Something stirred in Kira's dreams and he found himself slowly blinking the sleep from his eyes without really being fully aware that he had awakened. Something didn't feel quite right, but he wasn't able to place his finger quite on what... his arm slid arcoss the bed and encountered a only slightly warm indentation beside him where it should have been stopped by someone. Aha. Thus the reason for him waking up, though from the feel of it, Lacus had been gone for at least fifteen minutes or so. Not a bathroom break, nor a trip to get a drink of water, both being five minutes or less activities. Lacus didn't eat midnight snacks unless she was staying up all night and she'd been doing too much of that of late, which was why they'd both gone to bed early today, without even thinking about fooling around with any sort of physical activity... they were exhausted as it was. Fighting a war was bad enough, but he'd take the Archangel in space again in an instant over starting a national government up from scratch. Even if his sister was the national leader. Maybe even especially BECAUSE his sister was the national leader. And being the brother of the national leader meant, apparently, that you were somehow politically important and that people required his input for essential tasks that he had absolutely no knowledge of. Ask him about computers or computer security or even mobile suits and he'd be able to tell anyone who could stand to listen to him far more than most people would ever want to know... but national defense strategies? Troop allocations? Payment for the troops? New recruitment? He didn't have the slightest idea about what to say or do on matters like those... it was like people assumed that just because he piloted a Gundam he had a damned idea what he was doing, like a professional soldier might, which just wasn't the case.
His half asleep mind turned the coin over the other way. Not only was he Cagalli's older brother and apparently a senior member of the Orb National Defense Comittee with all the duties and cares contained therein, as of Purgatory Day anyway, but then he had a whole new set of problems and responsibilities jumping into his lap from Lacus's side of things. Purgatory Day also marked, amongst many other things, the day he and Lacus had "gone public" with their relationship, on world wide TV, nonetheless. The memory still made him smile and blush... something had gotten into him that day, usually he was far more content to stay out of the limelight, but he'd looked up, saw them both on TV and he'd just sorta snapped... in a good way. Lacus sure had been happy with him, though the good mood had of course been totally spoiled by the tragic events that took up the rest of the day. But despite the airing of the death and destruction on live TV as well, it had been far too much to hope for that the world would forget about him and Lacus... people loved juicy insider celebrity stories as much or more than they did morally outragous governmental scandals. Barely a day after Purgatory Day and he'd come back to their room in the Orb National Palace and found three reporters with camera crews posted outside with entirely too curious expressions on their faces. Luckily he'd spotted them from down the hall and managed to slip away before they noticed him. Or so he'd thought, but he'd been sneaking away, out the back door when several more teams came around a bend, arguing with each other about how Lacus wasn't where her so called schedule said she would be.
Kira hadn't had many "deer in the headlights" moments since his initial moments of combat in the Strike back up in Heliopolis, but he definitely had one then as four different tabloid reporters oriented on him as one and practically pounced on him like a rugby team. Four different recording devices were shoved at his head as the reporters and their photography crews surrounded him like a pack of wolves around a fawn. He still couldn't remember what they asked him... they seemed so eager to get a reply from him, any reply at all, that they never seemed to shut up to let him get a word in edgewise. Every time he tried to speak, to answer a question or deny an accusation... of which there were a lot, all patently ridiculous or totally indecent... or even to tell them to go away, one of them would shout both him and the original reporter down with a new question and so forth and so on. Looking back on it, he still got slightly steamed, though he was embarrassed with himself now as well for how angry he'd gotten. On an intellectual level he knew they were being provocative because that's what their jobs were, to confuse him and get him to say something unwise that they could blow way out of proportion and sell massive numbers of tabloid magazines with. On an emotional level he was still torn and bleeding from the events of Purgatory Day, and it was on the emotional level that he'd reacted. All of the interviewers had been Naturals, that day anyway, and they barely had time to shrink back when he tore their recorders from their hands one by one and stomped on them, telling them in no uncertain terms to back off and go away. Of course they didn't, and they had backup recorders. Then they started asking him why he was being so defensive, what was he hiding. Then they had started to speculate. Out loud. Fortunately, it was also at about that time that Alkire had showed up.
Kira and Alkire were still keeping each other at arms length over most issues, since their battlefield philosophies did not even come close to seeing eye to eye with each other and this leaked over into a lot of their personal issues as well. Still despite the distance and words and actions and even blows that had come between them at times, they both counted the other as a good man, a good friend and a close ally. Alkire hadn't even paused in his stride, coming around a corner and blitzing into the group of reporters with a unconvincing "oops". Alkire was not the most physically massive of men, but he was a extremely fit and strong soldier and he had little trouble in bowling over two of the reporters and pushing the other two and their assorted support back a few steps with his widely spread arms as he staggered forward, as if actually tripped and falling. To Kira it was a pathetically obvious act, but it was a thick enough excuse that the reporters couldn't say that Alkire had purposefully run them over. The reporters had tried to push past Alkire to resume their questioning of Kira, but Alkire wrapped his arms around the four of them like they were old drinking buddies or something and kept them firmly away from what was now Kira's side of the hallway. Kira had wasted no time in sprinting around the corner and out of the building, dodging several other teams of reporters idly wandering the halls, some on legitimate business, others looking for an unexpected scoop, often in areas where they shouldn't have been, because the Orb government security forces hadn't recovered enough to maintain the usual strict access controls to the building's interior spaces.
It hadn't gotten much better over the intervening time since then... now security guards and soldiers patrolled the insides and outer perimeters of the main governmental buildings and residences, keeping them safe, secure and most importantly private, but outside the perimeter of each building were hordes of reporters, gawkers and worst of all, in Kira's opinion, die hard fans. He'd known Lacus was popular... he'd owned a few of her albums himself, back before the war, he wasn't ashamed to admit, as had most of his friends who were Coordinators or pro-Coordinator. But quite how popular he'd never fully grasped until then. He wasn't even sure Lacus herself had known, until then. Now it was impossible to ignore... there were fans down there twenty four hours a day, every day of the week, camped out in the streets or parks or staying in large groups at the few functioning hotels in the area or even driving into the city each day, just to stand and jostle and shout and sing and make idiots of themselves on public TV every time either he or especially Lacus was foolish enough to let themselves be seen. Lacus was of course universally loved, showered with adulation, praise and acknowledgement, all positive. His situation was somewhat more complex... many of the fans didn't like Kira very much... mostly the male fans. Jealousy was an ugly, terrible thing, especially when combined with a mob mentality. Every car he'd ridden in had been vandalized with huge pink spray paint slogans and black permanent marker, and he'd been pelted with pink water ballons filled with pink lemonade on several occasions, and even peeled grapefruit on one occasion.
