It was odd, the sorts of things tht would cross your mind during times of extreme duress. There was a name for it, something fancy and multisyllabic and properly medically bland and almost unpronouncable if you didn't have a minor in Latin. He'd known it. But he was damned if he could think of it right now, when it was actually apt. Tunnel of light syndrome. Life flashes before your eyes-itis. Hallucinations brought upon by a near death experience. Where time seemed to slow down so much you could watch bullets spin through the air and seconds took years to count by on a watch, but you remained nothing more than a helpless observer to everything around you. He used to see it all the time, in action movies, or read about it, in all sorts of adventure and action novels. None of them had it quite right... probably because the people writing the novels or acting the characters either hadn't actualy experienced the phenomenon themselves, or if they had then they were unable to fully recreate it without subjecting themselves to the same conditions over again. They were right about one thing though... everything else seemed to be so slow... even such a long and sidewindy thought as he'd just had had taken less time than a single blink of his eyes. Or maybe it was just that his eyes took a long time to blink. They did feel unwontedly heavy.

Sai Argyle, youngest World President of the Earth Alliance Isolationists... well, only President, but youngest had a nice ring to it in the press... tried to sit up and take stock of his situation. He failed miserably. His entire body was numb, and he couldn't tell if he was injured or not. He couldn't move his arms or his legs, couldn't twitch his nose, couldn't wrinkle his forehead, couldn't even lift or turn his head. Or if he could do any of those things, his body wasn't sending him any sort of meaningful feedback, so he might as well not be doing it. Even rolling his eyes in his sockets was hard, and only the shifting in his admittedly blurry vision indicated that his eyes weren't frozen in place. Not that there was much to see. Blue sky, lightly streaked with thin white clouds, way up high in the stratosphere. Lower down, closer to the horizon line the bottom of his eye sockets represented, plumes of dark grey and pure black smoke shot skyward all around him, whipped into intricate vortices by a chilly wind that nonetheless didn't make him in the least cold, despite his lack of warm clothing. He only surmised it was chilly because he had faint memories of the day being slightly cold, in that far off time before he'd come to where he was. Whenever, wherever and however that was. His head was unaccountably fuzzy, and thinking straight was almost impossible. Little things he couldn't see or understand were nagging at him... important things, he was sure... but he just couldn't focus enough to draw them out of the chaotic background. Perhaps he'd hit his head. Strange that his head didn't hurt though.

A breath of wind passed over him, and brought a sharp scent to his nose. Warm and rich and metallic, with a very slight chemical tone. It took his struggling mind quite a while to place it. When he finally did, the resultant panicked realization helped clear his mind dramatically. He was smelling blood. And for him to be smelling it so clearly, there had to be quite a bit of it around. Exposed to the air, else he wouldn't be able to smell it. And exposed to the air meant it wasn't in a human body, where it was supposed to be. Blood out of body was bad, because humans needed blood to keep living. Recent memories started jamming themselves into his head, in no particular order, and he had to force himself to calm down and sort through them. Panicking would do no one any good. He was the World President. He was in charge. He was calm. He was about to leave the Denver Capitol Building, along with Cyprus, Vanai and his twin babies, Matthias and Jessi, to be hustled away by a secure, armed escort to NORAD Mountain in the Rocky Mountains, about a forty minute drive away. Then there'd been an alarming amount of noise suddenly streaming from Cyprus's radio, the one he'd been talking with Ashino on. That was the last thing Sai remembered clearly.

After the shouting from the radio, things grew much more confused. Cyprus was moving and shouting orders, a truly frightening expession of determination and concern on his normally guarded features. Something had shaken him badly, for him to look openly worried like that. Cyprus had just grabbed Sai by the upper arm and was pulling him towards the doorway that would lead out to the hallway that would take them to the exit where the convoy was soon to be waiting. Sai had had his arms around his wife, Vanai, who had her own arms full with the twins. The five of them had just been entering the hallway when a sound like a live snake being tossed onto a red hot frying pan, only a million times louder, assaulted them from only a few dozen meters away. At almost the same time, a rattling blast of concussive sound, too loud to be heard audibly but more than powerful enough vibrationally to blast out every window for a hundred meters in every direction slammed into the building with the force of a titan's punch, compounding with the massive structural damage caused by the Pulsar's ravening sword swing to shatter the building's foundation like it was made out of spun sugar. The floor had tilted sharply under them, causing them to all slide off their feet and go hurtling toward the nearest wall. Before they could strike it, the wall... and indeed the floor, ceiling and the rest of the building within sight... crumbled and broke apart into a mass of choking dust, heavy debris and black smoke.

Sai had a very vague recollection of being pushed... more like thrown... under some sort of heavy desk like object, but he couldn't be sure... once the building started collapsing, his memory went hazy indeed, and even what he could remember was too chaotic to make any sense out of. He did feel sure that he'd survived the collapse of the building relatively unharmed, as had Vanai, though Matthias and Jessi were wailing their heads off, distressed by the shockingly loud noises, bad smells and uncomfortable movements. Sai frowned, concentrating... he clearly remembered standing up from beneath whatever cover Cyprus had thrown him under during the building collapse, and he'd just been helping Vanai and the babies out from the pile of rubble as well. There hadn't been any sign of Cyprus, which was worrying... even if Sai would never believe that something as simple as a building collapse would be able to kill the redoubtable Cyprus Finch, many heroic men and women had succumbed to more ignomious fates before in history. Sai forced himself not to worry about it... if anyone could take care of themselves, Cyprus was that person. He and Vanai had just gotten into the clear, and had been looking around in shock at the smoking ruins of the Capitol Building, which looked like it had been leveled by a hurricane.

The sound of Mobile Suit thrusters had been loud in his ears, and Sai had been about to look up to see if he could find out where the sound were coming from, when a shadow had fallen over him and his family. From relatively nearby had come the sound of sharpened metal rasping lightly against more metal, the quiet whirr of mechanical and hydraulic systems and then a terrifying whistling sound as something heavy... and sharp sounding... slammed down on Sai and his family from above. He'd tried to look up, but he'd never even gotten close to seeing... whatever it was that had dropped on him and Vanai and the twins. The force of whatever it was that had fallen on them striking the ground had knocked Sai off his unsteady legs, though he felt sure he'd already been going down even before then. A huge cloud of dust and powdered stone had risen up around him, and then he was back where he was now, blinking languidedly up at the smoke streaked sky, nostrils full of the sickening stench of blood, barely able to do more than roll his eyes in their sockets. A tide of fear and worry rose up in him. Vanai! The twins! Where were they!? Were they safe!? His heart seemed to be trying to crawl up his throat, and he moaned in mixed fury and worry as he tried once again to sit up. The ground was hard, and now he could feel that it was cold and uneven as well. He had to get up. Had to find Vanai and his children. Had to make sure they were all right.

The ground shook and trembled beneath him, and he could see and feel rubble shifting around him as something enormous and heavy dropped out of the sky nearby... practically on top of him actually, massive blue and white and gold painted legs planting themselves firmly on either side of him. They were familiar legs, mechanical and gigantic though they were. Sai certainly had little difficulty recognizing them as belonging to the Liberty. And there was only one person Sai could think of that would pilot a Gundam like the Liberty towards a confrontation with the madman in the Pulsar. Kira had arrived, at last, and the rest of the Clyne Factin Mobile Suits couldn't be far behind. And about time too! Sai was fed up with his brave, selfless soldiers fighting hopelessly against a force they couldn't hope to measure up against in any sort of fair terms. Kira sure had cut it close enough this time, hadn't he? Sai had seen him make some last second saves before... and seen him miss a couple too, for that matter... but flying up JUST after a building collapsed on top of his allies was slicing it thin, even for Kira! If it hadn't been for Cyprus's quick thinking and actions, all Kira would be rescuing would be a puddle of blood and shredded organs, assuming there would even be that much left with a couple dozen tons of rubble on top of him.

The arrival of allied forces in the area gave Sai strength from some reservoir he hadn't been aware he had, and he slowly managed to push himself up to a sort of sitting position using his arms, though it was more just a leaning position with his back propped up against the nearest piece of large debris. It was the best he could manage, given that his legs were still stubbornly refusing to respond... or even acknowledge that they were there at all. They were... he'd felt too much friction and resistance during his pathetically limited movement for them to be gone... and he was still alive to move, which almost certainly wouldn't be the case if he'd lost both legs. He couldn't hear anything now, even though he knew Kira and the Liberty were right on top of him, and there had to be a half dozen other Mobile Suits within a few block radius flying or running about, but for the moment he seemed to be deafened. Not that surprising, considering all that had happened to him... he just hoped it was temporary, because otherwise it would be such a terrible inconvenience later on.

