysak was likely waiting above him or to the side somewhere, waiting to dart inwards with his beam sword to cut away at Cray during the vulnerable second or two it took for the Citadel array to disengage and realign to engage again.

Cray's internal debate about what to do was solved in a hiss of static and an unfamiliar voice. "Calling unknown Earth Forces mobile suit. This is Colonel Banner of the Third Corp, First division, 17th Armored Regiment. I've got a mixed battalion of MBT's and SPAU's moving up to support you as we speak. I don't know who you are, but I'll be damned if I let two rebel mobile suits tear up the city while it's under our protection."

Cray looked at his secondary status screens in bemusement... just as Banner had said, there were multiple new contacts on his sensors, indicating more than twenty Main Battle Tanks and about fifteen Self Propelled Artillery Units... old mainstays of the Earth Alliance ground forces before the development of the Strike Daggers... rumbling up the highway behind him, firing their weapons at the Grand Buster and at an unseen target off to his left. He disengaged the Citadel system with a feral grin on his face, waiting impatiently as the systems realigned and motor control was returned to his province by the Merciless's computers. True to his expectations, Ysak was engaged with the tanks off to his left while the Grand Buster was weathering the artillery fire from the SPAU's in its old position, caught swapping out weapons by the sudden armor advance. A dozen APC's clattered into view from side streets running parallel to the highway, their boxy forms juddering as they negotiated the rubble strewn streets to come to a halt in a loose formation just a few meters in front of the Merciless. More APC's along with several of the armored cars mounted with laser guided rocket pods that formed the fast strike units of the EA ground forces sped along other surface streets, heading for the Grand Buster.

"This is Lt. General Anders, Third Corp, First division. I've got a mechanized infantry regiment here, plus another two reinforced battalions of heavy armor inbound and six regiments of infantry mustering outside the city. Colonel Banner, you are under my command. Mobile suit pilot, what is your name and unit?" a tough, blunt voice announced over the comm. Cray glanced down and noticed the APC with a single gold star painted on the top... a command model, rarely seen so close to the front lines. Squads of infantry toting man portable missile launchers and RPG launchers were deploying from inside the APC's, and soon a steady stream of anti-vehicular fire came from their positions to further bombard the Grand Buster. Cray took a long step backwards to put both the Duelist and the Grand Buster within his fields of fire. Ysak was dominating the tanks that were coming after him, destroying two or three at a time as their cannon shots bounced harmlessly off his Phase Shift armor. The Grand Buster was momentarily out of the fight as it fought to recover its balance and continue swapping out its weapons while being continuously pounded by long range artillery fire and anti-tank missiles. Ysak suddenly abandoned the tank duel, the Duelist jetting up and forward in a reckless forward attack that Cray easily dodged, the Merciless crashing backwards a few steps to avoid the swing of the beam sword.

Cray smirked and then frowned. Ysak had landed the Duelist right in the middle of the APC's, so that they were between him and the Merciless. Infantry ran in panic or fired fruitless shots from their personal weapons at the mobile suit that had suddenly dropped from the sky into their midst. Heavier weapons mounted on top of the APC's started winking and flashing, but even their shells were less than spitwads to a mobile suit, especially one with Phase Shift armor. The tanks remaining from the brief and extremely one sided tank duel rushed forward, skidding down the steep concrete embankments seperating the highway from the surface streets of the city, firing their cannons high to avoid endangering their men and commanding officer, who Cray could see leaning out of the front cupola of his APC, waving his arm angrily at the mobile suit standing almost on top of his position, his other hand held to his face, probably with a comm phone in it. Cray shrugged... if Ysak thought placing EA soldiers between him and Cray made any difference at all... then he was more foolish than Cray had thought.

"I repeat, mobile suit pilot, what is your name and uni..." the transmission cut off in a splurt of static as Cray fired at the Duelist with his shoulder gatlings and torso beam cannons, driving Ysak back again and utterly annihilating the EA armored and infantry units that had been on the highway. The mobile artillery behind Cray stopped firing in surprise and horror, suddenly unsure if the giant mobile suit was on their side at all, given the lack of a response to hails and the cold blooded slaying of several of their commanding officers for no apparent reason. Cray decided that they had served their purpose well enough and indulged himself a little bit... the back mounted CIWS guns quickly bracketed them in storms of shells that tore through the lightly armored artillery units to strike their ammo lockers, sending them up in bright glossy fireballs like a string of firecrackers. "Thanks for the help." Cray smiled and said, now that no one could hear him. "You all get to die quick as a reward." Cray moved the Merciless forward, slowly at first but quickly building up into a headlong charge... the last thing his foes would expect him to do, given the relative lack of extreme close range attacks of the Merciless. "You're not the only ones who can come up with new plans... I learned this little maneuver from a colleague of mine, someone you guys already killed."

