Sweat dripped into Ashino's eyes, but he didn't dare blink to rid himself of the irritating, stinging sensation. He couldn't afford even that much distraction, though he was not currently engaged with the foe. He risked a glance at a secondary screen with a chronometer on it, checking his remaining ammunition levels at the same time. He still had almost eighty percent of his ammunition left. It had only been about six minutes since the enemy... since Frost, in the ZAFT Gundam... had appeared out of the late afternoon haze like a wight rising from a grave, utterly without warning or reason. It just felt like much longer because of the intensity of the battle. He was sweating, for god's sake. Sweating so much it was potentially distracting him. Even when he'd been surrounded and outmatched by the Clyne Faction in Panama, he hadn't been sweating like this. But then again, back then, he was just a simple soldier. A killing cog in the machine of war, only just barely starting to awaken to the pleasures of life as a real human being. Not so now. Now, he actually had things to lose. A future he wanted to explore. Friends. Family even. Places he wanted to go, things he wanted to see, people he wanted to meet. Now he was a commander, with literally hundreds of individual soldiers resting their own hopes, their own dreams and lives and worries on his decisions. And right at the moment, he couldn't do anything besides order them to remember their training, and hope for a miracle as they were butchered heedlessly and easily, like cattle packed into pens.
Ashino trotted the Independence forward, poking his head and sensors around a street corner. Gouges and divots had been ripped out of the buildings on both sides of the street... marks from beam blasts and cannon shells, craters of blackened stone and half molten metal. The asphault roadway was blitzed into crumbled ruins by more munition impacts and the pounding, widely spaced strides of the single assailant that had charged down the narrow corridor, running full tilt, laughing and irregarding of the streams of fire and violence being poured at him, to shred and mangle the now dismembered heap of Strike Dagger's and Cavalier's lying in a flaming jumble at the next intersection down. Four more soldiers dead. Fire still flickered in the rents and gaps torn in the armor of the wrecked mobile suits. This was relatively recent damage then... maybe a minute, probably less. It didn't mean anything... with the speed and maneuvering capabilities of the enemy machine, it could be outside the city in less than a minute. It could be anywhere... the next street over, all the way across town, even somewhere behind him. It was like playing hide and seek with a spirit of malice... every time you thought you were close you'd find yourself stung and disoriented, as the foe disappeared with such ease that he could only have been leading you on the entire time.
He and Cyprus had entirely underestimated the abilities of the ZAFT Gundam. He knew, abstractly, that it wasn't their fault for doing so, really. Cyprus had seen how the machine fought and handled with a Coordinator Ace at the controls, and had been mightily impressed and even a little frightened by the power, speed and agility demonstrated. But through tactics and new technology, the "unstoppable" Reaper had been seen off, easily enough. Ashino had seen it in action himself during the battle against the Clyne Faction outside of Orb, just before the Isolation of that nation. He'd seen a creation of such power and speed that it was entirely unwieldy... the machine was TOO fast, TOO maneuverable, TOO powerful even... so much that even with a pilot as skilled as Kira Yamato at the controls, it could not help but be somewhat awkward and balky. Destructive and devastating as an instrument of intimidation, yes. But nothing at all like this whirlwind of death they were fighting right now. He'd come to realize that it wasn't so much the technology of the machine that gave it such power... no, if that was the case then Kira, by most standards a superior pilot to Frost or even the original pilot, who presumably had trained on the machine extensively, would have been the ones that utilized the machine to the level Ashino was seeing now. It was the pilot that made the machine so exceptional, in this case more than any other.
Kira and the original pilot had been hampered in their efforts to control the machine because they were people who used their brains, their logic and reasoning ability to fight their battles. They made plans, used coherent tactics and fought with larger scale goals in mind... such as winning a battle or accomplishing a preset goal. To people like that, the Pulsar provided greater options than most mobile suits... more speed, more maneuverability, and the advantages of its powerful defensive shields. Ashino suspected that if the Pulsar had been designed with soley defensive mechanisms, and no offense whatsoever, that they never would have defeated it in the first place on the Moon, much less when Yamato was inside. Using the Pulsar as it was for defense would probably have worked just fine for logical, reason ruled people. But using the Pulsar for offense required an entirely different mindset. The Pulsar was too fast, too agile, too responsive for a reasoning, planning person to make full use of its offensive abilities. It could attack faster than the operator could plan attacks. By the time Kira or the first pilot had decided on a target, it was already past them. To use the Pulsar to its full offensive potential, you had to be the sort of person who lived entirely in the moment. Who lived life entirely by instinct, lashing out without thinking, planning or any sort of long term goal. You had to be like Frost. There had to be no difference between intent and action, or else the pilot would end up impeding and limiting the machine. Simply put, when attacking with the Pulsar, you could not have doubts. That was the difference between the other pilots and Frost, and the reason for the difference in the performance of the Pulsar. They had doubts, misgivings, hesitations, a greater plan to follow, whatever. Frost did not. He either acted or did not, with no in between.
"Sir... we're in trouble, aren't we?" Captain Kellson's voice was scratchy and strained over the radio. "He's in an entirely different league."
"We can't give up, Eric. We still have a massive numerical advantage. We have the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Combined Arms Divisions stationed in this area... the same amount of forces we had devoted to Isolating Orb. He's just one mobile suit. Just one insane freak of nature. It's a logical impossibility that he would defeat us all. He's a wounded bear, paws caught in the traps, lashing out at the hounds as they close in with pack tactics. He can destroy any one of us with ease... but together, we can be far more than he can compensate for. He can't kill us fast enough for him to outlast us."
"Uhh... sir, no disrespect, but I'm not so sure of that." Eric replied, thinking back to the initial contact between the enemy and them. One moment they'd all been standing there, quietly discussing what they thought the Clyne Faction was doing back on Earth while maintaining a watchful eye out... the next a building had practically exploded onto them and a Templar had just plain fucking disappeared. He still didn't know exactly what had happened to his juniormost guy... one moment he'd been standing there, the next there was a huge hole in the front of the capitol building and the Templar was gone, its status icon winking out as they were buffeted by hurricane winds and clouds of grit. He'd thought he'd heard an explosion, of the sort Mobile Suits tended to make when dying, but he couldn't be sure given the multiple sonic booms that had been battering them and throwing the Templars and Independence around like dolls in a tornado.
They hadn't even fully recovered themselves when the bastard came back, somehow descending on them from above. Two more Templars had bit the dust before Eric could even turn around, the most advanced mass produced mobile suits in the Isolation toppling like broken toys, each split neatly in half from crown to groin by some sort of beam edged weapon, likely the gargantuan sword. He'd barely caught a glimpse of a skeletal grey form that was too familiar to him... by the time he'd turned around to bring his weapons to bear, the enemy wasn't even on his scopes anymore... not even the long range radar. Another sonic boom had nearly knocked them down again as they'd been standing there. It was just like outside of Orb... the enemy didn't even have to touch them... just had to move nearby and they were nearly damaged and disoriented.
They both listened to several panicked... and very quickly cut off... reports from other units unfortunate enough to cross Frost's path. Quite where the BCPU was going... if he even had a goal or a plan and wasn't just wandering aimlessly, killing and destroying whatever pleased him along the way... wasn't evident. In a lot of ways, Frost wasn't the sort of person to have a set goal, regardless of his babbling about a "Destiny". That was just an excuse, Ashino believed. One more facet of Frost's psychological arsenal. It made people think there was a reason, a grand, sweeping, underlying reason behind all the madman's actions. There wasn't, Ashino knew. Frost was all about the means, not the ends. He didn't care what the ends were, as long as he got to employ his means in getting there. He was all about the journey, not the destination. Frost claimed never to lie, but Ashino didn't think that was the case. Frost lied to himself every time he talked about his great "destiny" that the Doc had given him. He was trying to fit himself into that narrow definition of a goal, but the Frost Ashino knew didn't have goals and didn't want to have them. He truly was just a being that lived from instant to instant. It was only his memories that kept him moving in even slightly recognizable directions.
Frost... the Frost Ashino knew, the one they were fighting now certainly, was much more like a force of nature than he was a human being. He was a hurricane, a tornado, a thunderstorm of cataclysmic proportions. Yes, there were reasons for the things he did... the way he acted. Or maybe not so much reasons as contributing factors... little things that were individually mostly harmless or only slightly tragic... that, when combined in their dozens, hundreds, even thousands mutated into something dark and terrible beyond the sum of its parts. What was that phrase the Doc had used that one time just before he died? A self sustaining emotional reaction? He'd been talking about Kira and the other Clyne Faction pilots at the time, but Ashino felt it was just as apt a description for Frost now. "This is Major Dibbs, 2nd CAD Cataphract Squadron three. We have engag-" The report cut off in a blizzard of static.
"Data plot shows the 2nd CAD units being in the Northwestern part of the defense perimeter, sir." Lieutenant Kissinger, the other surviving member of the 71st SMS, reported, her voice very shaky. This was her first time encountering Frost for real. Well, she'd seen him, a little bit, outside Orb... but there was a world of distance between seeing and hearing, and then fighting. Not that they were really doing much in that arena either. Which was probably making it worse... nothing like being confronted by something terrible, but finding yourself unable to even shoot at it fruitlessly to really kick your legs out from under you. "Do you want to... pursue?"
"We wouldn't get there in time, Ella... I mean, Lt." Eric spoke up, remembering his comm protocol in the last moment.
Ashino reflected on the somewhat odd tone he heard in Eric's voice. It seemed likely that this was that "girl trouble" situation Jean had hinted at. Interesting how things that didn't involve battle or fighting at all could pop up in the most harrowing of times. Ashino switched to an even more heavily encoded channel than the one they used for in-Squadron comms. Not that there was a particularly high chance that Frost was intercepting their communicatons... he didn't generally care that much... but it never hurt to be sure. "What's the status on the President?"