It was kind of odd, really... the vandalism was very low key, no swearing, no violence, just big frowny faces, faces with "X" eyes, little stickers homemade from a snapshot of his face with a pink circle around it and a line through it and things of that nature, while the written slogans were almost funny in their political correctness and politely phrased displeasure. As far as Kira could tell, most of the male fans seemed mostly concerned with him "soiling the purity" and "tainting the innocence" and "violating the virginity" of Lacus's image. Kira wasn't stupid... he knew what it was. Jealousy, like Alkire, Athrun and Waltfeld had warned him would happen. It's because he was with Lacus and they weren't, even though they had never had any realistic chance of even getting her to know their names, much less anything more than that. He'd found himself smiling a goofy secret smile at one point in time though... far as virginity went, the poor fans were several months too late to be protesting about that, though of course they didn't know that, and he'd do a lot to keep them from finding out too. As long as the male fans were able to decieve themselves into thinking that this was a recently started relationship with very few physical connotations, they could sleep at night. And so could he, without worrying about them upping the ante to more unpleasant protests, like stinkbombs and paintball guns. When Athrun had brought that up at one point in time, Kira had laughed along with Lacus at the ludicrous thought. He wasn't laughing now... not after being stoned with sticky and not all that soft grapefruit. He'd tried to hide the evidence of that little encounter, but Lacus had inevitable found out... he'd forgotten, again, that she could read his mind, quite literally.
Lacus had of course been about as outraged as she could be while still laughing in a sort of sad denial that her own fans could be so rabidly foolish. She'd resolved to make a public announcement, a laying down of the law, straight from the mouth of the goddess, as it were, to get the restless natives to lay off her boyfriend. Kira had been perfectly happy with that idea. Then Athrun had stepped in and blown the whole thing out of the water with his longer term and more experienced viewpoint. Basically, what Athrun had to say was that if Lacus were to step up and make a public request for the harassment of Kira to stop, it would indeed stop. Publicly, anyway. Privately, which was currently out of bounds for the harassers while they expressed their views outside, would then be the only conduit for their misplaced feelings of indignation. And in private things had a nasty way of turning much uglier than they would be if they stayed in the public eye. For instance, right now Kira had to contend with the shouts and the occasional hurled object... not so bad really. Not compared to massed hate mail, internet hacking, theft or vandalism of private property. There was also the fact that if Kira let Lacus make her announcement, it would seriously weaken his image as a strong man in the minds of the fans who weren't against him, which might make them willing to join the camp of the Kira-bashers. He'd chuckled again when Athrun brought that up, but Athrun had stared him down with little humor.
"It's no laughing matter, Kira. Remember what I said a while back, during the march? About how several times I overheard technicians talking about how easy it would be to slip up on some regular maintenance on my mobile suit which might then lead to me being injured or otherwise unable to remain Lacus's fiancee? They were joking of course. Mainly because to do anything at all like that would be a felony amounting to treason in time of war and thus punishable by death. But also because I was a ZAFT red elite, the best of a considerably good group of soldiers. Plainly put, on the personal level, outside my unit, people DID NOT want to mess with me. Now you know me, I'd never threaten anyone I didn't have to, much less hurt them, but by being a red Elite I gave the impression that I was far too tough to take down. So they made little jokes instead. Not saying they would have gone farther if they thought I was a kitten with no claws, but... well, they could have been a lot more unpleasant than just jokes. Ask Ysak about what his ground crew did to him a few times during training and you'll have some idea. If you don't wanna get nabbed off the street and rolled down a hill in a full garbage can though, you'd better pay some mind to how the public sees you." Athrun had elaborated with full seriousness.
Kira raised an arm and placed it across his brow, blocking out the near cave like darkness of the room into total darkness as he covered his half awake eyes wearily. Things just kept getting more and more complex with every passing day. Oftentimes he felt like he would just fall over and blow up, with all the stuff raging around inside him... but he couldn't because as bad as he felt, as confused as he was, the world situation was far more confused, and much worse off. Orb was starting to look like a nation again, with its own military and most of its own government. But the EA had yet to formerly recognize Orb as an independent nation again, despite the loss of their occupation force and the reconstruction of the Orb Government under Cagalli. ZAFT and the PLANTS had been similarly wary of extending political recognition to the fledgling government, as if afraid that by acknowledging it they would cause it to crumble again. It was extremely frustrating, for Cagalli especially and Orb as a whole, because without recognized nation status from one or the other superpower, Orb would receive no international aid, wasn't covered under any of the ethical arms or war conduct treaties and could basically just be categorized as an extremely large and well armed mercenary group. Being recognized by the EA was of course expected to be hard, since they would have little desire to once again lose Orb from their fold and it would be much harder, politically, to re-invade a sovereign nation than push a mercenary squatter group off owned territory. But the lack of recognition from the PLANTS, who had nothing to lose and much to gain from a free Orb, that was troubling. The situation in space was very murky... too murky for anyone on the ground's liking. There was much talk of sending the Archangel and perhaps the Kusanagi into space in the near future, with a full delegation along to sort things out properly. Kira was looking forward to it, to getting back to the clearness of space.
And then, most recently, there was the chaotic series of events that had revolved around Sai. First there had come the split in Blue Cosmos, a previously unknown schism in its ranks which had chosen the time right after Purgatory Day to make its bid for power within the global organization. Kira, like most Coordinators and all of his friends, had been nothing but pleased to hear of Blue Cosmos having political infighting. The more those crazy nutjobs spent their time hacking the political legs out from under each other, the less time they would be spending on committing atrocities against innocent Coordinators and the PLANTS. Kira had been rocked, much like everyone else, to learn that Sai was the leader of the breakaway faction, known as the Isolationists, who preferred a peaceful solution to the war and a subsequent segregation, seperate but equal in the most literal sense of things, of Naturals and Coordinators, for the forseeable future. Kira had read some of Sai's dissertations online shortly afterwards and while he thought his erstwhile friend made a lot of good points about the problems with the current system, he had to admit he had very strong doubts about the ability of any Blue Cosmos sanctioned policy to result in long term peace. Coordinators had been burned too many times by trusting the fires of Natural good will, especially by Blue Cosmos actions. He wasn't saying it couldn't work, though he found the whole Isolation principle somewhat simplistic and childish, just that he didn't think the atmosphere of trust and mutual respect that the plan relied so heavily on would materialize in any sort of time to make the plan feasible. There was too much blood under the bridge, to use Alkire's terminology, for trust and respect to reappear overnight between the two nations.
And then had come the electrifying news broadcast showing the assassination attempt by Blue Cosmos Puritan soldiers, the sect that Cervantes commanded, on Sai and his wife Vanai and their close friends at Sai's house in Hawaii. Kira had watched, riveted as anyone and everyone else in the world at the extraordinarily brave but effectively hopeless resistance the Isolationist guards put up against the Puritan MAGOS soldiers, outnumbered and outgunned. Though they certainly weren't outfought... Kira saw the defenders clearly in several shots and he easily recalled their uniforms from his own personal experiences aganst them and he was far from the only person in the private conference theatre in the Orb National Palace that had shivered when the defenders were identified as Hellhounds. Still, despite the quality of the troops, there was little they could hope to do against the superior numbers of enemy soldiers, who were also highly trained special operatives. Especially when the ultimate wild card of Zacharis Frost was tossed into the game against them. Lacus, Cagalli and Miriallia had barely held onto their shrieks while Athrun, Kira and Dearka had jerked reflexively away from the screen when Frost appeared on it, facing off against a man whom Alkire identified as Lieutenant Cyprus Finch, one of the Hellhound leaders, by his voice. They watched with extreme disquiet as Frost made his usual unstoppable way past Cyprus and, to everyone who'd been to Panama to rescue Ysak's surprise, Ashino, alive and well enough to be pummeled into unconsciousness by the other BCPU. Plainly there had been some editing done to the video, because only after the confrontation between Asmodeus and Sai in the underground broadcast room did the video clip of Asmodeus's little chat with Ashino get air time, even though it obviously happened some time before the final confrontation.