The Grand Buster came into view ahead as the Merciless bore down on it like an avalanche, still crouched low to the ground, its weapons just recently returned to its hands. Cray saw Ysak jet into his back arc, but by then it was too late, the Merciless was already shifting its center of gravity, Cray bringing his massive machine down into a slide tackle, just like Ashino had used against Athrun back in Panama. He made sure to keep his right leg lifted as he was unsure of how it would handle the stress in its current state, but the left leg held up just fine, though it was rapidly stripped of paint as it tore a smoking trench through the ground before the foot slammed directly into the center mass of the Grand Buster, just as it opened fire at him once again with its weapons. The missiles and beam blasts flew high, almost striking the Duelist as it charged in from the back. The hyper impulse cannon shot missed just wide, its terrible heat bubbling the armor along the Merciless's left leg and side into a half molten scar. The anti-armor shotgun struck dead on, but the Merciless was just too massive to be much affected by it, especially with all its forward momentum and low center of gravity at the time. Cray snapped backwards in his cockpit couch, but where a normal man or even Coordinator would have been stunned if not injured by the impact, his reinforced physiology shrugged off the stresses like he was on a mere roller coaster.

The forward momentum of the Merciless was quickly eaten up by the friction between its sliding phase shift armored form and the street and his slide tackle came to a halt after only a few dozen meters. Cray was quick to regain his feet, but he knew he wasn't going to be fast enough to turn and face Ysak. Instead of trying to turn fully around, he actually jumped the Merciless straight backwards, his grin only increasing as he felt and heard the structure of the Merciless groan in protest at all the sudden eratic movements... he hadn't heard it moan like that for a long time, not since the last time he'd really gone all out against Kira at Carpentaria. It was audible and tactile proof that he was really exercising at the peak of his skills. There was a loud and painful explosion on his back as the Duelist's beam sword cut the semi-strategic multipurpose missile launchers on the Merciless's back in half, but its sword swing was truncated by the sudden proximity of the Merciless and so Cray only lost his nukes, not his life as the Merciless slammed back on into the Duelist, knocking the smaller mobile suit flying. The Merciless fell to the ground but Cray still managed to snap off a shot from his own shotgun in mid fall, tagging the just barely recovered Grand Buster full in the face with 2400 pounds of high explosive shells, knocking the green and tan mobile suit flat on its back even as he landed on his ass and bounced.

He was quicker to his feet than either enemy, but he declined to fight them in his current position, where he would be flanked by one of them no matter who he engaged, a disadvantageous situation he was not eager to prolong. Instead of firing at them as they recovered he took the Merciless to the air, leaping up and over the Grand Buster to land a few hundred meters further down the highway. He'd spent at most ten seconds in the air, but he'd spent the time wisely and fruitfully, taking in the cityscape around him in a whole different manner than he had on his flight in from his mustering point. It was no longer a collection of concrete targets... now it was a warzone. His warzone. Cray smiled as he highlighted several features on his map of the immediate area. The first, and closest, was outlined in blue... a group of three seventy plus story skyscrapers, the offices of large business corporations judging by the company logo's emblazoned high on their sides. The buildings formed a triangle, where three major surface streets came together in a "Y" formation. His second jump brought the Merciless within a hundred meters of the center of the Y, deep within the shadows of the buildings. The second location of note glowed red on his map... it was a few miles off still, but it had been easily visible from the air... the giant red cross on the side had been quite eye catching. He watched the Duelist and the Grand Buster slowly get to their feet, harassed by the remnants of the mechanized infantry and armored forces that had escaped his fire. It was time for a "come hither", a special delivery, from Cray to them... he smiled as he saw the civilians flooding the lower levels of the building, rushing to get down to the parking garages where their vehicles were kept so they could flee. He did not hinder their progress, though he did take note of where the street entrances to the parking garages were.