His thoughts came to a schreeching halt as he put his hand down by his side and felt a pool of warm wetness starting to spread beneath him. He stared in horror at his hand, which was covered from fingertips to wrist in scarlet fluid. Well, now he knew why he'd smelled... and was still smelling... blood. He seemed to be bleeding pretty badly, even if he couldn't feel it. He instantly recognized that this was a bad sign, and realized that he really probably shouldn't have moved himself before discovering the extent of his injuries. For there to be this much blood beneath him, given that he'd only moved a second or two ago, meant that there had to be a very serious injury involved, even if he couldn't feel it. He was shocked at his own dispassion... he'd have expected to be in a panic, since bleeding to death was probably something he'd be doing shortly now, if he didn't get serious medical help... the lack of pain and sound was making everything seem dreamy. Or maybe it was just the blood loss... he was surprised he was still conscious... he must have been lying on the wound, keeping the bleeding to a relative minimum before.

Sai probed the wound as best he could with one hand, shivering in disgust and concern as his hands passed over wet skin, wetter muscle and delved deep into his lower back torso before encountering roughened bone edges. He concluded, based on his admittedly limited knoweldge of human anatomy, that his lower spine was broken or shattered in at least one spot, with the possibility of other breakages or fractures below his waist as well. He couldn't force himself to look... he'd never had a strong stomach for blood and mangled flesh. He was glad the principle wound was on his back, so he didn't have to see his torn skin and blood and bones and... he shuddered, feeling like he was going to vomit from lightheadedness. The urge to vomit slowly faded, but the lightheadedness wasn't going away, and he recognized it was a precursor to unconsciousness from low blood pressure due to his blood not being in his body like it should be. Instead of looking down at himself, Sai angled his head from side to side so he could take stock of his surroundings. There was someone next to him, almost within arms reach...

When Sai finally managed to get his head around to where he could see who that someone was, he did vomit, and he kept vomiting until he was throwing up blood and gagging on the dry heaves. Not only because of the state of the body, which was terrible beyond words, but because of who it was that was lying there, broken and bloody and barely more than a pile of bloody bones and pulped flesh. He could only tell that it was Vanai because of the red hair, redder even than the blood that soaked the ground around her in a miniature ocean, that fell like a waterfall from the back of the head that was turned away from him. She was lying face down, her limbs twisted into unnatural positions, her body crushed like a bug beneath a boot-heel, as if a monstrous weight had smashed her down. But not only did her body... not even Sai could delude himself into thinking she was still alive, no matter how much he wanted to, given the sight before his eyes... show evidence of massive blunt force trauma, there were also four great slices in her limp form. Long, jarringly straight and evenly spaced cuts, looking like the sort of deep incisions a surgical scapel would make... assuming it was the size of a sword and swung with blurring force. One had seperated her legs at the knees, another sliced her in twain at the waist, a third bisected her chest and the last had taken the top of her skull and face off and sent it flying somewhere out of sight, leaving her brain to leak from the bony container in a sodden grey mass.

Of Matthias, his baby son and Jessi, his baby daughter, there was no sign... but they had been in Vanai's arms just before whatever had struck and killed her did so, nearly killing Sai in the process. He wanted to believe that they were still alive... with every fiber of his being he wanted to believe that! But given the wreckage of Vanai, his wife and truest love, Sai's unrelentingly logical and analytical nature would not allow himself the luxury of that hope for long. His children were dead. Crushed, mangled, shredded by whatever had destroyed their mother and sliced into his back, shattering his spine and leaving him lying useless on the ground, rapidly dying from blood loss. He couldn't see their bodies, and was glad for it... bad enough that he had to look at himself, and the fleshy ruin that Vanai had been turned into... he could not have borne seeing his babies lying in such a state. His imagination was torment enough. The bottom of the world seemed to spiral away into nothingness, and Sai felt the sensation of falling. His vision blurred, and it took him a while to realize through the tears of despair and loss that he'd fallen over, leaving a huge streak of gore on the rubble he'd been leaning on. He didn't have long left.

Sai scrabbled and clawed at the ground with his arms. If he was going to die, he was damned well going to do it with his wife in his arms! He wouldn't let her and the babies go alone! He didn't WANT to live without his family. Without Matthias and Jessi, the cores of his heart and soul, or without Vanai, the girl who'd made his entire life worth living, without whom he'd have just been another sullen former soldier, trudging through the lifestyle of a moderately wealthy white collar drudge, LIFE WAS POINTLESS! Life without happiness was just death without a coffin! And without Vanai and his children, there could be no happiness for Sai. He was utterly sure of that! He whispered apologies and pleas for forgiveness he couldn't hear as he slowly inched his way along, dragging his lower body sluggishly behind him, leaving a bright, wet trail in the dust as he did so. The world was swimming all over the place, and now he couldn't feel his arms again. Or his head. Or his body. But the one thing he wished he COULDN'T feel anymore, his broken heart, seemed to be taking in all the pain from the rest of his body and magnifying it beyond endurance!

Sai's world faded to a blackness far more profound than simple unconsciousness, the last light he beheld before succumbing to the irresistable call of blood loss being the incandescent flash of igniting beam swords. His reaching hand fell lightly onto Vanai's closest shoulder. "I... love... ... you... ... Van... ai... sorry..." Sai whispered, before his head lolled limply in the dust.

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The sound of the shrieking alarms and thunderous announcements of the ship wide comm brought Shinn straight from the depths of one of the more pleasant dreams he'd had in months back into full brutal reality. It had been the first time in a long time when his sleep hadn't been at least lightly plagued by memories of the personal tragedy that he'd suffered, where the mangled and torn apart bodies of his parents and little sister were strewn across hillsides and all over his quarters or inside his cockpit or other, less fun places. No, perhaps because of the massively accelerated training schedule that he'd been working under in preparation for this operation, perhaps because he was about to go into such life threatening danger that he couldn't spare any thoughts for the past, perhaps just through simple fortune, tonight had been nice and restful, with his thoughts focusing on green hills and running water and puffy white clouds and super high scores on all his tests in the elite ZAFT Acadamy when he was finally allowed to go. Until the aforementioned raid sirens and shouting over the ship wide comm system. Given his choice of ways to wake up, it was down there near the bottom, only beat out by such truly horrid things as hard vacuum, cold water or the "you're three hours late for duty" alarm on his cell phone.

"SCRAMBLE, SCRAMBLE, SCRAMBLE! THIS IS NOT A DRILL! ALL PERSONNEL TO LEVEL ONE BATTLESTATIONS! ALL PILOTS REPORT TO THE FLIGHT DECK IMMEDIATELY! REPEAT... THIS IS NOT A DRILL! SCRAMBLE, SCRAMBLE, SCRAMBLE!" The message was being broadcast over and over again at a volume loud enough to blast his hair over to one side of his head if he got too near the speaker, or so it felt. Louder still was the slowly rising and falling wail of the sirens, which by their very precisely calibrated nature sent subconscious shivers of fear and wakefulness directly into the more instinctual sides of his brain. ZAFT raid sirens were quite literally impossible to sleep through unless you were drugged or physically knocked out. They also could cause hearing damage over prolonged exposures, so they were almost never used at full volume in drills. Most shipboard casualties didn't warrant their use either, unless it was something that directly and immediately affected the safety of the ship, or something equally important. Shinn lept out of bed so quickly he whacked his head on the bottom of the bed above his, but he didn't stop to rub his head, or even get dressed. Ignoring the stinging of his skull, he dashed for the door, only a few steps ahead of the other three pilots that shared the junior aerospace officer quarters with him.

Shinn charged out into the hall and quite literally bowled someone over as they were hurrying down the passageway. Shinn registered the collision with the rather softer and more yielding person he'd run over and he reacted in almost the same instant, putting himself between her and the wall. Even in microgravity, falling into the wall could still hurt... especially if you happened to get there because someone else wasn't watching where they were going and ran you down. He wished he had the time to apologize properly, but the comm system was still broadcasting it's dire warnings and the raid sirens were still blaring, so loud out in the passageways that it was hard to hear yourself think. He wished someone would turn the fucking things off... if anyone was still asleep right now, then they'd not wake up if you stabbed em with a knife anyway! Shinn pushed himself away from the wall, releasing his arms from the red haired girl whom he'd just run over, who was giving him a glare that oscillated between fuming indignance and restrained amusement.

Shinn could understand the indignance, given the circumstances, but amusement puzzled him. At least until he took in situation more fully, the red haired girl in her green tunic, garrison cover and skirt, standard shipboard uniform for female ZAFT soldiers, though the hat was only required when on duty, so she must have just gotten off or was just about to go on when the... whatever was happening happened. Then there was him, Shinn Asuka... clad only in his boxer briefs that he'd been sleeping in, without even socks on his feet, his hair even wilder and more spiky than usual, panting for breath and rubbing a bruise on one temple... he was lucky that this WASN'T a drill, cause he was suddenly aware that he looked like a TOTAL disgrace right now! At least he was wearing regulation boxers and not the gag gift ones his flight crew had bought for him... the ones with the cartoon Ginn prints were comfortable as hell, but red and blue and purple Ginns were a bit... colorful for a soldier's underwear. At that moment, someone on the bridge finally decided that the raid siren was doing more harm than good, and mercifully switched it off.