"Somehow I'm getting the feeling that this was bubbling under the surface for a long time now, and we're just barely seeing the tip of the proverbial iceberg." Waltfeld had commented, after listening to the back and forth between Ashino and Asmodeus. "That little frankenstein there, Ashino or whatever his name is, he didn't just fall into Sai's camp out of the sky." Waltfeld had continued, ignoring Lacus's narrowed eyes of disapproval at his callous term for Ashino. Waltfeld had turned to Alkire. "And I may not have been as fully dialled in to the infantry war as you probably were, Major, but I still heard more than a few things about the Hellhounds. A few of those were even about the so called "Lieutenant". From what I heard, he's not a man who switches loyalties lightly, and now we see him fighting against the Blue Cosmos Puritans, who must be his old bosses. There must be something else compelling besides the words and philosophies of a mere boy, barely into adulthood, behind the creation of these Isolationists."
"Cyprus Finch doesn't change loyalties. I don't think he's changed sides at all." Alkire had said with a slight smile. "He's still on the side he was always on, the side that fights for peace. He's not a political soldier, though he is quite politically astute, and he does work for politicians... of course, we all do, don't we? No, the only reason Cyprus is in Sai's camp is because Sai's camp is the one that stands the best chance of bringing peace, in Cyprus's estimation."
"If he's so peace minded, why's he in the Hellhounds? Why was he working for Asmodeus and Blue Cosmos in the first place?" Dearka had asked.
"I don't know his reasons, no one but him does. I can speculate though." Alkire had answered, slowly. "Let me put it like this... you fought for ZAFT, to preserve and protect the PLANTS. You did what your chain of command told you to do to the best of your ability, and did not generally question whys or wherefores. Why? Because you're a soldier, a professional soldier. Does that mean you always agreed with the policies and actions of your superiors? Of course not, but you followed their orders when they came anyway. At least until things got to a point where the orders coming from above were so ludicrous and impossible that you had to take a stand and do the right thing by refusing to follow them and setting your own course under new leadership."
"Like what happened between me and Le Creusete at Jachin Due." Ysak had piped up, a dark look on his face, from his post in one corner of the room. "I'd admired that... man... my entire military career. And then he tried to kill Dearka and then me, as part of a plot to cause the extinction of humanity."
"Sure." Alkire had replied, not being well informed about the events of that battle, which had happened far away in space, not connected to his own war. "And Cyprus is peace minded like I am, except more so. He's not genocidal, but killing people to bring peace doesn't weigh on his mind, as far as I've ever been able to determine. He led the attack on the subway tunnels against us, and was likely responsible for at least some of the deaths of the protest leaders in the Blue Cosmos secret attacks beforehand. Once he's identified people as enemies, he has no mercy and no forgiveness and no second thoughts for them."
"I wouldn't sell Sai short either. He may only be a year older than Kira, but let's not forget his experiences aboard the Archangel during the last war." Murrue added. "He was our information and electronic warfare technician from the day after Heliopolis's destruction until several weeks after Jachin Due. If theres a faster, surer way to give someone maturity than giving them crushing responsibility and lots of life or death situations to worry about it in, I don't know what it is."
"He comes from a wealthy family too, even if they are slightly estranged and impoverished after Heliopolis and the first ruination of Orb. I never noticed him having any problems being outgoing and personable during time at school in Heliopolis... in fact he was one of those universally popular people." Mirialla chimed in. "He got along with everyone, from the loud jocks to the quiet, nerdy people like Kira, to the goofy, go it alone crowd, like... Tolle. And me." She picked up her voice again after a moment of lip chewing. "He was engaged to Fllay, daughter of the former vice foriegn minister of the EA. Responsibility and the ability to stand up under pressure weren't new things to Sai... he was the first one to volunteer to help out on the Archangel. He was always the leader amongst us volunteers."
"Still, the kind of backing that it would require to marshal the forces needed to stand up to Cervantes Zunnichi... a byword for immense wealth and power if there ever was one, even without his ties to Blue Cosmos..." Waltfeld had replied, stubbornly clinging to his point.
"He's married to Vanai Zunnichi, remember? It was at their wedding that we got kidnapped." Kira spoke up. "I've no doubt that you're right, Sai does have a lot of backers and support, that he's a figurehead for a much bigger group of people. But I don't think he's a puppet leader... the Isolationist's are his creation, and anyone else is either an ally or a follower. He's got a lot more natural charisma and leadership ability than I do. And he's smart... maybe not technically smart like a lot of Coordinators are, but he's definitely people smart. He knows how to talk to them, how to convince people that he's right, how to make friends and avoid arguments that would lead to becoming enemies. He knows how to trust, and how to delegate responsibility. He learned how to be a good leader from people like Captain Ramius, Mu, Lord Nara Attha, Mr. Kisaka and you yourself, Mr. Waltfeld."
Kira...
Kira pulled his arm off his eyes and looked around the room for the source of the whisper. The bedroom was still empty, the door shut, the lights out, everything undisturbed.
Kira... This time the whisper had a note of reproach to it and he listened carefully, realizing that it didn't come from the room around him, but from within the confines of his own skull. The voice was instantly recognizable to him, naturally, since it was the one voice he treasured above all others in the world. He just wasn't used to this whole mental thing yet... most times, hearing voices, even of loved ones, in your head was grounds for registration at an asylum, in his book. "Lacus?" he asked, tenatively, to the empty room. Katie had told both him and Lacus that when communicating with Newtype powers it wasn't necessary for them to speak out loud as well, that merely forming the thoughts would allow the Active, Lacus in this case, to pluck them from his mind without need for verbalization while she was communicating with him, but Kira still hadn't brought himself around to the point where he could manage just thinking a conversation with a person, without words. Neither had Ysak, from the number of times Kira had seen him not quite whispering to not just himself in hallways and out of the way rooms.
You want to talk? She asked him. "Well I was kinda sleeping, but then I noticed you were gone. Guess I had a little bit of an introspective flashback going."
I noticed. You were getting agitated. You want to talk about it? A lot has happened over the last few days. Lacus's mental voice managed to convey far more concern than even her normally expressive voice could, since she was sending him her emotions straight from their source, without translation through any other part of her brain or body. Kira swung his feet out of bed and sat up, patting himself down briefly to make sure he was clothed... sometimes he wasn't, when he was really tired, and he forgot about it after waking up. He'd yet to fully embarass himself by walking into the common breakfast area in his birthday suit, but he'd come pretty damn close a few times. The mental giggle he got from Lacus during this brief distracted moment sent all sorts of shivers and goosebumps running along his skin... giggle's were always like that. It wasn't always the most pleasant of sensations, but this time, at night, in a bedroom, it was quite provocative. He forced his body to relax and snagged a pair of trousers from a dresser across the room, navigating by memory with a few barely noticed mental nudges from Lacus's memory. Sometimes it seemed like she spent more time in his head than her own, but so far she seemed to be handling things just fine, without any troubles.