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"Damn it! Why is this guy always such a bastard to fight!?" Dearka complained as he struggled to bring the Grand Buster back to its feet. One hand was on the controls while the other typed madly at a keyboard as he re-wrote the OS slightly to take into account the loss of some components that had been knocked loose by either the slide tackle or the shotgun blast. He swore more violently but far more quietly to himself as he relived that attack in his mind. Who would have expected a mobile suit armed with exculsively ranged weapons to charge and slide tackle me? Who would slide tackle in a mobile suit anyway? That's something you do on the soccer or rugby field... not in a thirty meter walking armory. But despite that, damn it, he really pulled it off. Not sure I could do the same. Smaller explosions shook the Grand Buster, sounding almost tinny and festive compared to the ear shattering blasts of the Merciless's weapons or the rending gong of impact between two gargantuan mechanical forms. "What's that?" he asked, momentarily unable to find the source of the explosions.

"Rockets and small caliber cannon fire from the EA mechanized infantry vehicles to our left. Survivors of the unit that engaged us earlier... before Cray blew them all to hell and gone." Miriallia replied, taking control of the shoulder beam turrets. She hesistated slightly before firing them though. Is it really right for me to kill these men? They're just following orders... they think we're the enemy. They can't hurt us... Her internal qualms were rendered moot a few seconds later as Dearka turned the Grand Buster's head and used the mounted CIWS guns to sweep the EA troops away in a fury of explosions. "Why did you...!?" Miriallia started to exclaim.

"They're the enemy, Mir. They may not be Cray, but they chose to shoot at us rather than run away. When the enemy chooses to attack you rather than run away, that's when the gloves come off." Deaka replied cooly.

"But they couldn't even hurt us!" Miriallia protested.

"Luckily, yes. But what if we'd suffered an armor breach... or been forced to eject? They'd not have hesitated to kill us... it's their job to try after all. Just like it's my job to bring us both through this alive... and your job too. And our jobs conflict with theirs... who's has a higher priority? It's not a hard answer, I don't think."

"No, its not a hard answer. We come first." Mir sighed. "I wonder how long we can keep saying that though? If we come first thinking continues to prevail, peace is going to be damned hard to attain." Dearka didn't have an answer for that.

"That's a problem I'm more than glad to leave in the hands of Lacus, Kira, Athrun and Cagalli. I'm not much for the philosophical side of things I'm afraid. I fight for what I believe in because that's what I think is right and that's what I want to do... and because if I don't fight I stand to lose more than I can possibly accept." Dearka said to no one in particular. The Grand Buster lurched to its feet and he scanned around the roadway... Cray was not in close proximity, the Merciless having jumped overhead while they were grounded before jumping again and disappearing from view down one of the side streets that was still lined with standing buildings. "So how's he doing, love?"

"Ysak? He's taken a lot more shock and impact damage than us, but no vital damage yet. He's about seventy meters to our right..." Mir began.

"No, Cray. I'm not so worried about Ysak... short of loss of limbs or major debilitating injury, Ysak is usually fine. Only thing I've ever seen slow Ysak down is some sort of serious injury and he's not even close to that." Dearka said cheerfully. "Isn't that right, Ysak?"

"Bruised, bloody, beaten... and very pissed off. That's me in a nutshell." Ysak growled over the radio. The sound of knuckles cracking came over the line as well. "I think that's enough of a warmup though. It's time to get down to business for real."

Miriallia smiled at his bravado, though she knew it was mostly false. Neither pilot was going to admit it, she knew, but they were both quite worried. They'd managed to inflict some damage on Cray to be sure, most notably on the right leg, but so far the fight had gone almost entirely in Cray's favor, with them staggering around making attacks as best they could and him just laughing it off and knocking them flying all over the place with his own attacks. They hadn't taken any serious damage yet, but Miriallia suspected that was more a fluke of good fortune than Dearka's or Ysak's skill or inability on Cray's part. "Oh, him. Yeah. Well, you know that his right leg is weak... another good hit there and he'll lose it. He's taken armor damage over most of his torso, but he's still got plenty of protection left there... that triple layer armor of his is more resistant to beam blasts than I thought it would be. Ysak destroyed his back mounted nuclear missiles, thank god, but you didn't get much more than the launchers, his thrusters and such are still operating fine. He lost the missile launchers on the right leg, but the ones on his left leg should have about forty five percent ammo remaining. He has another twelve shots for the shotgun and his shoulder cannons are down to sixty five percent load. Of course his hyper impulse cannon and beam cannons will function as long as he has sufficient power. His CIWS is down to seventy nine percent ammo, if it matters."