"Umm, sorry about that." Shinn coughed, his face flushing. Great going on his part. He just had to jump out of bed, mostly nude, jump out the door and crash into a girl, drive her into the wall and hug her. He was never going to hear the end of this, since he'd done it in plain view of his three roomates. Not only that but she was a CUTE girl, of about his own age if he was any judge. The ZAFT garrison uniform wasn't perhaps the best for showing off a girl's figure, but then again he'd had his arms around her pretty tight and... Shinn realized where his thoughts were going and forced himself, with some effort, to stop. There was an honest to God EMERGENCY going on and he was getting distracted by this girl, who was still looking him up and down, seemingly having decided on amusement rather than fury. Being fifteen sure sucked sometimes... it felt like he wasn't in control of his own body... ESPECIALLY around girls. At least he didn't generally get tongue tied. "I was in a hurry and all, to get down to flight decks. Still need to do that actually, so, sorry for running into you, but I need to get moving." Shinn pushed off from the wall and angled himself towards the ladderway that would lead to the hangers.

He was aware after a turn or two that the girl was following him, a determined look on her face. He paused at an intersection and waited for her to catch up to him. "Look, I said I was sorry... there's something up, I don't know what, and I'm in a big hurry to get to my Mobile Suit, so if we can leave the scolding for later that'd be..." Shinn started to complain.

"Apology accepted." The girl replied with a bemused shake of her head. "I guess you didn't hear me when I said it the first time. Of course, you were busy playing wall cushion at the time too, so I guess I can understand." She paused a moment at the intersection with him, as they both waited for a second or two for a rush of mechanics heading the other way to go by. "I'm headed to my Mobile Suit as well, in case you were thinking I was following you... during an EMERGENCY DEPLOYMENT... to chew you out. So rest easy and don't think so much of yourself...?"

"Shinn. Shinn Asuka, Pilot First Class." Shinn supplied, after he realized she was fishing for his name, since she obviously couldn't read it off his uniform.

"Pilot First Class Lunamaria Hawke. Nice to meet you, Shinn." Lunamaria held out a hand to shake. She couldn't help but eye the guy one more time... it was impossible not to really, given that he was just wearing regulation boxers... it wasn't like semi-naked men her own age paraded around in front of her every day... even with ZAFT's somewhat relaxed standards, that was a no-no. A bit wild looking, with that hair sticking up all over the place, and those rather startling red eyes... but she had the feeling he might clean up real nice. She forced herself to concentrate. FLIGHT DECK. Ignore potentially hot guy. FLIGHT DECK. MOBILE SUIT. Not pleasingly muscular and shapely semi-naked guy. She could do this. She could. Being fifteen sure made things problematic at times. They shook hands, and started to head to opposite sides of the hanger bay. Lunamaria wasn't quite sure what it was, but she couldn't leave it at just an apology and handshake. "Talk to you after, Shinn?"

"Uh... yeah, sure!" Shinn called back, half turned. He almost crashed into another wall because he was staring over his shoulder, but he managed to collect himself in a matter of seconds and push on rapidly towards the ready room where his team was supposed to muster. He forced himself to put all thoughts of anything besides whatever was going on that caused this alert from his mind.

"SHINN! What the fuck took you so long?" Captain Schwartz bellowed as Shinn raced into the ready room. "You're nearly four seconds slower than our drill times! I expect better! Get suited up, we're launching in less than five minutes!"

"Yes SIR!" Shinn replied, which was one of the only safe replies in a situation like this. Ignoring the nudges and winks going around the room's other junior members... mostly his roommates whom had witnessed his brief altercation with Lunamaria, Shinn bolted to his locker and efficiently climbed into his ZAFT flightsuit and combat gear in a little over two minutes. As he completed his final double checks, Shinn caught Captain Schwartz's eye again. "Pardon me, sir, but do you have any earthly idea what's going on? I've never seen them use the sirens like that."

"Precisely!" Captain Schwartz barked. Seeing Shinn's confusion, he relented. "Earthly that is. Something's come up regarding Operation Overload's implementation. Somehow... someway... don't ask me how... but the Isolationists have been forewarned of our impending attack. They have defense fleets maneuvering into the drop zones of all twenty Angry Sky warheads. This suggests to me... and to High Command... that there has been a serious loss of intelligence or communication integrity, because there is simply NO way the Naturals could accidentally happen to block all TWENTY insertion points under such short notice! Not only that, but something has gone seriously tube shaped down on Earth itself... High Command is running around like ants on a frying pan about whatever it is. Communications lines are going absolutely insane with message traffic!"

"They're ready for us!?" Shinn gasped, aghast at this terrible news. Operation Overload relied heavily on the element of surprise to ensure effectiveness... ZAFT didn't have the forces to ensure the safety of the Angry Sky mechanisms under less than ideal conditions. As things were, with the plan working perfectly, their forces were stretched to the breaking point. With the possibility of engagements in low to mid orbit, much less running battles planetside... Shinn's guts did a slow, uneasy flip flop.

"No. Yes. Maybe." Schwartz replied, with a heavy shrug. "Too soon to tell for sure. What is sure is that we can't fail to react and hope for the best, unless we all want to get shot to cinders in the process. At this point in time all we can do is try and take the initiative. The more of them we can knock out of the sky before the main force arrives with the Angry Sky bombs, the better chance we have of success. And I shouldn't need to remind anyone here, but success is the ONLY option we have."

"How badly are we outnumbered?" One of the other pilots asked.

"They won't tell me." Schwartz replied warily, conscious of morale. "Take that as you may, but I'd not expect good odds."

"Do we at least have a chance?" Shinn wondered, though he hadn't meant to say it out loud.

"Shinn, we've ALWAYS got SOME chance. We're ZAFT after all." Schwartz said with a wintry grin. His humor soured quickly though. "If you're looking for reassurance from me, I won't insult or lie to you guys. We're in it deep. Very deep. Like Shinn said, they don't use those sirens pretty much EVER. Ships have gone into fleet wide engagements and been blown apart without sounding those horns. The only way any of us is CERTAIN to survive this mission is to go EVA now and wait for search and rescue to find you... assuming there's anyone to conduct search and rescue left. However, thats not an option for the Schwartz team, is it lads?"

"NO SIR!"

"That's right. Now mount up and give me your green lights. We're going to go out there and show those damn Naturals that ZAFT... and especially the Schwartz team... isn't going down without a HELLUVA fight! SEMPER FORTIS MAGNUS!"

"SEMPER FORTIS MAGNUS!" (Always greatly couragous)

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Frost could hear the Mobile Suits breathing. He could see their heart's beating. Smell their breath smoking in the chilly air. Taste the vital fluids pumping through their mechnical frames in crudes fascimilies of blood. Ensconsed within the Pulsar, practically fused with its operating system in most definitions of the word, he had entire oceans of data being projected into his consciousness that normal humans couldn't even begin to fathom, limited to their old fashioned joystick controls and computer screen displays. He saw what the Pulsar saw, heard what it heard, felt what it felt... and when he found he didn't have words for those sights, sounds, smells and sensations, he'd been forced to look at them through the lens of his own experiences. The sound of thrusters idling, rising and falling whines as the pilots feathered the throttles reminded him of fighters panting for breath before a bloody fight... the steady flaming pulses of their fission hearts blooming in reds and golds in their chests... cooling systems belching steam into the air from their cooling gun muzzles and electronic components... Frost saw the enemy Gundams more as mechanical extensions of his enemies, rather than mere vehicles. To him and the Pulsar, they were as alive as, if not more than, the fragile meat that piloted them.

Frost flicked his right hand again, striving to remove the last vestiges of blood from his claws. Not that blood on his hands really bothered him, but it was a not so subtle reminder to his opponents... who regarded bloody hands as abhorrent, the silly gooses. As if any of their hands were truly clean... as if none of them had ever killed people! Oh, self defense, they'd say. We had to protect people, a common excuse. It was them or me, that was a favorite of his. Worthless drivel, all of it. Blood was blood, death was death, killing was killing. You either had or had not... and precious, precious few had not. Which was why killing those precious few... or better yet, bringing them down to the level of those who had, THEN killing them... was so satisfying. Of course, far too few actually understood this truth. Truly, a messiah was never appreciated in his own time, as it was said. Though Frost supposed he should be thankful that he was such a unique visionary... it gave him that much more unspoiled subject material to work with, after all!