"Where are you?" he asked, slipping into the pants, but remaining shirtless and shoeless... this was practically his house now, even if it was just a single floor of a much larger building, with common spaces shared by several bedrooms, an old ambassadorial suite that currently housed Lacus and himself, plus Dearka and Miriallia as well as Ysak and Katie. Athrun and Cagalli quite naturally had the Presidential quarters several levels above, while the rest of their friends were staying in the somewhat simpler and smaller guest rooms in the basements of the complex. Kira had thought about protesting about taking up all the good rooms, but everyone had been quietly insistent on it. Or not so quietly... Waltfeld hadn't hesistated to point out, quite publicly, that Lacus simply could not stay in a small public servant's room, not with all the reporters snooping around. She needed quarters befitting her so called "status". Kira had to admit, the privacy was nice, with all the rooms being extensively soundproofed. The bed's were soft too. And with no windows in the bedrooms, that meant that whatever happened in them...
Stay's in them. My, you're becoming quite the lech, Kira. Lacus mock admonished, with another giggle that didn't help his thought paths. I remember a time not so very long ago when even thinking about kissing me was enough to cause you to stammer and blush, much less where your mind was wandering just now. "And I remember a time when even thinking about making a comment like that, much less use the word "lech", would have done the same to you. It was about the same time, I think." Kira retorted. I'm on the balcony, ocean side view, by the way. Whatever happened to us, that transformed us from such shy, tenative people into the wicked teenagers we are today? "I don't know. Maybe it has something to do with how many of the mysteries of what goes on behind the bedroom doors of our parents we found out for ourselves since then." Kira said, with a slight smile, heading out of their bedroom into the common area, which was mostly dark as well, lit only by a few shafts of moonlight streaming in from the doors leading to the outer, wraparound balcony. I doubt my parents did the things we do. Lacus's thoughts were dimmed for a moment with tightly contained sorrow at the mention of her dead father and mother, but it was gone before he could comment on it.
"I don't know. Someone had to come up with everything, else we wouldn't know to try it. And I have trouble believing even Dearka is creative enough to come up with a few of the things I've heard of, so he must have gotten them from somewhere." This last comment he spoke to her back, coming up behind her and to her side, where she stood on the balcony looking out at the nighttime ocean, its water glittering very dimly with the light of the moon. She wore a simple nightgown that would probably be light pink in daylight, but the moonlight turned it a more cream white, washing out all color, leaving only shades behind. He slipped one arm casually over her shoulders and rested his other hand on the rail, looking out at the sea and up at the night sky above, which was almost entirely clear, with a few small clouds low on the horizon and a three quarters moon overhead.
"This is a delightful conversation, if anyone but our friends were to overhear it." Lacus murmured, tucking her head up against his side. She felt him chuckle. It was a good feeling and a good sound. She couldn't hear it often enough, after all the pain and suffering he'd endured and continued to endure even now.
"Try as we may, there's no getting over the fact that we're teenagers. Maybe not your average college age kids off the street, but there's a few things that just aren't fully under our control. Hormones are one of them. An interest in sex is an outgrowth of hormones." Kira replied. He made it sound sensible, and then he chuckled again. "Still, I'd imagine we'd be ruining even more fantasies than we already have if we were overhead, so maybe we should change the subject to something less explosive."
"Something like politics?" Lacus murmured. She felt him wince inside her head, though his outward expression was as clam and focused as ever. Odd times indeed, when politics is a safer topic than sex. The thought wasn't exactly meant for him, but it reached him anyway, like most of her thoughts that weren't carefully shielded did. This connection they had, as intimate Active and Latent Newtypes, yes it was very convenient a lot of the time, allowing her to sense exactly how he was feeling so she could head off any problems before they occured, not to mention the instantaneous and perfectly private communication between them it allowed... but it took a lot of getting used to. A lot. It wasn't like beepcalling, which she was still learning how to do... she had to concentrate on NOT sending him emotions and thoughts, rather than the reverse. Sure, maybe there wasn't all that much about her thoughts and her feelings that she didn't want Kira privy to, and vice versa, but the mind was and always would be a very private place... memories that no one else had any business looking at were in there. She felt that there was a very good chance she might accidentally look in on one of Kira's private memories or send him one of her own sometime, and something that awkward wasn't something they needed cluttering up their relationship, especially with all the outside problems they had discovered they had.
"That's a hell of an understatement." Kira allowed with a slight half smile. "I thought that maybe all of our problems were solved after Asmodeus surrendered to Sai on TV. He and Frost were in custody, Cervantes and Blue Cosmos were disgraced and under investigation, with Cervantes himself under house arrest. Cervantes isn't the only problem, as we both know from looking at his computer just how widespread the membership of upper echelon Blue Cosmos is, but he was the worst of them by far. Most of them were only in Blue Cosmos for economic or political reasons... he was the driving force behind the genocidal hatred of all things Coordinator."
"But then Panama happened." Lacus supplied as he trailed off. He nodded once, his eyes blank as he stared up at the sky, as if looking for a future written up there.
"But then Panama happened." Kira agreed. "Yesterday morning everything in the world was looking up... then Panama was destroyed. We still don't know how or by what or who, all we know is that the mass driver is once again a big pile of scrap, while the base itself is almost totally ruined, devastated to a degree far greater than when it was attacked by ZAFT in the last war. Orb radar tracked two objects on escape velocity courses from the Porta Panama mass driver, both launched less than an hour before it was destroyed. All we know about those is that one was very large, almost the size of a space frigate and one was very small, only a little bigger than a mobile suit." Kira brought his gaze down and looked in Lacus's lilac eyes. "As if that wasn't enough, all contact we had, tenuous as it was, with the EA high command, has been completely cut off as of this morning. Our phone calls and messages go through to them, but there is no answer. For what reason, we cannot determine. No one Cagalli, Alkire, Murrue or Waltfeld has talked to has any idea what's going on, or if they do know they are keeping the secret very well."
"And then there's the news of the renewed activity in ZAFT up in the PLANTS, according to Mr. Waltfeld." Lacus added for him. "They've been rebuilding ever since Carpentaria and now it looks like they're ready at last to renew the war full force." Kira nodded again.
"I just can't shake a really bad feeling. Like that everything in this war so far has just been a precursor, a sideshow to what's about to happen. Cervantes has disappeared again... he's probably dead if he remained in Panama, but what if he caused what happened there? Frost was taken captive too, and we both know there is absolutely no containing him when he gets going. The EA has cut us off, the PLANTS won't talk to us, both sides look like they're more than ready to start up the war where they left off... what exactly did we accomplish on Purgatory Day, anyway? Orb is free again, don't get me wrong, I'm fully appreciative of that... but..."
"You were expecting a more widespread, worldwide response." Lacus finished. She sighed, ever so slightly. "You're not the only one. All those people dead... this city wrecked... the damage done to the lives and livelihoods of millions of people in Orb alone, not to mention around the world... and it's all taken backstage to the new events circulating around Sai. I don't think it'll be forgotten anytime soon, but as long as the infighting between the Isolationists and Puritans continues, it will not be in the public eye, and if it isn't there, any memory of the event will be severly curtailed in its ability to affect the world political state. It's deplorable to think of it this way, but Sai planned his event better than we planned ours. A mobile suit tearing down a city and slaughtering crowds of innocent people is terrible... almost too terrible. The world is in shock over it, many people almost afraid to believe something so terrible could actually happen. Armed soldiers sent to assassinate a young man and his lovely wife in their sleep well, it's not as hard to imagine, if almost equally deplorable."