"And how are we set up?" Dearka asked, though he could have looked it up in a matter of moments, he knew he had to give Miriallia something to do, something to concentrate on, or combat shock would start to set in. She was still unused to brutal combat like this.

"We still have eighteen shots for the shotgun, our missiles have fifty percent load remaining and our CIWS is at eighty percent. We've sustained minor surface damage and some impact damage, though it's all been either re-routed or temporarily patched up. We're down one Earthshaker shell, leaving us with five more." Miriallia paused to call up more information on another screen. "Ysak's damage is mostly superficial, though he's had to re-write some of his own OS to compensate for damage as well. His railgun is at sixty four percent load and his missiles at thirty five percent, his CIWS is still at ninety percent. His shield is wrecked though and won't be usable again with a long time in the shop."

"Concise and to the point." Ysak commented dryly. "In short, we're still more than able to take this bastard down. We'll just keep playing it slow... let him waste his ammo. I'll see what I can do about taking out his leg... Dearka, I want you to focus on getting rid of his hyper impulse cannons... without those he'll be almost helpless once he runs out of bullets. And they're just about the only weapon he has that can kill us with a single shot, so it's too dangerous to leave in his hands for long."

"I'll get 'er done." Dearka replied. "Try not to turn into a clay pigeon again though... I don't know how many more times I can pull your ass out of the fire."

"We've been over this. I had him exactly where I wanted him... we almost got him there... if more of your shots had hit his leg we'd already be done with this."

"Don't blame this on me... he was about to turn you into blast-waste... I couldn't exactly take the time to pick the rivets I wanted to hit."

"Stop bickering! And TAKE COVER, DAMN IT!" Miriallia overrode the comm channel as a flight of missiles screamed down from the sky, knocking fire rimmed divots into the street and showering both mobile suits with shrapnel and flame. "Source of missiles is approximately seven hundred meters away, right near the three big skyscrapers, the ones with the Orb National Grid, Hameya Construction Co., and Morganrote Admin Division logos on the sides. We have incoming metallic objects... they're not missiles. Ballistic in trajectory... too large for any guns the Merciless has. What the hell... oh god." Miriallia's voice went very small and quiet as the image on her sensor screen came into focus. It was a car, a mid sized sedan, colored cream white, with its sides slightly crushed in where the Merciless had grabbed it and then thrown it. This car was empty... the red SUV behind it was not, being populated by at least three people. Miriallia could only watch in horror, Dearka cursing up a storm, as the cars tumbled through the air before hitting the ground like awkward toys thrown by a petulant child, folding into ragged heaps of splintering metal and spilling fuel. She couldn't keep her eyes off the SUV as it flew within meters of the Grand Buster, locking eyes through her cameras with the woman at the wheel of the SUV, who was wearing a fashionable blue business suit and had golden hair ornaments that were plainly visible for the half second or so before her car hit the ground and its interior filled with pulped flesh and jagged debris.

"What's he think he's doing?" Ysak grated, his voice harsh with repressed emotion. "He must be trying to provoke us."

"It's working!" Dearka snapped. Even as they spoke a dark green sports car came flipping down through the air, exploding in a rich fireball as its fuel cells ruptured upon landing. They watched as the Merciless dipped down out of sight for a moment before coming up with colored objects gripped lightly in its hands before its arms windmilled and more cars were airborne, thrown in a long arc to eithe rsmash into buildings long or short of the highway or to land on the highway itself. "That fucker... massacring the crowd at the peace march... terrorizing the city... killing his own allies... using people as weapons... is there no low to which he won't stoop?"

"I don't know." Miriallia said. Or that's what she tried to say anyway, before a luxury sedan crowded to overfilling with at least eight people inside came barreling into view on a much shallower trajectory, thrown more like a line drive than a hail mary. Before she could finish her sentence, or tell Dearka to get out of the way, the vehicle smacked dead on into the chest of the Grand Buster, crushing itself flat, disintegrating into pieces as it did so. There wasn't time to see much... but there was time enough for Miriallia to see the expressions of terror and desperation on the faces of the front seat occupants of the car, two middle aged businessmen who had no idea when waking up that morning thair their lives were going to end in such a gruesome manner. There was time, a splinter of a second, to watch the people tossed around the interior of the car, blood coloring the glass crimson as the front end of the car struck the Grand Buster before it crumpled into a totally unrecognizable ball and exploded, showering the surrounding area with atomized bits of humanity and car interior. Instead of saying something, Miriallia just screamed. Screamed and then began dry heaving, gagging at the terrible thing she'd just seen and even felt and head, as the Grand Buster had rung and shifted just slightly when the car had hit it. Eight people had just died... ended their lives in a rush of fear and agony, not ten feet from where she sat. She only escaped their fate by being behind a several inch thick layer of armor.