"Shaken but unharmed." Cyprus's somewhat breathless voice came back to him. "We have multiple casualties here and we need to move to a more secure location as soon as possible. Is it safe out there?"
"I have no visual on the enemy, and even if I did, I would still tell you that it is most definitely not a safe or secure situation out here. He could quite literally come at us from any direction at any time."
"How are our forces holding up? I'd imagine casualties were heavy during the first few minutes, but we've trained for shock scenario's like this... things should be getting organized out there by now." Cyprus sounded like he was in mild pain... which probabaly meant he'd been injured in some fashion that could be as serious as multiple broken bones on down, but Ashino knew better than to ask or express concern. Cyprus would do his job regardless of anything less than immediately life threatening injuries, the same as Ashino himself would. The only other people that even approached the level of disregard for self in the process of regard for others that Cyprus demonstrated were the Clyne Faction, at least that Ashino had encountered.
"Casualties were indeed heavy initially. I lost half of my own unit before I even realized we were under attack. I could not even make a coherent retaliation before the enemy was out of range again. We've not suffered any additional casualties in this unit in the time since then, though I believe this to be because Frost is involved in disrupting the situation elsewhere for the moment. Myself and the Independence should be a very tempting target for him... the only reason I can think of that he hasn't come after me again is that he still is, for whatever reason, not fully comfortable with fighting in that Mobile Suit. He's out "stretching" right now, so he doesn't suffer a sprain under stressful situations. Unfortunately, counter to our predictions, casualties have only grown heavier the longer our forces have had to group up and organize."
"Can we prevail with the forces we have?"
"I would like to say yes, eventually. But I cannot say that with certainty. Frost is utilizing that machine with far greater aptitude that either the original pilot or Kira Yamato. It is a machine that is very... well suited, I suppose would be the right way of saying it... for a BCPU. Especially one like Frost. It's a precise, maneuverable and very fast weapon that inflicts much more damage and terror than its purely physical aspects would normally indicate. Something like a straight razor, vs a gun."
"Between you and him...?
"Him, most definitely. I might be able to damage him, but it would be, as Thomas says, a toss up. The only viable strategy I see is to mass our forces, envelop him when he attacks us and overwhelm him with horde tactics and massed firepower. In that machine Frost is faster and more agile than he ever could be in the flesh... but he still can't dodge every bullet, and our data on the machine indicates it is very lightly armored. Even slight damage would significantly disrupt its ability to move at optimum levels. In an age where Mobile Suits are like walking tanks, his is a jet fighter, with all the strengths... and weaknesses that implies."
"Would reinforcements... qualified reinforcements... be helpful?" There was a strong hint of distaste in Cyprus's usually neutral inflection that more than sufficiently informed Ashino as to whom was being referred to.
"I dislike the idea of "The Enemy of my Enemy is my Friend" just as much as you do, Cyprus. However, in this particular case, any help, any help at all, would be useful. I would even take help from ZAFT, or even, were he living, Asmodeus himself. The Clyne Faction has the longest even partially successful history of conflicts with Frost. Turning them down would be satisfying emotionally, but very damaging in a realistic sense. If nothing else, he would be sure to go after them first, allowing us that much more time to mass our forces for the killing strategy I mentioned before."
"Little Ashino... Little Ashino..." A new voice crackled over the international channel, audible to anyone with a functioning comm system within ten miles. "It's time to play, Little Ashino."
"Forces are being massed at Reaction Point Zulu Hotel. Draw him in that direction. The Clyne Faction will meet you there, estimated time, one zero minutes. The President and his party will commence their evacuation after the enemy is engaged at Zulu Hotel. Lieutentant Finch, out."
"Um, sir... I think we're in trouble..." Eric commented, his voice very dry and starting to crack a bit.
"Frost! Show yourself! Or are you really that afraid of me?" Ashino challenged, also on the international channel. "I know you, Frost! I know your crimes and heart better than anyone else still alive! You should be afraid of me, so called elder brother!"
"Afraid...?" Frost replied, the Pulsar suddenly alighting in their view once more, crouched like a gangly demon from the pits of the underworld on top of one of the mid sized skyscrapers about three blocks away. The gargantuan beam sword, its blade longer than the machine that wielded it was tall, dangled almost negligently in one hand, while the other arm's elbow was propped introspectively upon the Pulsar's knee, the still slightly twitching bodies of five Isolation pilots impaled upon the claws of the free hand fingers. "Little Ashino... I am FEAR!"
"SHOOT NOW!" Ashino ordered, bringing as many of his weapons to bear on the abomination as possible. He didn't even wait for target lock... there was no point with this target. He settled the crosshairs on the general area of the Pulsar and jammed down all his triggers. About a half second later, Eric and Ella also opened up with the full arsenals of their Templars. Blue-red plasma bolts, green energy beams, fat yellow railgun tracers and the duller orange flickers of shell tracers and missile exhausts filled the airspace between the three Isolation machines and the Pulsar's position. The top third of the building vanished in clouds of dust and smoke, as rippling red and gold explosions threw debris and shrapnel for dozens of meters in every direction. "SHIELD WALL!" Ashino directed after a full second of offense. The Independence's left arm pushed forward and a greenish-translucent field of energy flashed into being on the front face of his shield. The greenish field expanded and grew slightly more transparent as it interacted and linked with the fields from Ella's and Eric's Templars, though the shield wall itself was actually about 200 percent stronger than any individual Citadel shield.
Taller than the Templars, the Independence was still able to fire its shoulder and back mounted weaponry over the top edge of the shield wall, which protected the frontal one hundred and eighty degree arc of the three machines from their toes to head level on the Templars, leaving the head and shoulders of the Independence exposed. Although it was almost impossible to tell where the shield effect actually ended unless you were close enough to see the slight greenish tinge to the barrier fields, so Ashino felt confident enough that Frost wouldn't just blast his head off from afar. Besides, that would hardly be Frost's style at all. Missiles and wide green beams of plasma energy continued to rake the last known location of the Pulsar, though Ashino held little hope of them actually finding a target. He was unpleasantly surprised when the Pulsar appeared, directly to the front, firing itself out of the middle of the cauldron of destruction they'd created, sword held behind it in one hand, with the other hand held before it in a warding gesture, the barely visible reddish energy field projected from its palm easily absorbing beam blasts and missiles like they were gnats hitting a zapper field.
Ashino wondered just what that field was, that it could stop both energy and physical munitions with such ease. It didn't seem to actually deflect or divert incoming fire so much as it just negated it, missiles and shells vanishing in brief flashes of light, while plasma and other charged particle beams just dissolved away as soon as they encountered the reddish field edge. There was no splash effect, no detonation, no backwash... it was like shooting into a hole with no bottom. Ashino watched as all four of his 200mm high energy shoulder beam cannons converged their attacks upon Frost, who'd dropped the Pulsar to the ground and was bounding along like a demented Olympic hurdler, blazing orange sword edge cutting through the faces of the buildings to Frost's right, spilling the structures forward and down as he passed by in a blitz of sparks and torn up streets. The four thick greenish plasma bolts struck and there was a brief power spike, maybe a half a percent or so, likely less, in the enemy machine's reactor. The greenish beams died out and the power spike went away. That was enough firepower to destroy a capital space warship, and there'd barely been a fluctuation... Ashino was still gaping somewhat when the Pulsar put both hands on its sword and jumped the last thirty meters seperating them, bringing the two handed sword around in a roundhouse swing that probably could have bisected all three Isolationist machines.
That is, if the beam edge hadn't struck the nigh impenetrable energy field edge of Eric's Citadel shield with a huge shower of blue-purple sparks and small arcs of lightning and a cracking detonation like a thunderbolt landing nearby. Unlike whatever the Pulsar's defensive energy shield was, the Citadel Lightwave barrier didn't absorb incoming attacks... it just denied them entry past a certain point, a mass of solid energy harder than any diamond, a plane of force that could only be penetrated by focused energies several times greater than what was being pumped into powering it. Certainly the plasma edge of the Pulsar's sword wasn't near strong enough to cut through the field barrier edge, even with the force of the several hundred miles per hour charge behind it. That wasn't to say though that there was no impact felt... though the sword had been successfully, even easily, stopped, the kinetic force of an object striking another object was still imparted. Eric's Templar's arm shrieked and protested, hydraulic and physical shock absorbers screaming as they were compressed under the blow. Golden-yellow zig-zags raced across parts of the shield wall as Eric's shield fought to maintain alignment and linkage with the rest of the shield wall, successfully in the end. Their defense had held.
Frost was not impressed. This was hardly the first time he'd encountered the frustrating new shield technology of the Isolationists that day. It was a powerful defensive mechanism... but, like all shields, it had one gaping flaw. It only worked if you could put it between you and whatever it was you were trying to block. No sooner had his swing been halted than Frost spun in the opposite direction, hammering a second swing into the other side of the shield wall, sending more golden-yellow zig-zags through the fields as Ella's Templar shook and bucked under the kinetic impact. Frost saw the beam cannons on Ashnio's shoulders cant downards to aim at him... obviously the Isolationist shield didn't cover that high, if Ashino was trying to shoot him still. He could have struck up high, swiped the cannons and head of Ashino's Gundam off like a scythe harvesting wheat, but it wouldn't have been very fun. He didn't want this to be THAT easy. He was having a blast, after all. He used one hand to bring the sword back into a more neutral position while his other hand's Positron shield, nothing more than a thin membrane of magnetic fields with pure antimatter particles contained within, absorbed the four green beams with ease, the plasma atoms being annihilated as soon as they touched the field edge, just like everything else made of matter was. Just about the only thing his handy shields couldn't stop was light, strong magnetic fields or more antimatter.