The Liberty stood not much more than twenty meters away, cannons and rifles stowed for the moment, glaring at him with a truely hateful expression. It was enough to send chills of pleasure down his spine. Boytoy always had been the easiest of them to provoke... you didn't even have to get personal with him... just threaten some people who had no business being near fighting anyway and he'd boil over like a pot left too long on high heat. The rest of Pink's little special forces unit circled the Liberty and the Pulsar from a distance of about two city blocks, clearly apprehensive about closing to extreme close quarters with the Pulsar. Not that he was going to give them much choice about it, but he let them revel in their plots and plans for a few more moments... it would make disrupting them all the sweeter when the time came. There was no loss as painful as a loss that was grabbed from the very jaws of victory, forcing you to realize that you'd been played for fools all along by a vastly superior force. Frost knew that better than pretty much anyone, given how many times his certain victory had been taken away from him by that bitch called Fate.

Frost spread his arms wide, sheathing his claws and holding his palms up. And then he laughed, as hard and loud as he could, the Pulsar projecting his voice both audibly and across every comm channel it could detect, decrypt and access, which for the Pulsar was pretty much all of them, including news feeds, the international distress frequency and almost all of the Isolationist and ZAFT military channels. He laughed because he'd been enjoying himself, and he was anticipating enjoying himself a lot more in the near future. He laughed because he was standing at the cusp of his great destiny, and only he could see it. He laughed because he knew it would goad his opponents like almost no amount of insults would. He laughed, because for one of the very few times in his life, he was happy and content with a situation. All was as it should be. Him. Them. The world. The stage was set, the players present, the music just about to start... the air itself seemed to have an electric tension, as if it was holding its breath. Frost was expecting to be attacked, while his guard was apparently down, but Boytoy and the others refused to fall into that little trap, more was the pity. Still, by this point he shouldn't expect THEM to play along nicely, should he?

"Well, if YOU won't attack me, I'LL just have to start this climax off properly MYSELF!" Frost shouted, ripping his sword from the ground where he'd planted it nearby so he could clean off his claws and leaping towards the Liberty. He cocked the sword back up high over his shoulder and prepared to bring it down in an apocalyptic strike that would shear the Liberty in half from shoulder to hip without even slowing down. He cried out in exhultation as he crossed the distance between them in a blink of an eye and brought his sword crashing down like the very sky itself falling atop his hated foe. However, the sword blade jarred to a halt well short of its intended target, bright orange beam edge striking gold and blue sparks from the flickering greenish energy field of a Citadel Shield that the Liberty had almost calmly interposed into the path of the swing, before the Pulsar could get its full momentum into the blow. The Liberty made no move to swing its own beam saber, and Frost snarled with anger at being so mocked. Boytoy should know better than to make light of FROST!

If he hadn't been melded into the Pulsar's OS, Frost never would have seen the attack coming. As things were, he noticed a sudden build up of energies behind the torso projector that graced the front chest of the Liberty, and his memories flashed back to one of the earliest encounters between himself and this damned Mobile Suit, where an invisible cone of energy from that very projector had blasted the Fury's electronics systems and OS into so much data confetti. The Fury had subsequently been upgraded with extra EMP shielding to protect against similar incidents, but the Pulsar had no such protection. Quite what would happen if the insanely complex computer programs controlling the NIC System, much less the Fusion Pulse Reactor, were corrupted into garbled static by the EMP wave, Frost didn't know, and wasn't eager to find out. For that matter, what the blast would do to HIM, given his new melding with the Pulsar, wasn't something he desired to experience either. In a heartbeat Frost disengaged from the sword and shield clinch and dodged backwards and to the side at maximum thrust. It was barely enough... the tips of the Pulsar's feet brushed the edge of the EMP field as it was disgorged in a rippling wave of charged air. It felt something like rubbing his feet against a file blade for a moment... not exactly painful, but far from pleasant.

"Clever! Clever Boytoy! Very clever!" Frost congratulated, his blood singing again. This was the sort of fight he was looking for... a final challenge before the long drudge killing! "Doomed to failure, but a clever attempt!"

"My name is Kira, Frost." Boytoy's voice was strangely calm, even for that abomination of a Pilot, who never seemed to get truly angry when fighting in his Mobile Suit.

"Your name has NOTHING to do with what you ARE!" Frost retorted in exasperation. Was he really the only one who could see things like that? "Your name is just a collection of meaningless sounds! What you ARE is Pink's Boytoy! You're nothing more than a security blanket for Pink!"

"I think Lacus might disagree with you there, but we're not here to debate semantics with you, Frost." Boytoy replied, still infuriatingly calm. "We're not going to let you run away this time."

"Let me? LET ME!? DON'T YOU REMEMBER, BOYTOY, WHO LET WHO GET AWAY LAST TIME!? OH WAIT, THAT'S RIGHT, YOU WERE UNCONSCIOUS THEN... TELL ME, DO YOU STILL CRAVE THE TASTE OF MY BLOOD, BOYTOY!? DO YOU!?" Frost shouted in gleeful rage.

"Your failure to kill me when you had the chance is YOUR mistake, not mine, Frost. And I do not, never have and never will crave the taste of blood... yours or anyones; your attempt to poison me failed utterly."

"DON'T BE SO CALM, BOYTO...!" Frost was diving to attack again even as he raved, ready to slice the annoying bastard into cubes small enough to eat in a single bite before he was done. Even as he started the dive he was forced to abort the attack, snatching one hand off his sword hilt in order to block an almost impressively timed barrage from the Blond Weeny and his chick, in the Grand Buster. His Positron shield absorbed the hyper impulse blast and explosive shotgun shells with barely a blip in his power levels, but it did force him to delay his attack on the Boytoy long enough for the Liberty to countercharge, using its shield to force the Pulsar's sword up and to the side even as the Liberty lunged forward with its beam saber. Frost reversed thrust in an instant and cartwheeled sideways through the air as soon as the Liberty's shield hit his sword, by the time the Liberty even half completed its lunge the Pulsar was fifty meters away.

Without bothering to look around, since the Pulsar could look in three hundred and sixty degress at once, Frost brought his sword up over his head in a horizontal parry as Scarface in the Duelist tried to power slice down onto him from above. With a grunt and a flexing of his muscles, Frost pushed the Duelist away and spun on his heels, ducking low into a crouch to avoid Loser Zala-Attha's first beam edged flyer pack, then flipping up into a somersault over the second flyer pack and finally utilizing a one hand handspring to redirect himself past Loser Zala-Attha and his so called Righteous itself. Railgun tracers split the air within feet of either side of the cavorting Pulsar, and Loser Zala-Attha's twin bladed beam sword sliced the air in humming patterns, but by the time he started swinging the Pulsar was already past and behind him, both hands once again on the sword hilt, body twisting around in mid tumble to bring the sword across in a horizontal strike that should have cleft the Righteous into two at stomach level, if the damnable Boytoy hadn't charged in and taken the blow with his own shield, rocking backward under the force of the blow.

Touching his feet to the ground for a bare moment, Frost kicked off into a jump that took him sixty meters down the street before he touched down again, abruptly reversing his momentum and barreling back down the street at Boytoy, Loser Zala-Attha and Scarface. Minute thoughts adjusted his flight path enough to dodge the hastily aimed shots from Fiery Zala-Attha's ion cannon and beam gatling cannons as she tried to catch him from the flank. Frost put the Pulsar into a rapid spin, using one hand to hold his sword tight against his front, while the other hand whipped out his beam crossbow and fired off a single shot at Fiery Zala-Attha that blasted her ion cannon into flaming shards, right out of her hands, and sent the Strike Rubicon stumbling backwards, smoke trailing from its damaged arm. Continuing his spin, Frost jammed a foot down into the ground just as he reached Boytoy, bringing his zweihander around in a one handed swing that Boytoy easily deflected with his shield, though the crunching impact was enough to send the Liberty sliding back a pace or two. Frost thrust his free hand at the Liberty, palm forward, as if trying to push him. Which was a fairly accurate description of what he was doing, as the barely visible reddish tinge of the Positron shield spat forth from the palm projector and slammed into the already off balance Liberty.

Frost had been hoping to just annihilate the Liberty with the Positron shield, but the incredibly strong magnetic fields enclosing the antimatter particles repelled pretty much anything, unless it was small or traveling at velocities of several thousand miles per hour. For something the size of a full Mobile Suit to break through the field would require it to be moving far faster than anything but the Pulsar could really manage. Still, even though the Liberty wasn't disintegrated by contact with the field, it couldn't penetrate it either, and the Liberty was knocked backwards like a kickball, stumbling and crashing to the ground in a haze of dust, sparks and ripped up concrete. Frost leapt over the Liberty even as it was falling backwards, kicking out with one foot square into the middle of the Righteous's shield, rocking that machine as well. Pushing off with that leg and his thrusters, Frost altered course in mid blitz, pulling two right angle turns within a second, his trailing foot kicking the Righteous in the side as he passed, his left elbow snapping back to clip Loser Zala-Attha behind the ear as an afterthought, the triplicate of blows causing the Righteous to stagger in place, unable to retaliate for a few moments.