"Mir! Are you okay?" Dearka cried. Okay... stupid question. She's not okay... anyone who's okay after being hit with a car full of innocent people... watching them die, feeling them die just feet from you... no, you wouldn't be fine. His own gorge rose a little bit and he could taste bile in the back of his throat when he thought about it. "Go, Ysak. He obviously wants us to close with him, so lets give him what he wants, just one more time. I'll be right behind you, soon as I make sure Mir is okay."

"Don't let her hold you up too much... I can't beat him without you." Ysak replied, his voice faintly critical.

"And I can't fly this damn thing without her!" Dearka retorted defensively. That wasn't strictly true, but he couldn't very well let Ysak just insult Mir and himself like that. "I won't be long... seconds at most... sooner if you'll let me get down to it instead of giving me stupid warnings!" Dearka snorted. "What you do in my place, if it was Katie?"

"Katie would understand." Ysak replied instantly, the Duelist rising into the sky on a pillar of blue thruster flame, dodging another two line drive cars as it did so.

"Just shut up! I'll be right there!" Dearka slammed off the comm system. "Mir... just breathe. Slow and easy. Slow and easy. Get through this... don't make me a liar, please... 'cause I don't think Ysak will be around to apologize to if I am."

Ysak shook his head as he darted the Duelist towards the Merciless, ducking under or hopping over the cars that were being thrown at him. His loathing for Cray grew with every passenger heavy car that flew past him or hit near him, but he didn't let the horror of the attack affect him adversely. He let his anger grow, let it swell, let it fuel his abilities... but he didn't let it get to the point where it started to take control over him. His breathing was deep and steady, his eyes still washed out in the throes of the SEED mode. Dearka was at least true to his word... the Grand Buster started to take tenative steps after the Duelist within a few seconds after they broke comms, but Ysak knew it would take his friend longer to fully calm Miriallia... a nice girl, but not suited for the rigors of mobile suit combat in Ysak's opinion. At least Cagalli had the right spirit for it... Miriallia was too nice by half for the field of battle, he felt. Dearka would not be fully in the fight for at least fifteen or twenty seconds, by Ysak's rough guestimation. Fortunately, Cray seemed prepared to indulge in his provocative attack for the next little while, rather than continue to fight seriously. Ysak shook his head... he just couldn't get a read on his opponent... Cray was wild and angry one second, focused and calculating the next, then barbaric and bloodthirsty right aftwards, with very little transition or warning phase in between them.

A car grazed the Duelist's right shoulder in a rain of fat yellow sparks, the sides of the vehicle being ripped off by the slight contact, spilling the people inside out like seeds being squeezed from a fruit as the car continued to hurtle through the sky. Ysak turned his eyes away from their plight and felt his resolve harden anew as he closed to within a hundred meters of the Merciless, which was crouched next to the street level entrance/exits of two of the three skyscrapers. Cars of all sorts were flooding out of the garages, or trying to anyway, as the mess of wrecked cars at the exit was preventing much outward motion, except for the unlucky cars Cray picked up and threw out of the morass, the suddenly opened space letting more cars pile forward, pushed by the panicking people behind them who had no idea of the fate being meted out to those too close to the exit. Ysak opened fired with his rifle and shoulder weapons, bouncing railgun shots off the Merciless as it came back to a standing position, SUV in either hand. One railgun shot would have struck the Merciless in the face, but Cray brought up a hand and the SUV took the shot instead, right in the undercarriage. Where Ysak's 120mm railgun was almost ineffective against the Merciless, against the unarmored bottom of a civilian car... that was another matter. The railgun round passed through the vehicle with hardly any resistance at all, shredding whatever was inside before blasting a hole in one of the lower floors of the building. Cray crushed the other SUV instead of throwing it, dropping the ruined mess to free up his hands as Ysak rapidly closed the distance.