"Fortress pattern, Turtle aspect!" Ashino ordered, as Frost backed off a few steps after making his two fruitless sword attacks. Even as he spoke, he crouched the Independence down to bring himself fully under protection from the shield wall... now that Frost had seen him shoot over it at him, Ashino didn't want to lose his head and shoulders to a vindictive swipe of that sword... while he also took a single step forward and altered the angle of his shield. To his sides, Ella and Eric likewise crouched their Mobile Suits down and altered the angles of their shields, while taking single sidesteps away from the Independence, so that they formed an equilateral triangle, actually a three sided polygon when you took into account the way the shields met overhead like a tepee. Now they were completely enclosed by the Citadel shield wall, protected equally on back, front, sides and top. They started moving slowly, a coordinated step at a time, towards Reaction Point Zulu Hotel, while Frost slowly circled their formation, occasionally hammering at them with his sword, while he tried to figure out how, quite literally, he was going to crack this little nut.
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"Aww man... they look just like they did when we left them!" Dearka's complaint was only half a joke. "Well, I mean, they're fixed... but why didn't you people at least UPGRADE them a little bit? Huh? That's what you're SUPPOSED to do! That's what always happens in the movies and shows! The protagonists always get sweet new gear just before the final battles! What a gyp!"
"Perhaps you're forgetting, young man, but your machines were produced by Morganroete Armories." A nearby technician spoke up icily. "We've taken more new technology out of any given one of those Mobile Suits than the entire Isolation Research and Development Department has come up with on its own in almost a year! And these machines are more than a year old! If anyone should be complaining about getting screwed out of upgrades, it is us!"
"We've retrofitted those machines that carried shields with Citadel shields, but that's all we were able to do." Another, more senior technician added. "We were hesitant to tinker around too much with the capabilities of the machines as they were. This is stuff that has been designed by some of the best Coordinator minds ZAFT and Morganroete can field, by leading experts in the military technologies fields. There are systems mounted in some of these mobile suits that should NOT exist, and that we cannot reproduce, given OUR understanding of current technology! Things like the passive defense systems of the Righteous and Liberty, or the cloak on the Duelist. I hadn't realized, until we started looking at these captured machines, just how far ahead of the rest of the world Orb's military technology is. I shudder to think what might have happened if Orb had had a few more years to refine and explore the possibilities I've seen the groundwork for here!"
"Keep shuddering." Cagalli muttered under her breath, where she and Athrun were changing into flight suits a few paces away. "I'm going to make a point of financing Morganroete well enough that you bastards will NEVER catch up to our exhaust fumes, much less our actual technology!"
"I wonder what these guys would say if they'd seen what sort of things are in the Pulsar, even during our brief inspection of it?" Athrun replied darkly. "Even compared to just the power supply of the Pulsar, the Angel Halo's and Photon Cloak are child's play, technologically speaking. They're just outgrowths of technology Morganroete already constructed in the original GAT-X series Gundams. Its nothing to brag about, compared to a working fusion reactor or the hands free control system, regardless of its flaws."
"The flaws, yeah." Cagalli said quietly, shooting a concerned glance across the hanger towards the feet of the Liberty, where Kira was likewise suiting up. "You think he's... going to be okay?"
"I don't know. I'd like to say yes. That my experience with Kira, and his ability to deal with personal disaster and guilt, tells me that he'll be able to logic his way through things." Athrun said, equally quietly. "But I still don't know just how deeply he's been affected by what happened to him the last time he flew the Pulsar. Not to mention what Frost did to him afterwards. Acting on selfish instincts and the other physical and mental quirks we've all seen... who knows if this is as bad as it gets, or if this is all just the prelude. Not me, certainly. I'm still, personally, not one hundred percent on just what makes an "Ultimate" Coordinator so much different from any other Coordinator, beyond the fact of one hundred percent uninfluenced inheritance of the parent's skills and abilities."
"You think Lacus will be okay?" Cagalli switched tacks, though her concerned gaze still rested on her brother, who was looking grim enough to be surrounded by a black hole of evil energy, if such things could exist outside of games.
"I think Lacus is a lot stronger and more resilient than any of us, especially including Kira and me, give her credit for. You think she didn't see what happened? She was closer than anyone but him when he made his first reaction, and he was in plain view. But you saw her... she doesn't blame him at all. She won't ever blame him at all. Not for something like what happened. Remember... they are "connected", in that wierd, Newtype way. Regardless of what Kira's body did, she had to know what he was thinking and feeling, the whole time. No, I don't think theres going to be any problems on her end. And while her injuries are certainly not minor, they aren't life threatening either. Kisaka's cracked skull is a worse injury than Lacus's lacerations, and he was sitting up and conscious when we left. Besides, its not like she's alone... she's got Kisaka, Alkire, Murrue, Raine and Katie watching over her. She's a lot safer than we are, actually. And, speaking of that..."
"Shut up now, while you're ahead." Cagalli cut him off. "I know the risks as well as anyone. Better, even. Pretty much every time we've fought Frost, he's made a victim and a fool out of me, and come within inches of killing me several times. However, similar things have happened to Ysak, and even you and Kira. So don't try and talk me out of going out there and..." Cagalli was cut off when Athrun cupped her chin and turned her face around so he could kiss her on the lips.
"It's going to be wild and crazy out there." Athrun whispered when he let her go. "Like the last few minutes of Jachin Due and GENESIS. I need you to keep me grounded, okay? So I don't try something stupid again. You know how I get in really high stress situations. I'm counting on you to watch my back and keep me safe, okay?"
"Athrun..." Words failed her and Cagalli merely wrapped her arms around him in the fiercest and tightest hug she could manage.
Ysak snorted and averted his eyes from the two "royal lovebirds" as he and Katie sometimes now referred to them as. Always with the last minute romance, the tension fueled hormonal imbalance of two people who really, really shouldn't, in his opinion, despite their skills, be on the battlefield. Especially not THIS battlefield, a place where their entire philosophy, their "killing someone only makes people want to kill someone in return" endless cycle theory didn't have any influence on what they were going to do. They weren't going out to pacify a situation, or shoot down WMD's or end a threat to the entire human race. They were going out to put down a rabid beast, to kill a single insane psycho killer in a Gundam. This was a scenario of hunt and kill, seek and destroy without mercy or hesitation, becuse their foe certainly would have none.
Oh shut up, you can kiss me later, you big sissy. Katie's voice echoed in his mind. Don't deny what you were REALLY thinking. Jealousy doesn't become you, Ysak. Especially not of them.
"I'm NOT jealous of them. Why would I be jealous of THEM!? What do THEY have that I DON'T!?" Ysak protested with a heavy frown. "The only person I'm jealous of at all is Kira. I find myself agreeing with that grey haired bastard soldier of Argyle's. If he really put his mind to being the best pilot he could be all the time, like he is right now, nobody else would even be close. You can argue that no one else is even close right now, but close is relative, and he could be a LOT farther ahead. But he doesn't WANT to, so he doesn't! It's like showing up to a gun range with a blindfold on! Doesn't matter how good you are or even if you can still hit the targets... you're not being as effective as you could be! It's like he's AFRAID to really try, except when he has to! And even then, he's not doing things as well as he COULD have, if he'd been TRYING ALL ALONG! He's MUCH worse than Athrun... Athrun just makes it all look easy, but he still tries hard at everything. I get the feeling that Kira isn't trying, most of the time. Not really anyway! Not when it comes to fighting!"
You may have something there. But there isn't anything we can do about it. Even if he doesn't try all the time, he's certainly trying now. You be careful out there, Ysak. We've got a lot of time ahead of us, to do all sorts of the things you were trying not to think about when you saw Athrun and Cagalli making out. Voyeur.
"I'm coming back from this, don't worry. If only to make you regret ever accusing me of being an ATHRUN ZALA voyeur!"
"He's talking to himself again." Dearka observed, shaking his head slightly as Ysak continued to gesticulate and make faces at the Duelist's legs. "People are looking at him. Hell, I know what's going on, and I still think he's crazy!"
"Even if he wasn't talking to Katie, I don't think I could blame him. I think gibbering at the walls is perfectly fine, in this situation." Miriallia replied. "Last time we encountered Frost he was in a normal, if albeit high performance Mobile Suit. He still wiped the floor with most of us."
"It was give and take." Dearka protested. "I got him pretty damn good with that slick deflection shot!"
"That's what I mean. You blew off an arm and he started fighting BETTER than before. We took off pretty much his entire left side and he still was going to kill Cagalli if Kira hadn't shown up. Kira then proceeded to trash what was left of him like he was a novice. Now Frost is in the suit Kira used to do that."
"Suit's don't matter THAT much. Oh, they set the baseline abilities and options available, but its the PILOT that really makes a Gundam a Gundam, in my opinion." Dearka pointed out. "You could put Kira like he is right now into a freaking GINN and he'd probably figure out a way to beat the Grand Buster regardless. I'm not saying that this is going to be EASY, mind, but this is also the first time we've ALL sortied against Frost alone as a unified group too, you know. He's not unbeatable or invincible... remember the time in the jungle outside JIHAD! We nearly cooked his goose that time too! He's had more bad endings in our encounters than we have!"
"And what goes around has a bad habit of coming around." Miriallia retorted bleakly, her anxiety peaking. "And I'm pretty sure I might have a bit more difficulty dealing with some of the bad ends he lived through!"
"Well, what can I do about it?"
"You can't do anything about it, Dearka! Nobody can! I'm not ASKING you to do anything about it. I'm articulating my fears, thats all! Its a coping strategy!"
"Oh. Well I got a better coping strategy than that." Dearka leaned forward and kissed her, just like Athrun had done for Cagalli. Mir let him hold her for a moment before she pulled away a bit.