"And then comes the mystery, of course. The bad guys get caught red handed and are rounded up for trial... then they disappear and a major military base is destroyed, oddly enough the same one where they were being held prisoner." Kira wrapped up the thought. "Too much coincidence there. No one is going to let this go until whatever happened at Panama is finally found out, and revealed to the public fully and properly."
"Given the nature of the situation, I don't know if that will ever happen, Kira. Full disclosure has only rarely been a tool of the people in charge of the EA." Lacus said. They let the conversation die away, staring out at the placid ocean together for most of another hour, endeavoring to take it's calm into their troubled minds, to little avail. They couldn't know that their problems were already being adressed, at least in a manner of speaking.
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"Dead!? What do you mean, they're all dead?" Sai almost shouted at the nervous eyed EA official who'd come to see him in his office in Hawaii. The EA had tried to put him in protective custody, under the care and protection of their own soldiers, but Sai knew well how rife the ranks of the EA military was with the supporters of Blue Cosmos... all too often Puritans. He wasn't about to put himself on the execution block by trusting soldiers who privately believed in the ideals of his estranged father in law to keep him alive. He moved out of his destroyed house and set up shop at his office in Hawaii, which was rapidly becoming the headquarters for the Isolationist movement worldwide. It wasn't anywhere near as comfortable and homey as the mansion, but difficult times called for tough measures. Even Vanai was putting up with things tolerably well, though she intensely disliked sleeping on a fold out couch in his office. She didn't particularly like playing secretary for him either, but he'd had to replace his old secretaries, who'd all been Puritan moles planted by Cervantes to watch over him. And currently he didn't have anyone else of sufficient security clearance to take his calls, other than her. Thomas Glory was still in the hospital, recovering from his re-opened wounds, which he had suffered from the blasting charge that had taken off the door to the hideaway in Sai's mansion during the attack. Most of the surviving Hellhounds were in the hospital as well, recovering from various gunshot and shrapnel wounds suffered during the seige.
By all rights, Cyprus should have been in the hospital, sporting a broken collarbone and compound fracture of the wrist on opposite limbs, not to mention severely gashed fingers on his right hand and more bruises and minor cuts than could be easily counted. With his left arm in a sling and his right wrist in a cast, plus several yards of bandages wrapped around various parts of his body, he certainly looked like he should be in intensive care. But Cyprus had refused all but the most perfunctory of treatments, settling for relocating his disjointed left arm and the bare minimum of bone regenerative procedures for his collarbone and wrist. The minor injuries he allowed to be covered, but no more than that... as far as Sai could tell Cyprus was getting around with only local anasthetics to dull the pain at shoulder and wrist, not true painkillers. He'd thought about ordering his friend to lay off it a bit and get some needed rest, but the look on Cyprus's face when Sai had opened his mouth to give that order had killed it before he could voice it. Sai reflected that the Lieutenant wasn't so good at following orders he didn't like... a common feature of a lot of soldiers he respected.
So instead of being in a bed, recuperating like any reasonable person would be, Cyprus stood guard just inside the door to Sai's office, while Ramierez, who'd come through the whole fight with MAGOS with only a few bullet bruises to show for it, stood armed watch outside with Vanai and a few of the higher level Isolationists. What precisely Cyprus planned to do to protect Sai with two bum arms, Sai wasn't sure, but he didn't doubt that whatever it was would be very effective... that's just how Cyprus was. As if that wasn't protection enough, Markov Ashino also stood in his office whenever he was there, and generally followed Sai around like a red haired limpet. Though soundly beaten by Frost, Ashino was a BCPU as well, and despite the continued lack of his required drug, gamma whateveritwas, he still healed far faster than any Natural. By the end of the first day after the attack he was already walking around without pain, and by the end of the second all of his bruises and cuts were healed. Sai jerked his mind back to the here and now, looking at the minor official in front of him, a sweating man in a grainy brown business suit and white shirt with grey tie... the very image of a political nobody, a messenger of no one important.
"Say that again, slowly and clearly." Sai ordered, leaning back in his chair, his steady gaze never leaving the edgy brown eyes of the man standing in front of his desk. The man gulped and chewed his lip as he sought to moisten his dry mouth, while his hands quivered and twitched at his sides, carefully fully within view of both Ashino and Cyprus, who watched the man with unfriendly looks on their faces from either side of the office. Truly, the man was a poster boy for nervous tics, but he had reason to be discomfited... he was apparently the bearer of very bad news, and the glares from Ashino and Cyprus did nothing to ease his job.
"Y-ye-yes, s-sir." The man, who was an assistant undersecretary for public works in the Atlantic Federation and completely out of his depth in the halls of the truly powerful, swallowed again and restated his message in as clear and calm voice as he could manage. "D-doubtless you've h-heard about what happened recently in P-panama. The base was destroyed and the mass d-driver rendered in-inoperable. Y-You also probably know that P-Panama was where Cervantes Z-Zunnichi was being held prior to trial, along with his a-accomplices."
"Skip ahead to what we don't know." Cyprus advised. The flunky nodded so many times and so rapidly that Ashino thought his head might roll right off his shoulders.
"W-well, what w-wasn't p-public knowledge was that there was a p-pretrial. Held this morning, for the accused and his a-accomplices."
"A pretrial?" Sai arced one eyebrow and leaned forward slightly. "Why would they hold a secret pretrial just before they took him to court..." Sai trailed off and glanced around the office briefly before returning his gaze to the messenger. "Don't bother providing me with an answer, I believe I know why, given my knowledge of Blue Cosmos and Cervantes. What happened at this pretrial?"
"Well, s-sir, first you should know who a-attended the pretrial." the flunky said. There was a long pause as the man screwed up his courage. "No one is supposed to say anything... b-but I-I-I... can't let it go on like it has, you u-understand? S-someone has to do something. I... I didn't know who else to go to. T-things are s-so confused."
"Just tell us who attended the pretrial." Ashino recommended, trying hard not to sound intimidating. It must have worked, because the man looked slightly more in control as he straightened up again, and swallowed yet another time.
"Everyone." the man whispered.
"What?" Sai leaned even further forward.
"I... I said, everyone, s-sir. The President... the Vice President, the Secretary of State, the Senate and Congressional Party leaders, the Speaker of the House... everyone senior enough to matter in the Atlantic Federation. The same for the Eurasian Federation and every other country in the Earth Alliance. The Joint Chief's of Staff as well as most of their general staffs. All the major corporate leaders and economic figureheads. Name anyone important in world politics on Earth and odds are, t-they were there."
"I see. And?" Sai prodded.
"A-and... a-and they're all d-d-dead, s-sir. A-all of them. I-including, C-Cervantes Z-Zunnichi." The man paused and swallowed. "No evidence has been found of either of Cervantes's accomplices, though t-things a-are... w-well... let me s-show y-you..." the man reached up into his coat pocket. Cyprus took two steps forward, an extremely displeased expression on his face, gun appearing in his left hand, even bound in a sling as it was. Ashino reacted little differently, though he was able to hold his gun normally. Both men aimed directly at the head of the flunky and their aim did not waver even slightly, even as he froze in mid gesture. "NO!" the man squealed. "I-I'm just grabbing s-some pi-pictures! Please d-don't s-shoot m-me!"