Ysak's beam rifle scored a glancing hit to Cray's right thigh, but though the internal systems glowed red momentarily, the leg remained functioning for the moment. Then there was no more space for beam fire, as Ysak was within arms reach of the mighty enemy, beam sword slicing around to carve a deep slice through the left leg armor. Ysak smiled at the solid hit, but the good feeling was quite short lived. His charge had been exactly what Cray had wanted... he'd just thrown himself into the lion's den, or the hunter's snare. The Merciless's enormous paws grabbed the Duelist's left arm and waist, and the machine turned, pivoting on a left leg that buckled and squealed under the pressure but remained whole nonetheless. Combining the momentum of the charge with the momentum of the spin, Cray threw the Duelist headlong, facefirst into the lower levels of the building across the street. The Gundam hit the glass and concrete wall and smashed through like it was made of gingerbread, the machine penetrating almost five meters into the building before coming to a halt. Ysak spun, sending even more of the building cascading down around him as the movement tore the interior to pieces around his head and shoulders. His anger was a white hot flame that burned cold in his chest. He'd been played... played for a fool. He didn't realize how much of a fool until about a second later.

Cray had not been idle... continuing to push the Merciless to its limits, after completing his throw, he'd gunned the retro-jets on the Merciless's front, forcing the big machine directly backwards, keeping up the burn as his back collided with the building behind him, keeping it up as he forced the Merciless to fly backwards through the building, his wide Phase Shift armored back forcing an unstoppable path through the relatively flimsy concrete, steel and glass the building was made of. Once on the other side, Cray wasted no time in drawing his hand held weapons from their armored holsters on his back, planting his damaged legs widely to provide the best possible support on their suspect frames. By the time Ysak had turned the Duelist around as was just stepping forward, out of the crater he'd made in the side of the building, Cray was ready to trip the jaws of the trap shut. The truth of his predicament was probably just beginning to dawn in Ysak's mind when Cray opened fire with all his weapons, holding down the triggers. His target was not the Duelist. In fact, not a single beam or shell came within five meters of the Duelist at all... they were all aimed higher.

Cray had badly damaged the support structure of the Hameya Construction Co. building when he'd rammed the Merciless through it's lower levels. The Duelist had also done a number on the lower floors of the Orb National Grid building, though not nearly to the extent of the devastation wrought by Cray. Instead of further wasting his ammunition firing at the Duelist, which between its Phase Shift armor and energy absorbing cloak had proven frustratingly hard to hurt so far, Cray instead finished the jobs the mobile suits had started on the buildings. Buildings which were all too easily affected by the massed firepower of the Merciless. 120mm cannon shells blew through the seventh through ninth floors of the Hameya building, some passing entirely through the building before exploding against the Orb National Grdid building, just above Ysak's head. The greater majority of the shells found some target of sufficient mass to trip their detonation circuits though, the total effect of the thousand or so shells being the total disintegration of those floors of the Hameya building. The missiles, torso beam cannons and anti-armor shotgun did likewise, along with the stray gatling cannon shells, to the Orb National Grid building, cutting it off at the knee's so to speak. The dual 350mm hyper impulse cannons sliced through the Morganrote building by themselves, vaporizing the bottom six floors of the building in a giant flash of light and acrid smoke.

Cray hit his retro-jets again, pushing the Merciless backwards in a series of ungainly hops, unwilling to put too much more stress on his legs, either of which he was sure would give out with prolonged use. Because of the way he'd angled his shots, all three buildings, berefit of a great deal of their supporting infastructure were now collapsing both downwards and inwards, the debris and broken fragments of all three buildings meeting and falling together down towards the middle of the "Y" intersection. Some debris did fall outwards, break on the Merciless on the streets around it in clouds of dust and metal splinters, but far more fell either straight down or down at an inward angle... down right on top of the Duelist, standing in the "Y" intersection. Cray almost immediately lost sight of Ysak, but he didn't see him fly out of the area either. He half smiled... he was victorious, but it wasn't quite the way he'd wanted it... he'd hoped to get the Grand Buster with this tactic, not Ysak. There was no way the fiesty Coordinator could survive having three entire buildings dropped on him... even the Merciless probably wouldn't survive that.

"Oh shit! YSAK!" Dearka cried. Miriallia had mostly recovered, through she was still trembling a little. He had no doubt he'd be helping her through a lot of nightmares for the next few weeks, assuming they lived through this. They'd been just about to move in to support Ysak... Dearka's heart had lept into his mouth when he saw Ysak slice the left leg of the Merciless with his sword... the more they crippled the mobility of their foe, the easier the fight would be. But the Merciless did not fall... indeed, it reacted with a speed like that of a striking mongoose, grabbing and tossing the Duelist so fluidly it looked like something more suited for a martial arts movie, not mobile suit combat. The Merciless then seemed to dive backwards, heedless of the building towering over it, crashing through the building like it was hardly there. It was at this point in time that Dearka got a really bad premonition, but before he was able to voice it to warn Ysak, it was too late.