Frost brought his sword down in a vertical two handed slice as he passed the Righteous, aiming to return the attack the Duelist had tried to level on him just seconds earlier. Plasma energies shrieked and arcs of tormented lightning spalled around as the Duelist brought both its beam saber and Citadel Shield up to meet the attack head on. The downward attack was stopped, but Frost didn't let up for a moment, spinning the Pulsar around once in place to build momentum again, he beat his sword down vertically atop the Duelist a second time, driving Scarface's defenses lower still. A third strike within a second all but broke his opponent, and the fourth strike sent the Duelist clattering onto its backside, throat bared to the sky. Or so it seemed, until the Duelist snatched up its beam rifle and brought it to bear on the Pulsar, greenish pre-discharge glowing from its twin barrels. Frost snorted in contempt, even as he kicked around with one leg, shattering the rifle in an explosion of metal shards and pinning the Duelist's right hand to the ground to prevent any more foolishness. Frost took his sword in both hands and raised it high, preparing to thrust down and impale Scarface like the bug he'd always been.

Several flights of missiles and a pair of intense green beam blasts arrowed in from off to his side, the beams glancing harmlessly off his zweihander, barely even causing the great blade to shiver. Grimacing in unrestrained distaste, Frost took a hand off the sword to sweep the missiles from the sky with a flick of his free wrist and the Positron shield. Unfortunately, he lost his opportunity in doing so, as the Duelist brought it's shield up across its body, chainsaw edges wailing and steaming as they struggled to find purchase along the incandescant blade of the beam zweihander, Citadel Shield edge sparkling as it forced the beam edge aside. Frost threw his upper body backwards even as the Duelist fired the three beam tipped grapples from the front face of it's shield. Frost snatched all three cables with his free hand, sliding out his claws to sever the macromolecular cords with disgusting ease as he gripped them, continuing his backward flip Frost lifted up his legs and brought his sword back and down in time to deflect a brace of shots from the Righteous's beam rifle. Digging the blade into the ground, Frost pushed off from it, leaving it behind as he somersaulted over the head of the still tottering Righteous. Frost thrust downwards with both palms open as he passed over the Liberty, which was just getting to its knees... flattening the annoying Boytoy like a fly under a swatter as both Positron shields pounded the Liberty face first into the ground.

Rotating out of his somersault, Frost snapped out his arms, releasing his twin heated whips of armored chain from the forearm sheaths. Glowing white hot with heat bleed from the FPR cooling systems, the whips carved molten paths through the buildings to either side of the Pulsar as he flexed his arms. He ducked and dodged in place a flurry of railgun tracers and beam blasts from the Righteous, as Loser Zala-Attha fought desperately to give his comrades time to rise again. A double flight of missiles from directly behind him drew Frost's attention for a moment, as the Strike Rubicon thought to rejoin a battle she had no place in even approaching. The Pulsar snapped its arms back and forth in a blinding pattern, heat whips snaking out like octopus tentacles to slice and batter the missiles out of the air in bursts of fire and shrapnel. Apparently not getting the hint, the Strike Rubicon charged through the smoke and debris of its failed attack, shield held low and forward, beam lance high and back, poised to thrust downward or forward as needed. Her CIWS chattered cutely at him as she entered the twenty five meter range of his heat whips. Dropping his head, twisting his shoulders to bring them beneath the hurriedly aimed tracers from her CIWS, Frost thrust his left arm out straight towards her, thrusting his right arm straight out in the opposite direction at the same time.

The five ton, white hot mass of his left heat whip struck the Strike Rubicon's shield high and center, deflecting up and over her left shoulder in a flash of light and orange sparks. The identical mass of his right heat whip struck the Righteous... who had been charging from the other side in a laughably predictable joint attack by Loser Zala-Attha... in much the same spot, though Loser Zala-Attha was smarter and deflected the heat whip down and to the side instead. A harsh push from his right hand Positron shield stood the Righteous up straight and ended its charge with a sound of crunching and bending metal, stopping it as cold as if it had hit an impenetrable wall. Not deigning to use his left hand shield to stop the Rubicon similarly, Frost let her thrust futiley for his center of mass with her lance... before snatching out his hand and arresting the beam lance several meters short of its intended target. With a grin of effort and triumph, Frost bent the shaft of her lance, destroying the beam emitter components in the head of the lance and turning it from a weapon into so much scrap metal. He twiched his left forearm even as he disabled her lance, looping his heat whip, which she had deflected over her left shoulder, around her now conveniently exposed right arm and neck.

Smoke and sparks jetted from where the links of the heat whip were in contact with the Rubicon's armor, and molten metal started to drip down the Rubicon's chest as the heat whip began cutting through the Rubicon's neck and right arm, which was trapped awkwardly rasied above its shoulder. Frost drew back sharply on his left hand whip, keeping the tension high and causing the looped chain to saw back and forth, adding even more cutting strain to go with the high heat and sharpened edges of the weapon. Fiery Zala-Attha proved the worthiness of her nickname once again though, as she left off trying to pull away from the Pulsar's whip, instead lowering her shield and pointing the twin gatling beam cannons beneath it at him. Normally not much more than an annoyance to a Mobile Suit, especially a Gundam, to the Pulsar, with its distinct lack of armor, the 25mm cannons were every bit as dangerous as pretty much anything else was. And he couldn't use his Positron shields to stop the attack, without cutting off his own whip in the process. Fortunately, there was more than one way to skin just about anything. Leaping straight up and applying a few taps from his thrusters brought the Pulsar over and around behind the Rubicon, looping several more coils of slack whip around the machine in the process.

Pressing close up against the back of the Rubicon, Frost jammed one knee into the lower back of his captive, applying enough pressure to make turning or moving the legs of the Rubicon almost impossible. He reached under her right arm and lashed his right whip at the no doubt extremely frustrated and worried Righteous, who was standing off a bit, obviously wondering how he kept getting into situations where his lovely little Fiery Zala-Attha was held hostage. "Its not MY fault! She did it to ME!" Frost crowed, giggling. Seeing that the Righteous had backed out of whip range for the moment, Frost fully retracted the right hand whip, popping the claws on that hand instead. Unable to penetrate Phase Shift armor directly, the mono-molecular blades did just fine for Frost's intended purpose, sliding into joints and between the joins of armor plates as he laviciously caressed the Rubicon, much as he'd done to Fiery Zala-Attha herself bak in Orb. This time though, his nails were doing more than indenting flesh... this time he was snipping hydraulic lines, cutting power cords, severing the internal mechanical and electric systems that served the Rubicon as nerves and muscles, crippling the machine without leaving more than bright scratches on its paintwork for the outside eye to see.

Frost lovingly punched two claws through the camera eyes of the Rubicon, delighting in the blue and white sparks that crawled over his talons as he dug them into the Rubicon's skull, slicing its sensor and camera systems into ruins. His other claws pried at the half melted and heat stressed joint between the Rubicon's head and neck, just above where the left hand heat whip was slowly but surely melting through the Rubicon's shoulders and right arm. When he was pleased with his grip, Frost stabbed the claws in deeply, twisted, ripped and then heaved, tearing the Rubicon's head from it's shoulders in a spray of flaming hydraulic oils and electrical arcs. Discarding the inert wreckage, Frost started prying at the front of the Rubicon, claws skittering down the metal as he searched for the nigh invisible cracks where the cockpit hatch came flush with the rest of the torso. The joins there were nearly nonexistant, forming as they did an air and water tight seal, but the tips of his claws were more than fine enough to slide in... once he found the correct joins, that was. And once he did, Fiery Zala-Attha would soon be EX-Fiery Zala-Attha, and he could go on his merry way.

That plan, as was the unfortunate way for so many of his good ideas, was not to be, as two very strong hands descended upon the Pulsar from behind, gripping him tightly at shoulder and waist. Frost cursed the world for its unfairness at letting him get so distracted as to let the Blond Weeny and his chick, in their massive Grand Buster, sneak up on him from behind. Damn Fiery Zala-Attha for being such a sweetly distracting bitch! Reversing his right arm in a manner no human arm could hope to match, Frost began scrabbling at the front of the Grand Buster, which was pressed close to him as the Blond Weeny and his chick tried to pry the Pulsar off the Rubicon through brute force. Frost fought the pull for a few moments, before he realized that, somewhat unfairly, the Grand Buster was much too strong for the Pulsar to match directly, unlike the situation would be in the flesh. Deciding that given the awkward angle of his right arm, and the soon to be presence of the other three Clyne Faction machines, that this situation was untenable, Frost stopped resisting the Grand Buster's attempts and instead added his own impetus to the yanking and pulling as he retracted his left hand whip from the already disabled Rubicon.