"That may work for Cagalli, but its not my thing. Appealing to my hormones before a battle just makes me feel a little nauseous." Miriallia pointed out.
"It was worth a shot. You're both from Orb after all."
"Why am I not surprised that you tried something like that based solely on that tiny similarity?" Miriallia couldn't help but grin and shake her head in exasperation. Perhaps that had been the point all along.
Kira finished putting his flight suit on, and rode the ascension wire up to the Liberty's cockpit. He wasted no time in entering and buckling himself in, shutting the hatch as soon as he sat down. Both because he was in a hurry to get launched and also because it provided relief from having to listen to his friends whisper, speculate and try and help each other cope with the pre-launch stress. It wasn't their fault he could hear everything that was being said in the hanger. Still, that didn't mean he liked eavesdropping, even unintentionally. Especially on Cagalli and Athrun's discussion. Well and good for them to wonder how he was doing, it was appreciated. But right now, he really, really didn't want to look too closely at his own mind and emotions. He was afraid of what sort of person might be in there, looking back at him. The sort of person who would selfishly protect himself rather than the person he loved. The sort of person that would resort to threats and physical violence against people helpless to stop him in order to get what he wanted. A person a good deal more like Frost than he wanted to admit.
It wasn't that Kira thought he was perfect. That he was never selfish, never got angry, never wanted to shout and scream and do whatever it took to get his way, to do what he considered right and proper. But he'd always been in control of what he actually did. He'd always been a reasoning person, acting with goals and plans and logic, even if it was only fragmentary at times. He'd thought he was a person in control of his own life, his own actions... in essence, in the parlance of some philosophies, that he was a thinking human being, who could control his instincts in order to best serve his priorities. Versus an animal, or beast or whatever, who couldn't control their instincts, who reacted to stimulus without concern for anything other than themselves. A human would deal with pain, would sacrifice themselves to save others that they considered important... more important than they considered themselves. A animal would save itself first, every time, regardless of the circumstances. And he'd gone and saved himself first, regardless of his intentions afterwards. It was a betrayal of everything he'd thought he was. Maybe he was holding himself to too high a standard, but that standard WAS his standard. And he'd failed to meet it. And Lacus had gotten hurt because of it. Those were the facts. He couldn't deny the facts now, not without compromising himself again. Not without betraying his standards again.
It was tempting to blame it all on outside factors. On the damage to his nervous system the Pulsar had inflicted. On the biological attack Frost's poisonous blood had initiated. But Kira knew there was more to it than that. A lot more to it than that. He'd been shocked before in his life, if never that badly. And he'd eaten things that weren't strictly edible, on childish dares and stuff like that. If trauma alone could account for the changes in himself and his biology and mind he was seeing, why hadn't something like this manifested right after he and the Strike had descended to Earth after the 8th fleet disaster? He'd been unconscious and sick for about as long after that as he had been from the Pulsar and Frost. Although, come to think of it, he'd never used the SEED until after that point. What was it that Mr. Waltfeld had called it during their first meeting? Berserker capability? An all consuming rage or emotional state of mind, where the body and mind didn't feel pain and could act beyond their normal limitiations... he'd looked it up later. No, the root cause of this, the common factor here... it was him. Something to do with being an Ultimate Coordinator. It was never fun when you realized that your own body and genetics were still potentially hiding secrets from you. Even less so when those secrets might end up getting the people closest to you hurt or killed. What WAS he? What WAS going on?
Right now he didn't have time to put anywhere near enough thought into it. Right now, he was Kira Yamato, pilot of the Liberty, member of the Clyne Faction and he had a job to do. A real animal to fight, besides the one locked down in his soul. A confrontation with someone who was as close to fully opposite of what he was as could be. Someone who stood for everything Kira and his friends opposed. Someone he had to defeat, in order to make Lacus... and the rest of the world... safe. The fate of the Earth, and most of humanity, he had little doubt, was resting on his ability... and his friends ability's... to defeat Frost. And while he hated killing... had always hated killing... always WOULD hate killing, in this case he couldn't see any other way to defeat the enemy. It left an ashen, bitter taste in his mouth and in his mind. In order to beat evil, you had to be a little evil yourself. Kira frowned and blinked as the silver threads in the corners of his vision knotted and twisted in his agitation for a few moments. He hadn't mentioned them to anyone else yet, not even Lacus. There was enough to worry about without bringing hallucinations, even vividly real ones, into matters. He gripped his controls firmly as the Liberty came to life around him.
"This is Kira Yamato. In the Liberty. I'm taking off."
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"You're being stupid! You're letting them play you like a fish on a hook! I cannot believe how incredibly foolish you are acting!" Mr. Machine had been going on in a similar vein for quite some time. Pretty much ever since the first few seconds after Frost had started his attack on Denver, when he'd left Little Ashino and his buddies alone for a while, to stew in despair and confusion while he worked the kinks out of his spine on the even more pathetically helpless offerings the Isolationists thought were soldiers. So far the only soldiers he considered himself to have encountered were the two tagging along with Little Ashino. Everyone else was just meat on the hoof. Soldiers resisted and died. That is what distinguished them from offerings, who merely died. Oh, they might get a shot or two off, but it wasn't real resistance. It wasn't planned, or considered... it was panic and luck that they squeezed a trigger or were piloting a weapon at the time before their death. Offerings were fun to carve and slice, but soldiers were a great deal more engaging because they lasted long enough for THEM to actually have some fun too. To let the fear and hatred and rage seep out of their souls and flush through their meat and blood in a dark tide of life and joy. There were too few who got to truly live... was it any wonder he decided to devote more of his time to playing with them?
"You're being led away from the targets! They're going to get away! Its like they have you on a LEASH! Are you just going to LET them jerk you around like a dog on a chain!?" Mr. Machine sounded well and truly upset. Frost smiled. Good. It was more pleasant to listen to him when he was enraged and worried than when he was pretending to be calm and controlled and in charge. Unless Frost was much mistaken, Mr. Machine was actually jealous of Little Ashino and his playmates because they were holding Frost's attention so easily.
"That sounds like animal cruelty, Mr. Machine. Where would a sweet young boy like you hear such a term?" Frost commented, hammering delightedly at the slow moving fortress of impenetrable light that Little Ashino and company were cowering under. The results were the same as they had been for the past minutes. Showers of purple and blue sparks, loud noises, the golden-yellow zig-zags of the shields struggling to stay aligned under the kinetic impact of the sword blow... it was pleasingly pyrotechnic. As much as if not more so than actually hitting and cutting the Mobile Suits themselves would be. After all, Mobile Suits could only be explosively dismembered once... they were disappointingly like people in that fashion. "And who's going to get away again? Is there someone specific you'd like for me to attack?"
"Doesn't it bother you, knowing that while you're wasting time attacking a target you can't destroy that the enemy is organizing and massing up to attack you from all sides? That your enemies, the ones I promised you, are being ferried to their Mobile Suits in order to team up against you? That so many of the people you came here to kill are currently helpless to stop you, but are getting closer and closer to escaping with every passing second!?" Mr. Machine sounded positively hopping mad. Plainly he wanted some people dead, and soonish. Frost wondered what it was like to want. Judging from how Mr. Machine was acting, it wasn't very fun.
"Why should it bother me? Its what I desire most in the world right now. For them to team up, mass up, come at me all at once in a great seething horde. If they would do that for me, it would make me happy indeed. It's the reason I exist after all. Humanity needs a reason to unite, to work together. I am that reason. It would be best if ZAFT could be here as well, but one works with what materials one has, right, Mr. Machine? Besides, what do you care, Mr. Machine, what happens to me or why? I thought you were cheering for Boytoy to kill me? Are you not getting the experimental results you were asking for?"
"Regardless of the results I'm getting, it'll all be meaningless if you don't kill..." Mr. Machine trailed off. Clearly he was unwilling to explain himself any more than he had to. That was the problem with big plans... early on, they were often so delicate a single person not doing what they were supposed to at the right time could send it all crashing down. It was stupid of Mr. Machine to make that one person be Frost, one of the very few people who could never be relied upon to do anything they were supposed to do, at the right time or not. Frost pointed that out with a grin. "I can force you!" Mr. Machine threatened. "I'm the one in control here!"
"If that was really the case, Mr. Machine, we wouldn't be talking like this." Frost explained, as gently as he could manage. Some news needed to be broken with care. No need to crush ALL his hopes... just yet. "Its okay, Mr. Machine. You don't have to stop giving me orders or yelling at me for messing up your plans. It makes a very pleasant background music for me to play along with. Very nostalgic... Asmodeus and Cervantes used to do the same thing."
"Don't compare me to Naturals like them. They were children, barely more than babies, playing with things they could never understand!" Mr. Machine retorted, a new height of arrogance in his tone.
"Would it be crass of me, Mr. Machine, to point out that you are actually a child too?"
"I'm an Ultimate Coordinator. There is a vast difference."
"Right. Of course. You're God, and they aren't. How foolish of me not to realize it."
"You aren't nearly as funny as you think you are. And you aren't far wrong either, freak. I'm as much of a God as the human race will see for the conceivable future. I "am" the future of the human race, freak. I will re-make all of humankind into my image and we will enter a golden age."
"Um, no offense Mr. Machine, but if we're all like you... how are babies going to be made?" Frost pointed out the immediate, glaring flaw in Mr. Machine's vision. "It sounds like it might be a very short age, golden or otherwise. A single, very homosexual generation. Which is fine... I don't hate gay people. They die as easily as anyone else, after all."
"I don't expect you to be able to comprehend what I'm talking about." Mr. Machine's voice was cold. "It isn't the job of the tool to comprehend the beauty of the finished product. No, all a tool has to be is a means to an end. Of course, even in that you fail, so I'm not quite sure what that classifies you as. Congratulations, you have officially stumped the smartest being ever to exist."