Cyprus nodded to Ashino and kept the man covered while the BCPU stepped forward and reached into the man's coat for him, removing a small cardboard folder from an interior pocket. Ashino tore the twine that tied the package shut off with a simple twitch of his fingers and slowly opened the folder, alert for any traps or otherwise threatening reactions from either the man or the folder. It was amazing what forms explosives could take these days, not to even mention things like contact poisons and viral warfare. Ashino ran his hands over each photograph as he looked at them dispassionately, checking for anything out of place. There was nothing... just standard high quality digital pictures. "He's clean." Cyprus slowly backed down, though the gun didn't quite go away... he was a lot touchier than he'd used to be, before the assassination attempt. Ashino finished flipping through the pictures, careful to keep any expression off his face... it wasn't that hard, they were much like he'd expected them to be, ever since the nervous man had said that Frost and Asmodeus were missing.
Sai flipped through a photoshoot of a massacre, worse than anything any horror movie had ever prepared him for. People were not so much killed as torn to shreds, heads twisted from shoulders, limbs ripped off and torsos smashed in pulpy ruins. There was so much blood on the ground he'd initially mistaken it for red carpeting on the floor and wallpaper on the walls. The pictures didn't bring it fully into scale, but there must have been more than a hundred bodies in wherever the photos were taken. He did some swallowing of his own. "I... see..."
"Cervantes Zunnichi was found with his heart ripped from his chest and crushed. The rest of the victims in the briefing theatre were also killed by a person using their bare hands and experts believe all killing was accomplished by a single person within a fifteen minute timespan. There were thirty six members of the Secret Service in the room at the time. Most were unable to even fire their weapons. There were fifty soldiers directly outside the completely secure room, who obviously heard nothing from within the room. They are in scarcely better condition than the delegates inside. Again, forensic specialists agree that they were killed by at most one or two subjects, and only half the soldiers were able to get off shots of their own, to no apparent effect. Frankly, we're all stumped as to how that came to be." the flunky said, reciting a portion of the message he'd rehearsed on the flight over from New New York.
"I'm not." Sai replied, struggling for calm. He didn't elaborate though... this man had no need to know about the capabilities of the BCPU's. He thought about a bunch of unsuspecting civilians and aging military officers, trapped in a room with a killer strong enough to tear down a cinderblock wall with his bare hands... no, he wasn't stumped at all. The fifty soldiers outside the door must have been packed in like sardines in a can... they would have had little better chance than the politico's, especially if Frost had armed himself. "Is there anything else?" Sai forced himself to ask, dreading the answer.
"Well..." the flunky replied in a steadier voice, calmed himself by how professional the younger Mr. Zunnichi was being. "Let's see... oh yes. The base was destroyed, we think by a mobile suit or suits, exact type we're not sure of. The secret project that Cervantes was preparing in the SLHB (Super Large Hanger Bay) was gone when damage control teams arrived, as were all the mobile suit supplies that had been stockpiled there since whatever it was that was inside first arrived. While the destruction of base structures and materials is close to ninety seven percent, casualties amongst troops stationed there are fortunately only about forty five percent... whatever attacked the base seemed primarily interested in destroying the base itself, plus the mass driver, not killing off the soldiers stationed there."
"He wanted to be sure no one would follow him." Ashino said out loud. Sai shot him a glance and then nodded at the flunky. Ashino took the hint. Not a topic for discussion around possibly unsecure ears.
"So let me sum it up. Cervantes is dead. The world leaders, political, economic and military, are all dead, along with their senior chains of command. Porta Panama might as well not exist, for all its current military value. We've lost that mass driver again. Asmodeus Sark and Zacharis Frost are missing, presumed dead, probably killed by the same force that destroyed the base, whatever it was. Also, a highly secret Blue Cosmos and EA cooperative project has gone missing from its high security hanger in Panama, along with a great deal of supplies for mobile suits that had been stockpiled there. This happened either right before or during the attack that destroyed the base. Right now, there is quite literally no one in charge of the EA. Is that what I'm hearing?" Sai asked the flunky, narrowing his eyes.
"U-uhh... um... y-yes, s-sir?" the man sounded scared out of his wits. The smile that broke out across the younger Mr. Zunnichi's face did nothing to calm his renewed apprehension... what sort of man could hear such devastating news and SMILE? Sai leaned back in his chair again and fought to keep his expression under control... no need to freak out the messenger, even if the news he brought wasn't nearly the apocalyptic tragedy he thought it was. He couldn't pretend to be happy about the current state of affairs as revealed to him, but neither could he deny that this certainly felt a lot like divine intervention in his favor.
"You did very well to bring this to my attention. You can rest assured that I, and the world, will not forget the very brave and couragous thing you have done today. Without your help, the world could very well have spiralled down into chaos and doom and nobody would have been the wiser for that condition until it was far too late." Sai told the flunky, whose name he couldn't remember. Doubtless Cyprus or Ashino would... they had far more focused minds than his, especially when his own was churning at lightspeed. "Please, wait outside for a while, would you? I can have rooms prepared for you in the lower levels of the office building, if you'd like, or we can arrange for a flight back to New New York. As you can doubtless imagine,the news you've given me now changes a great deal of things, and I cannot afford to hesitate to act to correct the problems I now see in front of me." the man bowed and practically fled almost as soon as Sai even got done with his praise of the man... plainly he could not have been more uncomfortable unless Cyprus and Ashino had kept their guns on him. Sai shrugged slightly... to each their own, some people just didn't have physical courage, though the man had demonstrated extremes of loyalty in defying the orders of whoever was trying to keep the massacre a secret to fly out and tell Sai about it.
After the door was shut there was a few seconds of silence while each of the three men present gathered their thoughts and organized them into coherent form. Sai first fixed his gaze upon Ashino. "So I think we're all in agreement then? Frost and Asmodeus are not dead. Indeed, they are the two most likely suspects for the massacre as well as the subsequent destruction of Panama."
"I cannot completely vouch for Asmodeus, though he does strike me as exremely hard to kill, for a Natural, but Frost... most definitely, he's alive." Ashino replied, his voice completely without doubt. "With Cervantes in disgrace and imprisoned, most of the people involved with the inner workings of the BCPU project would have been rounded up and imprisoned as well. Most likely Frost was only contained with regular maximum security protocols, designed with humans or Coordinators in mind. It must have been hard for him, playing the good captive until the right moment for carnage arrived. Personally, I'm very surprised, I did not think he had that sort of restraint in him."
"Before the assassination attempt, I'd have agreed with you." Cyprus said, cutting in. "However, while you were unconscious and I was disabled, Frost spoke to me about his plans... for what reason I'll probably never know, maybe none but the need for the megolomaniacal to have people groveling at their mercy. The picture he painted for me was hardly clear, but the major points I got out of it are these: one, Frost sees himself as both the ultimate threat to mankind and the ultimate peacebringer. Two, Frost is planning to somehow force all of humanity to unite against him. Three, Frost plans to destroy all of humanity, after they've united against him. Particulars as to how he plans to accomplish either of the latter two goals are beyond me, though he seemed nothing less than certain he could do it."