Miriallia watched with horror matching that felt by her lover as the three enormous buildings came tumbling down, huge clouds of dust and smoke billowing out from their bases as they collapsed, spilling thousands of tons of rubble through the air. She was still kind of out of it from recovering from seeing those people in the car die, but this new catastrophe snapped her awake quick effectively. "Get out of there, Ysak!" she shouted, hoping her comm line was on... hoping her wish could somehow make a difference. For a moment it looked like it had... the blue, white and grey form of the Duelist could bee seen blurrily through the smoke and dust and falling debris, riding a stream of blazing blue thrust as Ysak tried to bull the machine through the suddenly material clogged air, but then a massive section of building, a block of five floors bearing the Morganrote company symbol on the side came down like a giant flyswatter and smashed the Duelist from the sky, causing it to disappear from view under who knows how many tons of rubble. The shockwave from all three buildings collapsing at once set off a chain reaction, with other, lesser buildings nearby swaying back and forth before their own foundations cracked or shattered and they came tumbling down as well, in an expanding ring of destruction that would eventually claim every building over ten stories high in a three block radius.

Dearka and Miriallia were not around for that however. Dearka tried to move closer, to dig for his friend, but he knew it was pointless... even if Ysak had survived, which even he found to be a dubious proposition... he was almost certainly buried under the wreckage of three seventy plus story buildings... it would take rescue crews days if not weeks to dig that deep, assuming rescue crews were even despatched right that instant, which was far from likely. He was unable to even move closer, the Grand Buster forced back by falling wreckage and the pounding shockwaves of the buildings falling to the ground. "Ysak..." Dearka said quietly, mournfully, his voice pained.

"He's... he can't be. Not Ysak. Not like this..." Mir began, equally shocked. It didn't seem possible for someone she knew... not precisely a friend, but a friend of the person she was most intimate with... to be gone so suddenly. One moment he'd been there, the next he was gone, totally removed from view by the collapsing buildings. "He can't have died! He can't be gone!" In a way, it's like Tolle dying all over again... though this time it's for Dearka. Oh god... what that did to me... what this must be doing to him... oh god.

"That was supposed to be you." Cray's voice oozed over the comm line like pond scum slithering down a pipe. "That's why I threw the cars at you, not him. He was to have a more special fate than being entombed." Cray paused a moment as if considering. "Oh well... the best laid plans of mice and men, as they say. I suppose in some way's this works out better. He'll be trapped in there, alone, assuming he's still alive, which isn't likely. You two would have each other. Now I can have some fun with two people, rather than just one. Good all around, isn't it?" Cray let out a short burst of explosive laughter.

"Mir... Mir... Mir..." Dearka said slowly and quietly, almost unaware that he was even talking.

"I'm here, Dearka. I'm right here." she replied, her voice equally quiet and serious. She twisted around in her seat to look at him and started slightly. She'd seen him like this once before... in the Doc's lab, in the facility known as JIHAD. His breathing was deep and steady, his face set and calm and grim. His eyes... those lovely violet orbs she never tired of looking into... were washed out and flat, almost lifeless. He seemed to radiate power and confidence all of a sudden. She felt herself come to his attention as he roused himself from some inner introspection she didn't think she'd ever be able to understand. His hands twitched and spasmed slightly on the controls, she could feel the Grand Buster rocking forward and back slightly as his feet likewise tap danced on the thruster pedals.

"Please... I need you to... to..." words seemed to fail him suddenly.

"To what? What can I do to help, Dearka?" Miriallia prompted. His face turned fully to face her and a piece of the old Dearka resurfaced and smiled at her.

"I need you to be here with me... be right here with me... to fight alongside me. Please? For Ysak."

"Always... I'll always be here for you, Dearka. I'll fight alongside you. For Ysak. And for you. And for me."

"If you two are quite done, I'm getting tired of waiting! What are you doing in there anyway?" Cray's voice broke the mood and the silence that had followed her promise. "Believe me, you'll want to save your energy... you're both going to need it."

"Where is he?" Dearka asked breathily. Mir consulted her LRR and other sensors.