Obviously not expecting such a tactic, the Grand Buster stumbled backwards, wrist joints smoking as they were stressed mightily before the Blond Weeny released his grip on the twisting Pulsar. The Grand Buster tripped and fell to the ground with a thunderous rumble and the Pulsar flipped free, handspringing along the ground for almost a hundred meters before coming to an abrupt halt. The Righteous, Liberty and Duelist stepped forward, past the disabled Rubicon and between the Grand Buster and the Pulsar, standing in line abreast to give their big friend time to recover. However, it wasn't because of them that Frost had brought himself to a stop. Sighing with enjoyment, he thrust the Pulsar's arms straight out to either side, palms flat and out, legs braced widely. Even as he did so, the building directly to either side of him exploded outwards onto him, accompanied by full out barrages from Little Ashino in the Independence on his right side and some nameless fool in a Freedom on his left side. Rubble, cannon shells, railgun tracers, beam blasts and missiles pelted his shields mercilessly from both sides, sending corsucating waves of fire and shrapnel through the air, rendering the area around where the Pulsar stood into a cauldron of destruction.

The Pulsar itself, and anything else contained within the hemisphere defined by the Positron shields, was as calm as the eye of a hurricane and remained completely unscathed. Chuckling in his delight, Frost ducked out of the last sputters of the flanking barrages and turned on these new, old foes. Desiring to be rid of the nameless annoyance as soon as possible, Frost snatched out his beam crossbow, reloading it even as he brought it to bear, turning contemptuously away from his target to face the Independence, which had dropped its shield and its twin 120mm gatling cannons, leaving both hands free for some reason. Frost fired his beam crossbow, the plasma tipped bolt piercing the Freedom high on the left torso, blowing that arm, the hip and shoulder mounted weapons, and the HiMat wing behind it off and sending the machine twisting backward in ruins. Spastic fire from the Freedom's... or Templar's, depending on who owned it... right hand beam rifle splattered off the buildings to either side of the Pulsar, and one lucky beam even scorched a black runnel down the outside of the Pulsar's left arm... barely more than paintwork damage, and the nano-repair system would take care of it in minutes, but it was infuriating!

Frost returned his attention to Little Ashino, and just in time too, because the Independence thrust both of its hands, palm out, at the Pulsar, as if trying to push him! The Independence was too far away to make physical contact though, and Frost knew that the Independence didn't have Positron shields... he raised his right hand shield in a mirrored pushing gesture to be safe and was glad he did when twin bolts of eye searingly bright purple-white lightning spat out of the Independence's palm mounted Mjolnir capacitors. Nothing fancier than pure electrical energy, man made lightning bolts composed of gigajoules of energy leeched from the willing Captain Kellson's Templar, the Mjolnir bolts struck the Positron shield and EXPLODED into frustrated ball lightning, unable to penetrate the magnetic fields coating the shield, and therefore not subject to annihilation by the positrons contained within. The backlash tossed the Independence backwards like a leaf in a gale, flying a full fifty meters, through four small buildings before friction at last brought the great machine to a halt, in a stunned, half sitting position. The feedback from the strike against his right hand shield raced up Frost's arm like molten steel eating his blood, and the uncontained force of the concussive explosion sent the Pulsar reeling backwards as well, tripping over the prone form of Eric's Templar and falling heavily onto its back, right arm spouting thin white smoke from within its hand mechanisms.

Boiling with rage, Frost twisted, rolled and kipped the Pulsar back to its feet with an undulation of his body, shaking his right hand as if he'd just touched a red hot stove and was trying to cool it down. His arm tingled furiously, but did not appear to have had any of its functions impeded or damaged. Frost could sense the Righteous, Liberty and Duelist closing in on him at top speed, while the Independence was slowly clambering back to its feet, shaking off the unexpected backlash from Ashino's desperately gambled attack. The Grand Buster was moving around at the edge of his perceptions, no doubt trying to find an angle to use its great artillery cannon on him without endangering its friends. He'd taken the odds from seven on one to five on one, and he was sure he'd be winnowing down the odds even more shortly, but even Frost had to admit that it was becoming a close run thing at times. He LOVED it! It was BEAUTIFUL! Everything his DESTINY should be! Everything... his train of thought was interrupted by a snippet of conversation the Pulsar's comm stealing systems suddenly picked up.

"... ionist Thirty Fifth Orbital Defence Fleet, calling IsoSuCom (Isolationist Supreme Command)! ZAFT Forces have accelerated to flank speed and are approaching on attack vectors! They are launching Mobile Suits and moving to engage our outer elements! Repeat, ZAFT advance forces are engaging us outside the parameters of their Operation Overload as transmitted to us! Location and trajectory of Angry Sky EMP bombs no longer clear. Request clarification of orders. Do we engage enemy forces now, or withdraw and stick to interdicting the doomsday weapons? IsoSuCom, come in! Respond, IsoSuCom! DAMMIT CAN ANYONE HEAR ME..."

"Noah... you little bastard..." Frost gritted his teeth in frustration. "You and your evil genius plans... touche. Touche. BUT IT'S NOT GOING TO SAVE YOU! NOAH!!" Frost blurred into action, taking off at maximum thrust, disappearing into the clouds of smoke over Denver in less than a second, before streaking down like a meteor, altering course at the last possible second to avoid slamming into the ground, the sonic boom rattling out in an expanding wave that threw dust and debris into the air in a circle a half mile across, knocking down several buildings that had been damaged during the course of the fighting and all but flattening his five remaining foes. He'd get back to them... by all that was holy, he'd get back to them! But right now, his fun... his DESTINY itself was endangered by Noah's minions... ZAFT... and whatever this "Angry Sky" weapon was. EMP bombs... such a quaint idea. Not playing fair at all. Lying little bastard Noah! Trying to cheat FATE itself! Well, Frost was having NONE of that! He'd go up there and wipe out ZAFT once and for all and THEN, THEN he'd come back down and get back to the serious business of ending the last hope of the human race! The Pulsar snatched its sword out of the ground as it zipped by, and Frost altered course again, aiming for heaven itself. "I'm coming for you, NOOOAAAHH!"

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With a sound not unlike a sledgehammer shattering a pile of bricks, a tanned human arm punched out through a half destroyed cinderblock wall. The arm shed patches of skin in large swathes along its length from the force of the blow, revealing the pinkish inner structures of the arm and the bones beneath those. No blood squirted, no howl of agony resounded, and the arm was withdrawn as smoothly and easily as it had first appeared, to reappear within seconds, bursting out through another portion of the wall, knocking a larger hole in the rubble that had fallen and blocked the exit door leading out the back side of the ruined Capitol Building. Two more punches later and the arm, now little more than shreds of skin and rubbery pink flesh hanging from scratched and dusty steel bones, finally managed to clear enough of a hole for people to start squeezing out from the darkened passageway.

"I must admit, whoever built this prosthetic arm REALLY knew what the fuck they were doing!" Waltfeld commented, inspecting his mechanical arm with something close to awe. That hadn't been the first bit of fallen debris he'd pulverized on their way out of the building, and as far as he could see, the arm was still working just fine, with only light cosmetic damage. The same couldn't be said of his very expensive faux flesh arm cover, which was utterly ruined, but appearances weren't exactly his major concern right at the moment. He slammed his metal fist into the sides of his hole several times, knocking out entire cinderblocks in blasts of dust and concrete chips, widening the hole by another foot to help the bigger people, like Kisaka and the sullen Sergeant-Major Glory, effect their own escape. His shoulder joint, where the steel bones of the prosthetic merged with his organic shoulder bones, ached somthing furious from the repeated jarring, but like the arm cover, that was a price he was willing to pay for no longer being trapped in a collapsed building.

"Indeed. Remind me not to get into a fist fight with you. Ever. AGH!" Alkire managed a weak chuckle that ended as his face went pale white when he accidentally put too much weight on his injured legs while stepping out of the hole. They'd decided to leave the wooden shrapnel in him, because they were afraid of tearing more blood vessels and muscles and nerves if they removed them... but that made walking especially painful for the TEMPEST leader, and he could only move with the assistance of Kisaka and Raine, and slowly at that, since Kisaka wasn't exactly at his best either.

Sergeant-Major Glory and Corporal Ramierez kept slightly off to themselves, accompanying the Clyne Faction in their bid to escape the ruined building, but not willing to follow Lacus's orders directly. Still, the massive Sergeant-Major and the wiry Corporal had added their shoulders and legs to the efforts to bull their way through locked doors, debris choked passageways and half collapsed stairways, right alongside Waltfeld, Murrue, Raine, Katie and Lacus herself. Kisaka and Alkire had been forced to stay away from the heavy work because of their injuries, which had suited neither man particularly well, despite the unimpeachable fact that they'd be more hindrance than help. Glory and Ramierez were helping after all, and they were both injured too... though with proper splinting Glory's wrists barely seemed to bother him at all, and Ramierez's splinters were orders of magnitude less severe than Alkire's. Ramierez whistled, low and long, as he caught sight of the devastation that the Capital Building area had become. "Looks like a tornado hit here." Ramierez commented.

"More like a pair of armored divisions had a knock down-drag out brawl to the death." Glory muttered, squinting his eyes to try and peer through the dust and smoke.