"Temper, temper Mr. Machine. Your insults aren't making me feel very cooperative, you know." Frost brought the Pulsar to a halt, letting Little Ashino and his playmates continue to scrabble away from him like an indestructible bug. They rounded a corner and started heading out into a wider open area that was quickly filling up with all sorts of other Isolation troops and machines. So this was where everyone else had been. He'd been wondering why no one had come to help Little Ashino. Well, they were obliging enough to pack themselves into a can for him, he might as well let them continue. At least, for as long as it continued to bother Mr. Machine so much.
"They're getting away again." Mr. Machine pointed out petulantly. "You pursued them this whole way, wasting time you could better use elsewhere and now you let them go free. You really are useless. Don't you have any concept at all of planning or forethought or even a GOAL of some sort? Or are you just acting on whatever scatterbrained whim happens to cross your mind!?"
"It depends, Mr. Machine, on how I feel when I wake up in the morning. Somedays I'm just ALL about the goals. Other days, like today, I really just wanna kill stuff. Whatever crosses my plate will do. I'm in no rush now that I have this Gundam. With the Pulsar fully operational, I have the power to accomplish my Destiny any time I happen to set my mind to it. Perhaps you haven't noticed, Mr. Machine, but not everyone has sweeping goals to re-make mankind in their image. We aren't all evil little geniuses. Some of us are geniuses. Some of us are little. Some of us are just evil. And evil doesn't have a timetable, Mr. Machine. I just take things as they come to me. You should try it sometime. It's liberating." Frost recommended.
"Very well then, I shall. I see no further carrot and sticking will work with you. Its too bad, Mr. Frost. You could have had a lot of fun, as you understand it. All you had to do was play along a little bit. But no, you had to be childish and willfully erratic. This isn't my fault now, Mr. Frost. This is all your fault and your fault alone. It's been a dreadful bore, Mr. Frost. Good riddance."
"Mr. Machi-ARGGGHHHH!"
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Noah finished inputting the code that overloaded the Pulsar's action memory, sending five hundred volts and almost fifty amps of current coursing through Frost's entire body. A tenth of an amp, applied across the human body for merely a single second was enough to kill an average human being, even a Coordinator. Fifty amps was enough to cook a man like a microwave dinner. That's what happened to Uncle Jeremiah after all. And would have happened to Cousin Kira, if Noah hadn't been feeling generous. Frost would not be the recipient of any generosity, no, none at all. If he could have, Noah would have turned up the power even more. It was all the brute deserved, for the days of threats and posturing and willfull disobedience. He'd tried, he'd tried hard to be understanding. To make allowances for the unbalanced nature of the BCPU's mind. But everything had a limit, even the patience of an Ultimate Coordinator.
It was unfortunate... he'd really have liked to be able to get some data with Frost fighting against Kira and the other members of the Clyne Faction. Sure, he could and would get some data from setting his records of Frost against the records he'd taken from Kira's brief stint in the Pulsar, but setting two stored sets of action memory against each other just wasn't the same thing as having the two of them duke it out in real life. It wouldn't have any of the satisfaction of seeing a champion of reason and logic and pre-planned genetic design like Kira triumph over a sad, modified after the fact, pathetic Natural imitation like Frost. Noah watched the seconds tick by on his watch. The initial jolt should have sent the freak into instant cardiac arrest, but Noah wanted to be sure. Kira had been able to fight it for almost forty seconds, though only a few of those had been under full current flow. Still, for all his crudity and debasement, Zacharis Frost had proven time and again that his durability at least could not be condemned out of hand. It was somewhat risky, keeping the Pulsar's control circuits in overload status like this... there would be collateral damage to other circuits and programs, undoubtedly. That was okay though... the Pulsar had reached the end of its useful lifetime.
After ten seconds had elapsed, Noah cut the overload off and input another code. Naturally, any enemy who'd fought against the Pulsar would want to capture it if they could, to steal its technology for themselves. The code he'd just finished putting in would kick the Pulsar's Fuson Pulse Reactor up to three hundred percent power and disengage the cooling systems and containment fields the next time the cockpit door was opened. In a word, BOOM. For roughly a twentieth of a second, a star would come into existence, centered on the Pulsar and extending outward in all directions for a good five miles. The actual blast radius would be considerably larger, and the destroyed radius much larger still. It was too bad... he'd rather liked the look of the Rocky Mountains, and there just weren't going to be nearly as many of them afterwards. Or much else left of old Colorado for that matter. He hoped the Clyne Faction would be smart enough to get far away, but he steeled himself to accept their loss as well. It would hurt, losing some of the few people he judged ever able to actually understand him, but sometimes pain must be borne.
"All you had to do was kill Sai Argyle and the rest of the Isolation leadership! Is that so much to ask!? Is it!? Then I could avoided all this bother! With the Isolation in confusion, Operation Overload would have been stopped by the Clyne Faction, given the data I supplied them and the orbital forces the Isolation had left. If need be, I could have detonated the Angry Sky mechanisms before they reached their target areas... but it'd be pointless to do that now. No, its better to wipe the slate clean now, and pick up the pieces later. It'll add another decade or two to the transition time between the Cosmic Era and the Golden Age, but so be it, I guess. I was planning on having the Clyne Faction take the credit for saving the world... a small reward, I think, for the good turn Cousin Kira did for me, by being born first and getting all the flaws out of the process. I would have had to remove them later, of course, but I'm not the sort of monster who'd deny them happiness first. I much prefer euthenasia to murder, after all. But it was ALL RUINED by YOU, Mr. FROST!" Noah accused the dead thing in the Pulsar. "I hope you're happy!"
"I'm ecstatic, THANK YOU, MR. BORANDER!" The voice was thick and scratchy, but undeniably Zacharis Frost.
"W-what!? YOU'RE DEAD!" Noah protested, jerking away from his computer screen in a panic. "Y-y-y-you shou-should have be-been f-fried l-like a b-bu-bug!"
"DO YOU HONESTLY THINK THAT'S THE FIRST TIME I'VE EVER HAD ELECTROSHOCK THERAPY!!? THAT NO ONE HAS EVER TRIED TO KILL ME BY ELECTROCUTING ME!? THAT THE DOC DIDN'T FORSEE SOMETHING LIKE THIS HAPPENING!? YOU MAKE ME CHUCKLE, MR. BORANDER!" It was more a full throated belly laugh. That went on, and on and on, way past the point where any human throat should have been able to handle it. "Short of head injury and fire, one of the leading causes of pilot death in combat is due to electrocution from shorted and deranged equipment, Mr. Borander! Human's do not conduct electricity very well at all, Mr. Borander. It takes a lot of current to kill a human... that good ole tenth of an amp. Still, many pieces of equipment common to Mobile Suits work with more than enough amperage to crisp a human like a french fry on an open stovetop. You'll have to do a lot better than THAT if you want to shock me, Mr. Borander. All your little joy buzzer managed to do was burn my hair and skin mostly off. Were I not surrounded by this nice hot gel of yours, I might be concerned for my health. But I am surrounded by this gel, Mr. Borander, and thus I don't have to worry about infections. My blood is already clotting, so I won't bleed out. My heart can restart itself, incidentally using some of that power you just shocked me with to do it. Besides... I've always been dead, Mr. Borander... I'm still just working out my How, like always."
"But y-your organs! Your nerves! They should be smoking ash!"
"Mr. Borander, Mr. Borander, Mr. Borander... didn't you ever talk with Doc? Do the words "Armored Organs" and "Redundant Systems" mean NOTHING to you? You burned me. Crisped my eyeball. Ignited some of my muscles. Lacerated my lungs with flash heated chunks of armor. You've knocked out most of my primary life support systems. However, my secondary systems will be more than enough to keep me functioning, especially in this very supportive environment of yours. I can keep going for days like this, Mr. Borander. I might even recover... I've surprised myself before. All you've done is take your best shot at me... and failed! Congratulations, Mr. Borander... you actually managed to HURT someone who believed he could FEEL NO PAIN! Care to GUESS what your PRIZE IS!?"
"How can y-you function!?"
"I am a force of nature, remember, Mr. Borander? I am a vengeful soul, stripped out of Hell by the Doc and implanted in a fleshy body! How can I function!? How!? I... DON'T... KNOW! But it MIGHT have something to do with your Gundam, Mr. Borander. I don't need eyes, Mr. Borander. The Pulsar see's for me. I don't need muscles to move anymore. I don't need lungs to breathe... my organs can absorb oxygen directly from my blood or other fluids... such as the gel around me. Anything your electric jolts can take away from me, your machine gives right back to me, Mr. Borander. I'm Mr. Machine now!"
'I c-can still destroy you!" Noah's hands darted for his keyboard. He'd blow the machine now. It was inelegant, but he could freely admit he was in panic mode right now. Once Frost was gone he'd be sure to think more clearly.
"No, Mr. Borander..." Noah ignored the freak as he typed in the overload code. He hit enter and sighed in relief. "... you can't." Frost finished. Noah stared at the screen in disbelief. The Pulsar's status icons were still transmitting data. It hadn't blown up. This was the first time he'd ever had a program not work. It shouldn't have happened. He heard Frost chuckle, dimly, as he typed the code in again and hit enter again. Nothing happened. The third try had the same results. "Confused, Mr. Borander? Didn't you hear me? I'm MR. MACHINE NOW! Didn't you know that BCPU stands for Biological COMPUTER Processing Unit!? Here's the funny thing about computers, Mr. Borander... when they're linked, signals can go BOTH ways... whether or not you want them to. I see that code you're trying to enter. Its appearing in my head every time you enter it. I AM the Pulsar now, Mr. Borander. And I don't WANT to blow up, thank you."