"He's about three hundred meters to the west of our current position. His signal is really weird though... I'm reading a lot more mass at his location than even the Merciless could possibly have... thousands and thousands of tons. His radar signature is also broken up really weirdly... his outline keeps changing, flickering almost. Hold on, let me tune the vari-camera... oh fuck." Miriallia swore, surprising herself at her word choice... normally she intensely disliked the more foul curses. But this was a situation that fully qualified the use of them.

"What...?" Dearka asked, also shocked at her curse, which was quite unlike her. The vari-camera image came up on his screen. "Motherfucker!" he exclaimed.

"Come and get it! I'm right here... my legs don't work so well... come on, I'm nearly helpless... a little lamb, just waiting for the slaughterman... or wait, I think I may have gotten our roles reversed. Come on, why are you hesitating?" Cray taunted. "I'm not even moving... I'm a sitting duck here." he called, making his voice more singsong like, almost childish. "We've been playing tag... and you're it. Now you have to come tag me." The Merciless stood in plain view. Well, the top quarter of it was in plain view anyway... the bottom three quarters was hidden by the cream colored painted stone and polarized glass windows of the Orb Red Cross Hospital building, in which courtyard the Merciless was standing. The Hospital building formed a hollow square eight stories tall and several hundred feet on a side, with an attached residence/long term care building twenty stories tall on the west side of the square. The courtyard was a garden that filled the interior of the square, where recovering patients and off duty staff could relax for lunch or go for a morning jog. Well, until the Merciless took up residence anyway... the tower of the residence building loomed behind its head while it's arms were out of sight below the roof of the east side of the square, with only its head and shoulder gatlings really visible. The Merciless may have been a sitting duck... but it was a duck sitting in the middle of a maternity ward.

"Dearka... we can't shoot at him! He's in the middle of a hospital! That place is probably packed full of people!" Miriallia cried.

"I know... the bastard knows that too. That's why he chose to move there... because he knows we can't shoot at him while he's got the hospital as a hostage. Hell, even if I was confident enough to shoot at him, and sure that I would only hit him, which I'm not, the explosion of the Merciless or its collapse would still cause massive destruction. I can't do it! Not even for Ysak! I can't put all those people's lives in jeopardy!" Dearka shouted, shaking his head in frustrated rage. "How dare he hide behind a hospital! COWARD!"

"Thou speaketh my name?" Cray rasped smugly. "They're just people... you don't even know them. They haven't even seen you yet, probably... they'll never know. Most of them will never even know what hit them... and those who do will be dead anyway. You won't have to feel guilty... no one will confront you... no one will blame you... everyone who knows about it will be dead. Hell, so will both of you, at that... but that's a whole different story. So come out and play... come out and play or else."

"Or else what?" Dearka snarled.

"What else do you think? You saw what I did to Ysak, didn't you? This hospital is convenient... it makes for a nice set piece on the great stage of this battlefield. But if you won't play, then it's useless to me... you know what I do to useless things, don't you." Cray did not make it a question.

"We won't surrender." Miriallia said firmly. Cray laughed, geniunely amused.

"Surrender? Why would I want that? You've already shown me that you two can't keep a promise... I learned from Panama, you see. Unlike at least one or three other people I know." Cray paused. "No... I just want you to play... play my game. It's not even all that stacked against you. It's called the game of survival. First one to die loses."

"But you're standing in a hospital full of people... the very definition of an off limits target." Dearka pointed out. Cray laughed again, contemptuously.

"You'll want to throw out those old rules of warfare if you want to have any chance of winning the game. Survival is about survival... attaching rules is utterly pointless. Now... come closer, my friends. It's time to start the game..." the barrels of the Merciless's shoulder gatling cannons began to spin, slowly at first but then faster and faster. Dearka swallowed and looked at Miriallia, who nodded slowly. Cautiously, with deliberate care, the Grand Buster lifted one foot and took a long step forward... towards the Merciless.

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Behind the Grand Buster, unnoticed by all participants in the drama unfolding, a scree of rubble shifted, rumbled and then slid to the side. Slowly, a dinged and scratched blue and grey armored hand and arm reached out of the hole it had poked in the wreckage. The arm began to feel around, gradually shifting more and more rubble away. Several meteres further into the mass of collapsed building debris a man sat in a dark cockpit, all his screens black, only a few winking red danger lights serving to illuminate his face, making the liquid seeping down from his hairline appear black and colorless as his eyes blazed with washed out color. "This is so... not... over!" Ysak promised as he inched the Duelist closer and closer towards the outside world.

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