"I think I understand." Ashino gazed blankly at the wall for a moment. "Yes, it's certainly possible."
"What is?" Sai asked.
"As you may or may not have known, the BCPU project was commenced to provide pilots for the EA Gundams, the GAT series of advanced mobile suits. Our predecessors for the original GAT series, then Frost, Cray, Amy and myself for the GAT-Super series, though Amy's machine was never completed. However, the Blue Cosmos design team also created one more machine in a new series, the GAT-Ultra. I never saw anything more than partial schematics and outlines for it, but I remember hearing the Doc talk about it in progress reports to Cervantes. It's called the Judgement, and it's purpose was to serve as the main tool in bringing about the destruction of the PLANTS. It was the command model for the GAT-Super series, an ultimate machine, if you will. Now, obviously I cannot say from personal experience just how ultimate it is... but what little I know about its specs is more than enough to account for the wreckage of Panama. There is no way Frost could have destroyed a base of that size with the Fury alone... it isn't equipped for mass destruction. Even the Merciless would have been pressed to assure nearly one hundred precent destruction."
"So Frost took the Judgement and the Fury and used one or a combination of them to destroy Panama and the mass driver, after either setting explosives or otherwise ensuring the later destruction of the mass driver so that no effective pursuit could be launched against him." Sai tapped his fingers on his desk. "But why? What can he hope to accomplish with just two mobile suits, extremely powerful or not?"
Ashino smiled slightly, the expression grim. "Pardon my inability to properly explain. The Judgement should not be classified as a mere mobile suit... it is a humanoid battleship more than three times the size of the Merciless. I'm not privy to it's full armament list, but I know it carries multiple nuclear missiles plus capital space warship category weaponry. Combined with triple layer phase shift armor and a lightwave barrier Citadel array much like the one the Merciless was equipped with, it is quite simply put the most heavily armed and armored machine currently in space."
"I see." Sai's lips pressed together in a firm line of displeasure. "So we've got an apocalyptic madman on the loose with what amounts to the power to annihilate an entire civilization. That's wonderful."
"That's not even the tip of the iceberg." Cyprus pointed out. "Frost is a loose cannon, but he's still, at most, a national level threat. ZAFT is not blind or stupid... it won't take them long to connect the disaster at Panama with the hesistancy in the senior levels of the political and military sectors of the EA and get the correct conclusion... that currently, there is no leadership worthy of the name in the EA. They've been building their forces back up ever since Carpentaria and even more recently the scale of their buildup has intensified dramatically. They will be ready to make a move on us in a matter of days, not weeks. And currently, we are weaker than we have ever been before."
"I agree. But where will they move on us? I cannot claim to be near the expert in military matters as you are." Sai acknowledged. "If you were them, where would you attack?"
"They'll hit the lunar bases. It's really their only choice. Carpentaria is still a mess, logistically speaking, and what ground forces they have are far too firmly dug in to be able to mobilize for another ground assualt within the timeframe I'm seeing them using. Added on to that is the fact that, historically, the ground war has never gone altogether in ZAFT's favor... every time they make a major commitment in force it turns out to either be a trap or a debacle, like JOSH-A or Carpentaria. No, they'll be hitting the moon. The Ptolmiaus base was annihilated by GENESIS at the end of the last war, but we have several other lunar fleet bases on both the light and dark sides of the moon, not to mention the factory and civilian cities. If they can disable or even occupy those bases then space will belong to them and there won't be a thing we will ever be able to do to strike directly at the PLANTS ever again. Personally I'm surprised they didn't try tactics like this sooner, though Endymion was a major loss for them, I guess, and the moon always has been very well defended. Of course... that was with strong leadership..." Cyprus trailed off with a slight flair of dramaticism.
"Do you think they know the truth?" Sai asked.
"I don't see how they can... we didn't even know the truth until just now." Ashino observed.
"The ZAFT intelligence network is very good. But they aren't that good." Cyprus agreed. "Of course, I might be wrong and maybe they do know we don't have leaders. I'm sure many of them suspect something of the sort, no matter what they know. But if they really did know, I think we'd already be under attack."
"We'll operate under the assumption that they do know the EA currently has no effective leadership and that their attack will commence at any moment." Sai said firmly. He leaned forward towards his desk and started typing commands into his keyboard, initiating calls to all his key staff and allies around the world. The room darkened as the windows polarized and the lights dimmed in preparation for another videoconference. "This isn't how I wanted things to go. If possible, I wanted to work with Cervantes, or at worst replace him peaceably. Instead, I've got a fractured Blue Cosmos, a depressed military, an angry public and a massive gaping hole where I was planning to recruit supporters from in anticipation of assuming the reins of command. But I guess you have to work with the cards fate deals you. This is all preliminary, but Cyprus, you will be leading the war effort. No, don't protest, I'm not promoting you, I'm just giving you extra responsibility." Sai ordered, cutting off the expected complaint before Cyprus could voice it.
"What about me?" Ashino asked.
"You'll be assisting Cyprus. He'll be in control of the regular military... I want you to take charge of the mobile suit forces. I'll be putting both of you in more permanent contact with the R and D department, so you can coordinate the integration of the Cataphract and Archmage systems into our arsenal, as well as any other new technologies we can whip up before the end of the war." Sai said, even as the screens around him started flickering to life, showing the surprised and concerned faces of his major supporters worldwide. "I will be stepping forward to take the reins of overall command. This is not a burden I would have sought out, but given the current state of things, I have no choice but to assume it now because there is simply no one else who can. Hopefully my tenure as world leader will be brief and successful. With your support, my friends, and the support of the good people of this world, we can bring this war to a swift and bloodless end." Sai activated his microphone so he could address his supporters. "A recent bit of tragic news has come to my attention recently, my friends. Because of this news, which I will shortly relate to you, our timetable has been moved up dramatically... to now. Get your people moving and follow the plan... ZAFT will be hitting us in a matter of days and we have to be as strong then as we always have been. Now... let me speak of something very unpleasant..."
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"This machine really is amazing." Frost muttured to himself as he looked over a self diagnostic of the Judgement for perhaps the fifth or sixth time. After slaughtering the lambs in the briefing theatre he'd gone directly to the hanger where the Fury was stored, killing all who were unfortunate enough to cross his path. He'd been engineered to kill any Coordinator or especially Coordinator's, plural, who'd dared to challenge him, thus fighting through a bunch of second rate Natural garrison soldiers was hardly even an exercise. He'd planned to head directly for the Fury, but upon seeing the recently completed Judgement lying on its maintenance cradles, his instincts had thrummed with pleasure. He'd become instantly convinced that he'd just been gifted with a sign from whatever force controlled the universe that his path was the correct one. It hadn't taken him long to hack the computer codes locking out access to the Judgements controls... unlike weasly little Ashino, he'd never really specialized in non-combatant skills like data hacking, but he'd still received the same training and in his current, almost hyper-enlightened state, he found it far easier than usual to concentrate on the small, boring tasks.