"Or a freakishly powerful Gundam chopped the building in half with its sword and then kicked around the rubble like a child destroying a sand castle." Katie spoke up, having been eavesdropping on their conversation. "Which is what actually happened, by the way." Her attempt at humor fell as flat as Alkire's, but she refused to let herself give in to despair. She'd be just as strong as Lacus, damn her if she wasn't! Lacus, with her cut up face and arms, who wasn't even crying a tiny bit, and had been leading them all with calm orders and uplifting comments, who'd taken charge when they'd all been stunned by the destruction and calamity of the building falling in on them... goddamn, but Katie didn't know how Lacus did it... even under the emotional assault of Frost's mind, she'd still managed to be calm and rational and focused, when all Katie wanted to do was find a hole and pull it in after herself!

"So where now?" Murrue asked, having stepped into the role of second in command. Lacus gave them direction and goals, Murrue fine tuned those directions and gave orders to accomplish the goals. Pretty much the same relationship they'd had throughout the course of the Valentine Wars. Why fix or change a system that worked just fine, after all? "We can't stay here, not with Frost and the Pulsar nearby... that monster'd like nothing better than finding the lot of us out on open ground like this!"

"We're going to go find Cyprus and the President and his family." Glory said stonily, his face set in a grim mask as he surveyed the chaos that had taken hold of the Denver cityscape. Fires raged out of control in all directions, smoke rose from rubble and even whole buildings like volcanic vents, and there was barely a structure within sight that wasn't damaged in some way, if not half or even fully collapsed. Pearl Harbor, after the atomic strikes, hadn't been this fucked up! Well, that was what happened when you pitted two entire CAD's against a Gundam in the middle of a city, or so Glory was forced to conclude. It was damn near impossible to believe that there was only one... ONE... enemy Mobile Suit out there, killing people and nearly twenty thousand soldiers were singularly unable to do DICK-ALL to stop him! "I don't particularly care what you people do. You're not my problem right now. We needed to work together to get out of the building, but now that we're out, the alliance is off... if I see you guys again I'm going to cap the lot of you... starting with the creepy girl with the pink hair!"

"We need to get in contact with Kira and the others, find out what the situation with Frost is." Waltfeld said, wondering just how they were going to do that, since Glory had destroyed the only radio, and it didn't look like there was much in the way of communication devices handy in this... wasteland.

"We'll help them find Sai and his family, and Mr. Glory's friend. Its the least we can do, given their help in escaping the building." Lacus said firmly. "We'll search for any other survivors along the way... I can't just walk away and hide and let people die, when if I stay and render even basic aid I might be able to save their lives!"

"But..." Waltfeld tried to argue, trying to interject the logical arguement that Lacus was quite a bit more important to keep alive than other people, cruel as that may have sounded.

"Kira, Athrun, Ysak, Dearka, Cagalli and Miriallia are more than busy right at the moment, and they don't need pointless communications from us distracting them. They know what they need to do, and they're doing their best to do it. When the time comes that they have a free moment, Katie and I will work something out with them for communications purposes. Right now, there is nothing more important that we can be doing than saving what lives we can." Lacus cut him off, adding a look that sent shivers up and down his spine. The decision had been made, that was plain. Usually Lacus was far from heavy handed in her directives... but that didn't mean she couldn't lay down the law when she thought it necessary, Waltfeld forced himself to remember. It stickled at his pride sometimes, even for him, who was as willing a Clyne Faction adherent as could be, to be flat out told what he was going to do by someone half his age, barely into young adulthood by PLANT standards. Still, despite the number of grim situations he'd been in, he could hardly say she'd steered him totally wrong, could he? And what was that saying... "pride goeth before the fall?"... perhaps it was better to get your pride pricked every now and then... kept you grounded.

"Split up then... we'll be able to cover more ground that way. But don't go off without at least one partner, and don't get out of sight of each other if at all possible! The last thing we need is people getting seperated and lost and maybe getting hurt!" Murrue ordered, after waiting a few moments to see if there were any other protests or opinions. There were none. "Raine, I want you and Ledonir and Alkire to find some sort of flat ground, preferrably with cover as well, that we can use as a sort of aid station or emergency shelter. I'll have Katie stay with you so we can stay in contact with you. Andrew, you and I will go with Lacus and search the northwest side, while Mr. Glory and Mr. Ramierez take the southwest side. If you do get seperated, try and find your way back to this position in thirty minutes, okay?"

"All this communicating without radios or cellphones is rubbing me totally the wrong way, but the basic plan is sound." Glory muttered, barely audible to the rest of them. "Thanks." He all but whispered.

"You're welcome, Mr. Glory. Just as you bear me no personal animosity, the reverse is also true. My stated ethos is to help people in need... and right now you're someone who needs help, so I am at your service, without reservation." Lacus replied, with a slight smile. To Murrue, Lacus seemed to be somehow bubbling with energy all of a sudden, as if the weight of the crisis and the narrowness of the escape from the collapsed building had revitalized her somehow. Lacus had always had a good presence in tough situations though, so Murrue told herself that she shouldn't be THAT surprised. Still, sometimes it was tough to remember that Lacus wasn't even eighteen yet.

The search for survivors was heartbreaking work, as such searches usually were. Few people lived through having a building collapse on top of them, especially when there'd been almost no warning beforehand, so people had been caught out of cover, exposed to the full weight of collapsing walls and ceilings. Rupturing gas lines and severed power lines added poisonous gas, electrocution and fires to the mix, while torn water mains flooded out many pockets of air where survivors might have been able to escape being crushed. Precious few of the people they were able to pull from the wreckage were still alive, and precious fewer of those would last long without dedicated medical attention, which they were unable to provide. Worst of all were the people they could hear, calling out faintly from deeper within the ruined building, but they couldn't find or reach, much less dig out, so all they could do was call out encouragement and hope that rescue crews would arrive in time to save those who were trapped.

It was Lacus, perhaps predictably, given her extra Newtype senses, that found the Argyle's first. She clambered over a pile of rubble, paying heed to an odd, just barely there tugging at her mind, an obstinate flicker of familiarity that she couldn't quite place... until she looked down the small slope and saw the bloody ruins of two people lying at the bottom. Lacus swayed, bile rising in her throat, and she had to turn her head to the side and squeeze her eyes tightly shut so she could take a couple deep breathes so she could speak properly. "Found them! I found Sai!" Lacus shouted, at the top of her considerable lungs, loud enough to be clearly heard even by Alkire, Raine and Kisaka, almost a quarter mile away. Lacus heard Waltfeld and Murrue scrambling up the rubble behind her, and more distant sounds as Ramierez and Glory rushed towards her position, but she didn't let herself turn away from the horrible sight in front of her eyes as she slowly made her way down the pile of rubble.

Lacus had seen some terrible, horrifying things... her father's shot riddled body after he'd been assassinated by ZAFT Military Police, a collapsed kindergarten in Pearl Harbor after the nuclear strikes, Kira and her friends after being tortured at the hands of Blue Cosmos in JIHAD, hundreds of unfortunate people in the streets of Purgatory Day, Kira after his disastrous experience with the Pulsar and Frost outside of Orb, more recently the smashed victims of the building collapse... but the sight of Sai and Vanai Argyle struck her harder than most. Perhaps it was because they'd been so vitally alive not that long ago... perhaps it was just the state of the bodies, which affected Murrue and Waltfeld the same way it had her, drawing deep breaths and low curses. Perhaps it was the knowledge that it was Frost who'd done this to them. Lacus didn't bother to wipe the tears from her eyes as she knelt by the two of them. From the look of things, Sai had managed to awake after suffering his injuries, and had crawled the few feet over to his wife, ending just short of her with his hand on her mangled shoulder. Of their twin baby children there was no sign, but given the utterly destroyed nature of Vanai's corpse, that didn't necessarily mean anything.

Glory stumbled into view, nearly tripping and falling face first down the rubble pile in his haste, before he fully saw what there was to see. The massive Hellhound staggered and literally moaned with mixed anger, sorrow and despair. Ramierez, arriving on scene just after his Sergeant-Major, didn't make a sound, though Lacus could feel that he was just as hard hit as the other Hellhound. Sai had been far more than just their boss and President... he'd been a staunch friend, and the person they'd looked up to in the process of bringing peace to the human race. Seeing him like this... they felt like members of the Clyne Faction would if it was Lacus lying there instead of Sai. "Fuck. Fuck. FUCK. FUCK! GODDAMN AND FUCK AND FUCKER!" Glory dropped to his hands and knees next to Lacus, pounding his hand into the ground, heedless of his broken wrist. "DAMNIT! DAMNIT! MR. PRESIDENT! SAI! DAMN IT, SAI! YOU CAN'T FUCKING DIE! YOU CAN'T!"