"That's impossi..." Noah trailed off. It wasn't. He thought of Melanie, in the Pink Haro. And the other girls he was cultivating as control circuits for other robotic lifeforms. The systems he'd used to translate their emotions and intelligence into electronic form were based completely on the NIC System from the Pulsar. All it would take would be a sufficient stimulation of the mind and the controlling emotions and... but that was impossible! He'd only managed to get the required level of activity by reaching in and forcibly stimulating Melanie's mind! That a mere electrocution could do the same thing was... Noah considered his few, brief tastes of Frost's mind, like when he'd extended himself to prevent him from destroying November Eight with the Judgement. Frost had been so open. More open than even a Latent, by far. So vulnerable that Noah had been able to influence him so easily, even from thousands of kilometers away. And the Pulsar's computers had more than enough capacity to hold a human intelligence as damaged and incomplete as Frost's. This was a definite oversight on his part. No one should have been able to live through the sort of trauma needed to turn THEMSELVES into action memory... but that didn't mean that if someone COULD that it wouldn't happen. He felt his stomach drop down into his toes, or so it felt.
"Nature finds a way, Mr. Borander. I think I saw that in a movie somewhere. I wish I could see your face right now, little boy. How DOES it feel, being the one to open Pandora's Box? Does it make you excited, knowing just HOW DOOMED you now are? You gave me your best shot, Mr. Borander. Shortly, I'll be showing you MINE. Now that I've WON this engaging little contest between us, I think it's about time I got back to killing some people. You just sit there and wait for me, Mr. Borander. Sit there and shiver and wet yourself and cry and WATCH as I show the whole of humanity just how DARK the dark side of human nature can get. Ciao... NOAH."
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"Is it just me, or is he acting different now?" Eric commented, his spirits much recovered now that he, Ella and Ashino had reached the relative safety of almost three regiments of Mobile Suits, mostly Cavaliers and Dagger JA's, but with at least ten more Templars and almost thirty Cataphracts. Plus thousands of infantry, mobile artillery and tanks. And plenty of air support. They even had two FRALA units set up, primed and waiting for the enemy to get pinned down behind a wall of fire so that they could slice the bastard into tiny pieces with their white hot beams. They had video proof that FRALA's could penetrate the defensive fields of the enemy machine, so that was what they were relying on now. Everyone else just had to get the bastard to sit still long enough for the FRALA units to ensure that their shots... which they could only do about once every fifty minutes in atmosphere... didn't miss. Because they weren't going to get a second chance most likely, one way or another.
"He's still acting crazy, so I don't see any difference there!" Ella retorted, fighting a shiver as she kept her weapons oriented at the intersection they had left the Pulsar at before they had crossed into the open parking lot area around the sports stadium where their forces were mustered. According to sensors, the Pulsar had not moved in almost three minutes and was still standing where it had been when it inexplicably left off attacking them. No one had approached it to discover why it had frozen... it was widely accepted that it was suicide to provoke action from this enemy.
"He's not acting like Frost." Ashino confirmed. "Or rather, he's acting like Frost only he's got his attention somewhere else right now. Where and why that is, is unguessable."
"What are we going to do if he realizes this is a trap? Well, I DON'T see how he CAN'T see that its a trap, but what will we do if he doesn't just charge into it like we think he will?" Eric asked, fingering his own firing controls nervously. "Sending units into the streets to flush him out will only give us more casualties again. He's one of those turds that just don't flush well."
"Thank you for THAT image, captain." Ella felt like rolling her eyes, but didn't dare take them off her screens. "When's the Clyne Faction going to ge-"
The Pulsar didn't jump around the corner. It came THROUGH the building it had been hiding behind like a bullet penetrating a piece of sheet glass. The Isolation forces were already set up in a large series of shield walls as a precaution against the inevitable attack, but despite the warnings from commanders and Ashino, no one was QUITE ready for the Pulsar to appear THAT FAST. It was like a time lapse photo with some slides missing... one moment calm, then suddenly the Pulsar was halfway to their position, seemingly with no transition period or events. In well under a second the Pulsar crashed through the building, accelerated to maximum cruising speed and crossed the distance between its old position and the Isolationist forces. Just before it reached the shield wall, the Pulsar altered course and went straight up, pulling off the ninety degree change in direction with barely any decceleration. There was no time for an attack, not even from a Frost as intimately linked with the Pulsar as he was. Unfortunately, he didn't need to attack.
The shockwave from the Pulsar's hyper-sonic maneuver struck the Isolationist shield wall like a battering ram, hard enough to knock several Mobile Suits completely over onto their backs and sending others reeling backwards or to the sides. In any case, it was more than enough to punch a wide gap in the outer shield wall, a gap which remained open for much longer than the three seconds it took for the Pulsar to come screaming down from the heavens, sword missing from its hands, claws and heat whips poised for extreme close range combat. The superheated heat whip chains snaked back and forth in a quick whiplash of blurred metal links and heat haze and three Cavaliers came apart at the waistline, with a Cataphract sent crashing backwards with two jagged holes punched in its upper torso. A Dagger turned, rifle in hand, only to discover that the limb had been ripped off, shortly before a foot came around and crushed the cockpit area like a tin can. Chaos spread rapidly through the tightly packed Isolation formations... there were so many allies in such close proximity that any sort of missed weapon discharge was sure to cause friendly fire damage, and anyone close enough to shoot only at the enemy didn't live anywhere close to long enough to actually take a shot.
With every sweep of his arms, Frost's claws sliced off limbs and heads, gashed open bodies and mangled weapons, while the heat whips bent and snaked like living things, entangling legs, punching through torsos and crushing armor into melted furrows wherever they touched. Panicked soldiers began opening fire, not caring that they were only shooting their own side... it was too terrifying to just sit there and die or watch your friends die. Better to do something, shoot back, even if you were only causing more damage to your side. At least it felt constructive. Assuming you weren't the person being blown apart by friendly fire that is. Within seconds there were more than two dozen Isolationist Mobile Suits down or destroyed, and the number was growing without showing any signs of stopping. A space was slowly being cleared around the section of the formation Frost had penetrated, but it was not a very organized effort... some commands were charging forward, hoping to overwhelm the foe with numbers, while others were trying to pull back and regroup into firing lines again.
Still, no matter how many Cavaliers and Dagger JA's crowded forward, shields to the front and swords held high, poised to stab or slash or even just contain the dervish that had thrown itself into their midst, no one managed to make more than a couple hesitant stabs, slashes or grabs, and most such attacks did more harm than good, damaging or destroying friendly forces on the other side of the enemy, or otherwise in close proximity to them. If the scene had been with live actors in a movie, it would have been one of those huge close quarters brawls, without room to lift or swing anything more than a fist or knife or knee unless you were a martial artist of the highest caliber. Or had huge claws on your hands and tendrils of superheated metal extnding from your wrists. Or had both advantages, much like Frost did. As far as mobile suits went, on a pure strength basis, the Pulsar was actually not all that strong... not too much stronger than the original Strike Gundam. Any one of the Cavaliers, assuming they managed to get a strong grip and solid position, could have overpowered the Pulsar in a contest of strength versus strength. The problem was the speed and the fact that the Pulsar seemed to be fairly made of blades or other destructive surfaces that would melt or slice off anything that tried to touch the Gundam or even got within about fifteen meters of it.
Within about thirty seconds, units had stopped pressing forward to engage the Pulsar, as commanders began to fully realize just how pointless that was... engaging the Pulsar in an extreme close quarters brawl was about as favorable a battlefield for the enemy as could be. On the other hand, they knew that now that the enemy was closely engaged with them, they couldn't let him retreat to long range either, because with his speed, maneuverability and defensive mechanisms he was all but invincible at ranges of more than a hundred and fifty meters or so. They had to find the tricky middle ground... out of physical reach, but close enough that gunfire and other ranged attacks wouldn't give the enemy time to dodge or evade. It wasn't a comfortable fighting environment for most Mobile Suit pilots, especially Naturals, for whom war had been a "shoot over the next hill" profession for centuries now, ever since the advent of guided weapon systems like missiles, or else extremely up close and bloody, like the infantry struggles against guerilla forces in urban combat settings, where there weren't commonly more than ten or fifteen feet between you and the enemy at the time of engagement. Unfortunately for most of the Isolation forces, their war machines had been designed with a "shoot over the next hill" ideology, with "extreme close range" as a backup and "middle ground" a distant third.
There was one ray of hope though. Or rather, several squadrons worth of them, because the Templars WERE designed for that "middle ground" as was Ashino's Independence Gundam. Armored with Phase Shift armor and Citadel Shields, bristling with high powered weaponry, the Templars and the Independence had the defensive maneuverability and armoring to survive close range attacks while retaining the offensive capability to overwhelm their opponents defenses at the same time. Or, at least that was the idea. Blue-red plasma blasts, yellow railgun tracers and green energy beams converged in a virtual deluge on the Pulsar and the area around it, chewing up the open ground, the paved streets and the buildings nearby with equal abandon. Dust and smoke rose in a towering plume as the Special Mobile Squadrons continued to pour their combined firepower at the last known position of the enemy. The remnants of the regular Mobile forces added their own cannons, missiles and beams after a few seconds, having had a moment or two to get a breather away from the constant terror of the close quarters assault.
"Tell me the FRALA units are in position!" Ashino demanded, his entire cockpit shaking with the recoil from continuous firing of all weapon systems. How could Cray possibly have LIKED this feeling, a part of his mind wondered? It was like being shaken inside a metal can next to a sound system turned up to full volume. He could barely hear himself talk, much less what anywone else was saying... it took more of his concentration than he liked to piece together the reply from the support units.
"We are in position and ready to fire, Commander. However, we have no target."
"No target!? He's right there... in that cloud, where we've got him pinned down!"
"We have no visuals on the target, sir! Other sensors aren't giving a coherent picture either, with all the heat and debris being created! We'd be shooting blind, sir!"