Compared to the Fury, piloting the Judgement was like walking around with a full size sofa strapped to each of his limbs... they weren't exactly heavy, but they were very unwieldy and inelegant. Each step took a seeming eternity between when he moved the controls and when he felt the impact of the foot hitting the ground, even thoug the delay was still less than a second. Upon first standing up in the machine... incidentally tearing the roof off the SLHB... he'd been dismayed at the lack of agility and grace of the great machine... maybe it would do just fine for a lumbering oaf like Cray, but his battlefield was the flashing razorfields of lightning hand to hand combat... this trealcy plodding was almost more than he could bear. Not to mention that his preternatural agility had always been his primary defence, and that was denied to him here... he felt exposed and vulnerable. Well, he did until he reviewed the defenses the Judgement came equipped with. The machine sported the same triple layering of phase shift armor that had first proved so effective on the Merciless, but that was only the fundamental layer of the defenses. Geischmeidig-panzer beam deflecting shield blisters were mounted four to each limb plus four more each on the front and rear torso and two on the head, all arrayed so their particle deflecting fields overlapped. While these shields, first pioneered on the Forbidden, would not provide complete immunity to beam based attacks, especially those fired from large warships, they would be more than enough to deal with most mobile suit weaponry.
As if those defenses weren't formidable enough, the Judgement was also equipped with a portable lightwave barrier generator Citadel array, much like the one the Merciless had, but of course far larger and even stronger. By trading away the Judgement's already limited maneuverability as well as the ability to return fire for a short time, Frost could weather even direct hits from strategic level weaponry with the Citadel array activated. He'd also been pleased to see that the Judgement was equipped with a Celerity system much like the one on his own Fury, though the increase in speed and maneuverability was dramatically less... when active the great lumbering brute was still less mobile than the Merciless at it's best, but at least it allowed for the possibility of tactical maneuvering. Not that the Judgement really needed to do all that much more than pivot and point to orient it's weapons systems... Frost was sure Cray was turning over in his grave somewhere with jealousy, given the firepower of the machine Frost now commanded. It had been more than sufficient to wipe out Panama without even progressing past the secondary weapon systems.
Dual 120mm gatling cannon turrets were mounted on the outside of each upper arm and upper leg, with fully three hundred sixty degree rotational capability for unidirectional focused fire. More than four hundred anti-vehicle missile launchers mounted in banks of forty pockmarked the lower back region, while the lower legs each contained three larger anti-ship missile silos. Missile and projectile interception 20mm CIWS guns sprouted like body hair from dozens of places all over the entirety of the machine in case he wanted to deny his enemies even the faintest of hopes of success by intercepting their weapons before they could impact the Judgement's armor. Upon each titanic shoulder crouched four semi-strategic multipurpose missile launchers, each equipped with a nuclear missile with three seventy five kiloton warheads inside. The two main weapon systems were mounted in the arms of the machine, with the left arm ending in a long stump instead of a hand, the stump consisted of six 75cm gottfried high energy beam cannons and their associated cooling and recoil compensation systems, the weapon system was codenamed Gottfried's Maul. The main gun of the Judgment, codenamed Ultimate Justice, was a semi-detachable rifle like weapon carried in the right hand, the weapon itself being a 300cm positron cannon similar to but more powerful than the Lohengrin cannons carried by the Archangel and Kusanagi. And if he really wanted to challenge his abilities, the Judgement had forty eight detachable "gun barrel" wire guided attack pods with twin beam cannons, ugraded versions of the same weapons that came standard on the Moebius Zero class of Mobile Armors.
Combined with the Fury and the small barge's worth of ammunition and replacement parts that he had stolen along with the Judgement after destroying the base, Frost had more than enough material resources to begin his purge of humanity. Now he just had to decide where he would begin. The Earth Alliance had been decapitated by his little kick off celebration, and from what few radio comms he could intercept, sitting way up in geosynch orbit, things were turning into an absolute clusterfuck down there, with both the military and the political adminstration running around like BCPU hopefuls with their arms torn off. Perhaps destroying the mass driver hadn't been necessary after all, but such was life... he couldn't very well undestroy it, could he? No... he'd leave the Alliance to stew for the moment... they'd still be there, proably still panicking, when he got done with the Coordinators. He hadn't come out of Earth nearly as close to the PLANTS as he'd wanted, but astronavigation had never been his strongest suit... he'd just loaded the mobile suits and cargo onto the driver, ensured there was enough power then hit the start button after setting the timer on the bombs. Given his present course he'd reach proximity to the PLANTS outer defense lines in a few days, assuming he was willing to merely drift and wait. Which he was. The desire to close to bloody battle and begin tearing the hearts of his enemies out by hand was strong, but the senseless killer part of him had relinquished much of it's control over his actions as of late. While it would be fun to give into his desires now, it would be far more rewarding to wait and let things mature a bit, then act when the situation was right.
Naturally, his enemies would eventually come for him, even if he did nothing. Since Cervantes was dead, Blue Cosmos would have to find a new leader, and Frost could not imagine anyone but that fool Sai Argyle taking over the job... he was far too well placed to let the opportunity pass him by, assuming he had even a quarter of the brains he must have had to trick Asmodeus. And even if the Natural did not realize it, sly little Ashino wouldn't, and apparently he was some sort of advisor to the Natural. Frost grinned savagely and spit in disgust... a BCPU, willingly subordinating himself to a Natural... it was against everything a BCPU should feel. They were monsters, slaves to their masters unwillingly... they should have nothing but hate in their hearts for those who created them. Ashino would learn the error of his ways, Frost promised this to himself. But now was not the time. His mind turned to other thoughts... Orb was doing a better than expected job of repairing itself from the destruction caused by Cray. His heart burned with regret, since he'd had both the princess of Orb and Pink herself nearly at his mercy once again, and once more they had slipped between his fingers, due to the intervention from the mechanically armed man, who was soothingly dead now. It wouldn't take Pink's horrid little boyfriend, Yamato and his equally despicable friend Zala long to figure out that Frost had not been killed at Panama and had indeed been the cause of the destruction. They would come after him, personally, like the knight's in shining armor they fancied themselves to be.
Frost was looking forward to that day... every time they had fought in the past he'd been limited, either by orders from his so called masters or because of losing control of his baser instincts... a visceral reaction that being around Pink tended to evoke in him. But now, now he was grasping his destiny firmly with both hands, and the golden illumination it enlightened him with provided a stopgap that made ironclad his control over his more bestial attitudes... he still desired nothing more than the utter ravaging of Pink and her friends, body, heart, mind and soul, but he was no longer willing to subvert his goals by flying into a foaming rage every time he encountered them. Foaming rages were a lot of fun, but they weren't getting the job done... he might be insane, but that did not prevent him from learning from past mistakes, oft repeated. He giggled to himself, relaxing in the mental picture of his long anticpated reacquintance with Pink and her friends... but most especially Pink. He well remembered the harm her nasty, terrible, wrenching songs had done him in Orb... he was betting that whatever allowed her to cause him such pain would provide an equal if not greater pleasure were he to conduct her emotions away from ugly love and horrifying forgiveness into the more soothing melodies of hatred and fear. And he knew exactly how he was going to accomplish that.
Had there been anything but empty space around the drifting masses that were the barge, the Fury and the Judgement, space itself might have seemed to grow a few degrees colder due to the maniacal hitching sounds of amusement that vibrated the cockpit sections of the Judgement's outer hull.