Ashino chewed his lip for a moment. On one hand, they were only ever going to get these two shots, most likely. He could save one if the first missed, but he felt it better to fire both at once... a single beam could be evaded by a nimble foe like Frost, wheras two beams at once would be almost impossible to dodge. On the other hand, every second they delayed now was one more second for Frost to break loose from the barrage that Ashino hoped was actually pinning him down. He hadn't seen any evidence to the contrary yet... Frost hadn't attacked or moved, as far of his sensors could detect. "Use your best guess. Fire now!"
"Sir?"
"You heard me! We're not going to get a better chance than this! Hurry and shoot him! Cut the entire block in half if you need to, but shoot him!" Ashino ordered fiercely, gritting his teeth and hoping he'd made the right choice. Firing at an enemy you couldn't see was a good way to miss... but letting a caged beast have the time to free itself from a trap was an equally bad proposition, wasn't it? Ashino didn't wait to hear the acknowledgment from the commander of the FRALA batteries before switching back to his most heavily encrypted channel. "Cyprus! If you're going to move the President and his family, do it NOW! We have him pinn..." Ashno's threat display suddenly chittered two things at him, and he stared in incomprehension at the monitor. The Independence was suddenly detecting a gigantic increase in electronic comm activity from the enemy, as well as a... threat from above? What could that... "DAMN IT! The sword!"
Before even Ashino's lightning quick thoughts and reactions could formulate a response to the new threat, it was already much too late. The massive beam zweihander of the Pulsar speared down out of the sky, finally reaching the ground after being thrown from several thousand feet up in the air during the Pulsar's initial attack run. The placement and timing of the attack were spot on perfect, with the great orange sided blade impaling the eastern FRALA unit like a knifetip through a beetle, severing the focusing chamber from the power supply and turning the carrier unit into so much melted scrap in the process. The FRALA unit went up like a bunker busting bomb, destroying several lighter vehicles parked nearby and even causing a mobile suit to stumble and nearly topple backwards in surprise. However, the sudden destruction of its sister weapon did not even slightly alter the course of the blue-white hot beam from the western FRALA platform, which slashed through the cloud of smoke and debris concealing the Pulsar on a rising diagonal that flowered into a purple-blue-white explosion about halfway through its approximatly second long firing sweep.
"YEAH! BITCH! Suck on THAT!" Eric cheered, punching his fist in the air in exuberance, accidentally cracking one of his tertiary screens in the process and bruising his hand. "We GOT you BA..."
The almost unrecognizably charred and melted remains of a Cataphract's Citadel shield sailed out of the smoke cloud, little more than a gutted collection of ash and scrap. Still, it was almost a half ton of metal, and its trajectory was far from unaimed. The remains of the shield impacted on the tip of the western FRALA's barrel, warping it several degrees out of true and causing widespread cracking of the delicate internal conduction paths. "... D!" Eric finished his shout of triumph, somewhat lamely.
"Cyprus! GET SAI OUT OF CAPITOL BUILDING! NOW!" Ashino yelled, bringing his crosshairs back over where he hoped the Pulsar still was. The damn smoke and dust... the Independence heeled sharply to the side as two of the Templars nearby, thankfully not from his Squadron, suddenly detonated in twin balls of fire and white hot metal, both victims of beam tipped projectiles fired through their torsos from... behind. "GET DO..." Ashino threw the Independence forward in an ungainly dive, arms spread, pushing Eric's Templar over as well. He rocked Lt. Kissinger's machine, but she wasn't standing as close to him, and that was all he managed to do. The rest of his warning was lost amid the destruction that followed his instinctive action, as the Pulsar, beam crossbow held in one hand, ripped its sword out of the wreckage of the FRALA and scythed down the three closest Templars, tightly packed into a firing line as they were, in a single horizontal swing of the sword.
"ELLA!" Eric screamed, staring in stunned disbelief at the inferno blossoming where her Templar had just been standing, where he'd just been standing too, if not for Ashino's nigh instantaneous reflexes. "NO!"
"I missed. How unfortunate. For you." Frost's voice echoed around Ashino's cockpit. For a too long moment, Ashino couldn't figure out where it was coming from... external noise was so loud there was no way his mic could be picking up a verbal broadcast... and his only open comm channel was... he stared in horror at his comm panel, which was still selected to the heavily encrypted line that went straight to Cyprus. "I was going to let you have the honor of paving the road to hell for your masters, little Ashino. Now, I guess they get to pave it for you, instead."
"CYPRUS!! GET OUT OF THERE! HE'S COMING!" Ashino's heart seemed to suddenly drop out of his toes and shoot into his mouth at the same time.
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"Are... are you sure you should be up, walking around like that?" Katie asked, watching Lacus pace, with a grimace of effort or pain on what was visible of her face through the bandages wrapped around her head, back and forth in front of the podium of one of the meeting rooms within the Capitol Building. Kisaka, a brace of sorts around his neck and a truly massive wad of bandages around his own head, was lying along the wall nearby with his upper torso propped up against the stage. Waltfeld and Murrue sat next to him, and they talked in low tones, going over what limited amount of intelligence they had and trying to formulate contingency plans. Alkire sat in a chair facing the doorway, his lips pursed in pain from the piece of wood still embedded in his leg, while Raine stood by the door, ostensibly guarding it... though against what, given they were unarmed in the middle of enemy territory, was questionable. Mostly she just traded cool glances with Corporal Ramierez and Sergeant-Major Glory, both wounded Hellhounds sitting at the far end of the meeting room table from the Clyne Faction, a radio laid on the table in front of them. Neither of the Isolationists was in any condition to stop the Clyne Faction members from leaving the room they been told to stay in... but neither was there really anywhere to go, considering the city was a war zone.
"I'm fairly sure I shouldn't be. I would like not to be. But conditions aren't what I like them to be." Lacus replied, her voice uncharacteristically clipped and flat. Part of that was almost certainly the pain from the deep lacerations she'd suffered from the glass, but Katie could not help but notice the slightly washed out look of Lacus's eyes and she sure as hell couldn't ignore the barely contained surging of Lacus's emotions on the psychic plane of things. "If I had my druthers... no, nevermind."
"You're making me nervous, Lacus." Katie said, after a few moments. "The pacing is bad enough on its own, but ah... well... you kinda... well, how do I put this... um, you're reminding me of that time outside of Orb..."
"I am in FULL control of myself, Katie, thank you." Lacus's voice was about as cool as Katie had ever heard it. "I have a lot on my mind, that's all."
"Well, I don't doubt you do... hell, we all do... but... um..." Katie tapped her fingers on the desk nervously. "I'm not really sure you're qualified to say that, Lacus. That you're in control, I mean. You sure don't FEEL very tightly controlled right now, you know? Not that I blame you! At ALL! I'd be angry too, I mean..."
"I'm not angry. At anyone. Especially not Kira." Lacus said, turning to pace away.
"I didn't say anything about Kira..." Katie tried to protest.
"You were thinking it." Lacus's voice did not hold a shred of doubt. "I don't have to be a Newtype to figure out what many of you are thinking on that score. To be honest, I'm a little disappointed. That any of you could think I'd be angry at Kira for something as inconsequential as what happened to me. You and Ysak especially should know better than to think that. Would you be angry at Ysak if he failed to protect you like that? When he was completely open to you through the link?"
"Well... angry wouldn't be the right term..." Katie replied slowly.
"I'm sad that our negotiations with Sai were hitting such difficulties, and I'm frankly terrified that Frost is now in control of that hideous mobile suit and I'm worried about everyone... myself and Kira among them and I'm frustrated that I can't do anything besides sit in this room and wish my face would stop hurting but UNLIKE outside of Orb I don't have a single iota of anger in me right now. That is what makes me say that I'm in control, Katie. If I was not in control... if I was doing the things, deep down, that I know won't help but would make ME, personally, feel better... those two men over there..." Lacus nodded at the Hellhounds. "Well... they wouldn't be sitting down shooting me suspicious looks, I can tell you that much. And President Argyle would be hopping like a frog on a frying pan in his haste to call a cease fire with the PLANTS."
"You really think you could force Sai to call a cease fire? Against his will?" Katie swallowed somewhat hard when Lacus glanced back at her, with a decidedly casual twist of her neck and shrug of her shoulders.
"I really think... that I'd better not try." Lacus said, barely above a whisper. "For the sake of my own sanity, amongst other things." Lacus paused for a short while. "It wouldn't do any good if I did, anyway. That man... Cyprus Finch... I can barely even touch him, much less manipulate him. And he would prevent Sai from doing anything out of character... which, sadly, calling a cease fire would be."
"Hey! What are you two plotting about over there?" Sergeant-Major Glory called. "Don't go whispering stuff about the LT and the President. It makes me twitchy. Pardon me saying so, but I don't trust you people or your intentions. I don't have anything against you personally, mind, but you ARE our enemies. Don't think I'm forgetting that, even in the current situation. Maybe even especially so, given the current situation. I recommend you sit your pretty, pink haired butt down in a chair and stay quiet, if you please, Ms. Clyne. I don't like picking on people, especially girls, especially, especially civilian girls... but if you keep setting off my threat senses, I'm going to knock you out for my own safety and peace of mind."
"Sergeant-Major, if you so much as BREATHE on Lacus in a harmful manner, Kira's gonna know about it, pretty much as soon as it happens. He already broke both your wrists, and he was trying not to be aggressive." Raine pointed out, with a small smile. "Touch her and he will DESTROY you."
"Kira has enough to worry about already." Lacus said, stopping her pacing and putting her hands on the back of a chair. "In truth, he and I are doing our best not to send each other too much right at the moment. We're both fuel for each other's fire, and we both need to keep clear heads, now more than ever. I'm sorry for causing you distress, Mr. Glory. And I'd like to apologize for what Kira did to your wrists... he regrets it terribly, I assure you. But please... don't threaten me or anyone else whom I am responsible for. Or I will knock YOU out for my own safety and peace of mind."
Glory barked out a short chuckle. "Holy crap, I have to say, you got some serious backbone, Ms. Clyne. It takes guts I can't even think of for someone like you to bluff like that to someone like me. Course, you're crazy if you think I'm going to take you seriously... I doubt you could even slow me down, much less knock me out, but..."
"Um, sarge-major..." Ramierez started to interject, his voice deeply uneasy.
"Stay out of this, Corporal."
"... I can't move my body, sarge-major." Ramierez's voice was extremely unhappy.
"What do you mean you can't move your... WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS!?" Glory shouted, his eyes blazing and mouth working... but the rest of his body stock still. "WHAT'S GOING ON!? I CAN'T MOVE MY... BO... DY..." Glory's gaze was swept up by Lacus's. "Holymotherofgod."
"I told you I wasn't making it up, sarge-major." Ramierez didn't sound too pleased, even if he was vindicated.
"Call for help, Corporal."
"I can't MOVE, sarge-major. The radio is completely out of reach."
"Neither can I. But you have less of a reputation to lose if you start screaming like a little girl in a haunted house." With extreme difficulty Glory tore his eyes away from Lacus's. "Okay. So you weren't bluffing. I get it. I don't know HOW, but I get it. Keep your creepy pink haired ass as FAR away from me as possible, please."
"Talk about keeping an audience riveted in their seats!" Katie whispered with a small grin, as Lacus relaxed her concentration and let the Hellhounds have their voluntary muscle control back. "You're going to have to show me how you do that sometime. I can't TELL you how useful it will be for keeping Ysak in line if I can just freeze him up like a popsicle."
"Please don't make jokes. I'm disgusted with myself right now." Lacus slumped against the chair a bit. "I guess you're right... I'm hardly the right person to be saying that I'm in control of myself or not."
"Lacus, if you weren't already hurt, I'd slap a little sense into you." Murrue suddenly spoke up. "You're a seventeen year old girl, don't forget. Most of your friends, including the one person who means the absolute world to you, are out risking their lives at this very moment, against a foe very few people have fought and lived. If you WERE in full control of yourself, then I'd think you were crazy. I'd be throwing myself against the walls and chewing my nails to the quick AT THE VERY LEAST if I were you! The fact that YOU aren't crying, given what you have to be going through, makes ME want to cry, because of what this situation is forcing you to do."
"Thank you for the vote of confidence, Captain Ramius, but..." Lacus's voice trailed off into a frown and a look of intense concentration.
"What? What's wrong?" Katie asked, somewhat anxiously, since her own senses hadn't been tripped at all yet.
"Kira's... close by. He's headed... this way." Lacus replied slowly, trying to resolve a clear communication from the veritable fireworks show Kira's mind was putting off. He wasn't trying to communicate with her... almost the opposite... but at such relatively close range, and given his state of extreme emotional distress, she couldn't help but pick up... but why would Kira be coming here? He was supposed to be with Athrun and the others, intercepting... Frost...
"Sergeant-Major! We're LEAVING!" The Hellhound's radio suddenly burst into life, crackling with background static from the volume. Lacus discerned a note of deep concern, almost panic, in the voice of the Hellhound commader. "Exit the building immediately and..."
"What's going on!?" Waltfeld and Alkire demanded almost at once.
Lacus and Katie had the answer for them. "It's FROST!" They shouted in unison, staggering backwards in identical flinches from the bruising emotional assault of the maniac's close proximity, mere instants before everyone in the building was knocked staggering from a massive shockwave traveling through the structure. The lights flickered and went out, slowly being replaced by red emergency lights as dust and pieces of structural material rained down from the ceiling, large cracks spreading throughout the walls and floor. The podium on the stage teetered and fell over with a splintering crash, nearly crushing Kisaka on the floor. The sound of tearing stone and ripping metal echoed around the room from two sources... one, mutedly, from the direction of the front of the building and two, more piercingly, if only for a brief time, from the Hellhound's radio. Lacus could have sworn she heard human screams mixed in with the cacophony coming through the radio before it went dead, but it might have just been echoes from the people in the room with her. She prayed that was what it was.
"Sir! Sir, what happened!? SIR!? LIEUTENANT!? WHAT HAPPENED!? IS THE PRESIDENT ALRIGHT!?" Sergeant-Major Glory was shouting into the radio, holding it so tightly in one hand that Lacus was almost sure the big man was going to shatter the metal casing, despite the pain of his broken wrists. Only static and feedback squealed from the radio. "CYPRUS! WHAT HAPPENED!? SAY SOMETHING! CYPRUS!? GODDAMNIT!"
"He's... he's right... right outside.." Katie whispered, huddled as far away from the front of the building as the room would allow her, head held in her hands as she struggled to keep her mental senses away from the abomination that was making the very air seem to bleed. "He's... he's in so much... pain. And so much... ecstasy..." Katie's voice shuddered with revulsion and she gagged, her body becoming physically ill with the sensations she was sensing. "What happened... to him? He was always... disgusting, but this... oh god, WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM!?"
"YOU'RE NOT MAKING ANY SENSE!" Glory roared. "WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON!? WHAT HAPPENED!?" He slammed the radio down so hard it did break, Lacus could easily hear the crunch and crack of the internal circuits. "I'm going out there!"
"Don't!" Lacus commanded, infusing her voice with as much authority and power as she could, given that she too was fighting not to become physically ill from the overwhelming barrage from Frost... and also the Pulsar's... near presence. Glory stumbled and spun in midstride, mouth hanging open as he turned towards her. "He'll... he'll just kill you too. He doesn't know we're here. He's... gloating, right now."
"But the President... and Cyprus..." Glory mumbled.
"I can't sense them. I'm sorry... I'm..." Lacus spun around herself, feeling Kira suddenly flare up like a supernova. "KIRA!"
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Of the many things Kira would never want to see, Frost in the Pulsar, standing in front of the capitol building, or rather the recent wreckage of that edifice, which was where Lacus was, was among the worst of them. There was only one thing that kept him at all sane... and that was the undeniable connection to Lacus that he still felt in the back of his subconscious. Never before had he been so singularly glad he was a Newtype, because otherwise he wouldn't have been sure, like he was, that Lacus was not yet further harmed. Emphasis on not yet, since she was also, by his rough estimation, within about twenty five meters of the Pulsar, though Frost, from his placitude, obviosuly didn't seem to realize this. Kira forced his hands away from the triggers of his long range weapons. Though the Pulsar was well within range, and getting closer VERY quickly, and Kira was normally totally sure of his aim... he couldn't be now. The slightest mistake. The merest miscalculation. Even just a spot of bad luck, or underestimation even slightly of Frost's evasive capabilities on Kira's part and his attack... or Frost's retaliation... could very easily kill Lacus. No, he couldn't fire, not before he managed to force or lure the Pulsar to a safe distance. And he was still a good fifteen seconds away, which Frost, who could not help but be aware of the him, obviously planned to put to good use in enjoying his most recent bout of destruction.
It looked like pretty much the entire front half of the building had been sheared...or more likely, slashed... away from the rear half. The Pulsar was now kicking and stomping through the ruins, like a child smashing a sandcastle on the beach or knocking down a tower of building blocks with the singular focused intent of leaving not one stone standing atop another. It was almost like Frost was searching for something or someone in the wreckage, but there was a calmness, a... sense of relaxation about the search that made Kira sure that Frost wasn't looking for Lacus. Every other time Frost had come after her, he'd been driven into a berserk frenzy just by the thought of being able to kill her, and Kira could think of no reason why Frost would change that behavior now. The Pulsar froze as a pile of debris shifted near its feet... the remains of a desk and heavy table suddenly rising up and sliding away from where they had been seemingly strewn by Frost's devastating sword swing. Kira's camera's zoomed in on the people that staggered out from the cavity that the desk and table had covered, and his heart jumped into his mouth all over again.
"SAI! WATCH OUT! GET OUT OF THERE! NO!" Kira shouted, the Liberty's shield arm reaching futiley toward Sai, who was helping his wife clamber out of the cleft between two fallen stone pillars, since she had a young baby in each arm. Kira saw no sign of anyone else, though he could see but a snapshot of the wreckage, as his entire world seemed to contract to just Sai and his family, blinking in the sunlight, totally unaware of the fact that they were basically standing underneath the Pulsar. Kira was achingly familiar with this feeling... there was even another girl with flowing red hair this time as well. "NO! DON'T!" Kira's shield seemed to creep towards his former friend and his family at a snail's pace, though in reality he was only seconds away. Seconds was far too long, as the Pulsar switched its sword into one hand and popped five wicked looking claws out of the tips of its free fingers. "DAMN IT! SAAAAIII!"
The Pulsar's free hand slashed down in a blur, like a man swatting at gnats that had landed on a table in front of him. Sai and Vanai were just turning to see what had caused a sudden shadow to fall over them when the Pulsar's hand came down on top of them, the mono-molecular claws shearing through air, dust, stone, wood, flesh and bone with equal ease. Blood spurted through the air in thick streams and a haze of dust quickly obscured the impact point. The Pulsar shook its hand once, flicking droplets of crimson far and wide, and turned to face the Liberty and the other Clyne Faction machines with a sense of utmost indifference and boredom. That, as much as anything, as much as the death of a long time friend, even one like Sai, with their mixed history, was what drove Kira momentarily over the edge. The callousness. The cold blooded murder of an unarmed man, woman and their two young children by a mobile suit. It was exactly like a man stepping on bugs, the way Frost was acting. "NOT AGAIN! NOT AGAIN! NOOO! SAI! FROST!"