"Blunt force trauma... and deep slashing wounds. What the hell did this?" Ramierez said quietly, as he reverently but professionally poked and prodded at Vanai's remains, trying to forensically reconstruct what had occured. Though Lacus hadn't been there to see it, Kira had, and though he hadn't yet told her what he'd seen to so set him off like he had been, seeing this, Lacus no longer had to wonder. She shivered, and curled one of her own hands into a fist. How horrible, to survive the collapse of the building, only to be mercilessly snuffed out by a Mobile Suit, helpless to do anything to save yourself! Truly, Frost was a... Lacus gritted her teeth and wiped at her face gingerly, careful of the lightly bandaged cuts as she dried her eyes. Now was not the time for regrets or hatreds or fears... she could worry about those later.

"Frost did it, with the Pulsar's claws." Lacus said simply, her voice calm and all but drained of emotion. "They never knew what hit them, I don't think."

"I see. He's a dead man walking." Glory said, his own voice cold and bloodless. He was making a statement of fact, nothing more, nothing less. He struggled with himself for a moment, then turned his face, with hollow eyes, towards Lacus. "How did you find him, Ms. Clyne? We could have searched for hours without climbing this particular part of the rubble. I'm not angry at you for finding him, I just want to know how..."

"It's... umm... hard to explain..." Lacus hedged. "I suppose you could say I felt his... mind. I can see people's minds... well, see isn't the right word, but sense maybe, and I followed that sense until..." Lacus trailed off, as she suddenly realized something. She'd felt Sai, not Vanai. She couldn't sense the mind of someone who didn't have one... i.e. because they were dead. But she HAD sensed Sai! It had been terribly faint but she'd... Lacus narrowed her eyes in intense concentration. THERE! There it was, a very faint glimmer, like a candle at the bottom of a well, growing ever so slightly dimmer even as she watched. "HE'S ALIVE!" Lacus shouted, startling them all. Glory stared at her for a second, uncomprehending. "I can feel his mind! He's close to death, but if he was dead I couldn't have felt him!" Lacus insisted.

"Thank you God..." Glory whispered under his breath, moisture gathering in the corners of his eyes. He gently reached forward and felt Sai's neck, his brow furrowed in concentration, before he broke out into a very tight, feral smile. "She's fucking right! She's FUCKING RIGHT! He's got a pulse... thready, but it's there! He needs a doctor, NOW! CORPORAL, GIMME YOUR DAMN SHIRT, WE HAVE TO STOP THE BLEEDING!" Waltfeld and Murrue also crowded closer, offering what first aid training they could, which wasn't much helpful for wounds like what Sai had. His upper body was mostly unharmed, except for abrasions and bruises and minor cuts. There was a very big, bloody bruise on his temple that looked serious, but it was his lower body that drew most of their attention. There was a seven inch slash across Sai's lower back, where the Pulsar's thumb blade had sliced across him on his way to the ground. The slash was more than three inches deep... if Sai had been a half foot closer to the Pulsar's claw, he'd have been cut in half. as things were, his spine was cleanly seperated by the initial slash, and broken in two more places by the blunt force trauma that had followed. His hips and pelvis had been half crushed as well, and there were several compound fractures in his lower legs, while his left foot was all but pulped. It was a small mercy that he was unconscious, and couldn't feel his lower body anyway, because the pain would have been unimaginable.

Lacus stood slightly aside from the four people working on saving Sai's life, wracking her brain mightily for some sort of solution. She could contact Kira, and get him to put out a call for help... but any potential distraction could be very costly, given how the battle with Frost was going. He was mostly shut off from her still, but that in itself told her how well things were going... or not well, as it were. But if they didn't get some sort of real medical support here soon, Sai WOULD die, and so would many of the other people they'd pulled out of the wreckage before she found him. As things were, she'dbeen prodding lightly at his mind, trying to send feelings of reassurance and comfort to him, but the more she touched his mind, the weirder it felt. Spongy and vapid and not at all like the Sai Argyle she'd met earlier that day. Something was seriously wrong with him, beyond even his shattered legs and spine... Lacus felt her eyes drawn again and again to the ugly, livid bruise on Sai's temple. He was hanging on for dear life... but what sort of life he'd managed to hang onto, she couldn't be sure.

A flash of bright color caught her attention, and Lacus focused her gaze. She couldn't claim to have the eyesight of Athrun or Kira, but her Coordinator eyes were much better than most Naturals, and it took her only a second or two to catch sight of the color again. Bright red and pink, it was a person in a flight suit trotting more or less at the ruins of the Capitol Building, as much as the ruined cityscape allowed them too. It only took Lacus a moment or two more... and a brief touch of her mind... to recognize Cagalli. Wondering where the Strike Rubicon was, and afraid she already knew the answer, Lacus called out and waved her hands back and forth to get her friend's attention. Cagalli waved back and broke into a semblance of a sprint, covering the broken ground much faster than she had been before, at any rate.

"I thought that was you..." Cagalli said, slightly breathlessly, about twenty seconds later, when she'd reached easy talking distance of Lacus. "... That hair of yours stands out like a road flare." Cagalli pressed a hand to her side to help herself catch her breath as she slowed to a walk, she carried the survival kit box from the Rubicon in her other hand. "Your face is bleeding again. I've got some bandages we can put on there..."

"No time." Lacus interrupted, almost snatching the box from Cagalli. "Sai is dying, he needs all the medical supplies we can spare him!" Lacus turned and darted back down the pile of rubble she'd climbed, slipping and slidding on the loose debris. "Have you a radio, or some other way of contacting the Isolationist Military?"

"Umm, yeah, there's a short wave set in the box... but Kira said Sai was dead. Well, he didn't say it, he more screamed it, and went after Frost like nothing I've seen him do before but..." Cagalli replied, nonplussed for a moment by Lacus's actions... she was unused to the overtly decisive and pushy Lacus, since usually Cagalli was out in a Mobile Suit during the times when Lacus manifested it. Cagalli was a freaking Head of State herself, supposedly a equal partner for leadership of the Clyne Faction, and she still found herself jumping at Lacus's command when things were like this. It didn't exactly rankle... it was just disconcerting. Cagalli watched Lacus provide the survival box to the absolutely massive Hellhound, whom Cagalli vaguely recognized as the man who'd almost killed her and Athrun with a missile launcher during the fight in the subway complex on Purgatory Day. Funny how situations could change, friends and allies becoming enemies, enemies becoming friends and allies. The Hellhound... Sergeant-Major Glory, Cagalli thought his name was, took the box from Lacus with a heavy nod of thanks, ripping it open, ignoring the blood leaking down his wrists from the injuries Kira had inflicted. Plainly the Hellhound was in a state of mind where his own pain didn't reach him.

Glory passed the medical supplies and blankets he found in the survival box to Ramierez, who had steadier hands for first aid than Glory did, especially given his wrist injuries. He could ignore the pain, but he couldn't still the trembling and weakness in his hands, and so he didn't trust himself to help with any serious attemps at staunching Sai's bleeding or setting his bones. Glory took a step back, removing the short wave radio and three smoke grenades from the survival box. He tuned the radio with restrained haste, until he picked up a good and clear signal. "This is Sergeant-Major Thomas Glory, of the Presidential Security Agency, requesting immediate medical evacuation under code Zulu-Foxtrot-Niner-One-Sierra. Repeat, code ZF91S. This is a priority signal, all recieving units pass it up your chain of command. Location is Denver Capitol Building. Look for blue and red smoke. I repeat, this is..."

"We hear you, Sergeant-Major. Acknowledge code ZF91S! Medical evac inbound, ETA five minutes. Is location secure, over?"

"FUCK SECURE! DIDN'T YOU HEAR THE FUCKING CODE!? ZF91-FUCKING-S!! STEP THE FUCK ON IT, WE DON'T HAVE FIVE FUCKING MINUTES!! BLUE AND RED SMOKE, SOUTHWEST SIDE OF THE BUILDING! GLORY, OUT!" Glory screamed into the radio, veins and tendons standing out along his neck and face. Muttering dire imprecations under his breath, he popped the blue and red smoke grenades and tossed them downwind of where Ramierez and the Clyne Faction people, now joined by Cagalli Zala-Attha, sans Mobile Suit, were working on Sai. "MED-EVAC IN FIVE MINUTES, CORPORAL!"

"FIVE MINUTES, AYE, SARGE-MAJOR!"

"MS. CLYNE, WE'RE LEAVING AS SOON AS THE CHOPPERS GET HERE! DO WHATEVER IT IS YOU DO, AND LET THE OTHER FOUR KNOW WE GOT SUPPORT INCOMING!"

"Katie already knows, thank you, Mr. Glory." Lacus replied. She turned her attention to Cagalli, now that there was little they could do besides wait and hope. "So, what happened... your lack of Mobile Suit is somewhat noticable?"

"What do you think happened?" Cagalli said, her voice light but her tone sour and somewhat shaky. She quickly outlined what little she'd contributed to the fight against Frost and the Pulsar, and the outcome of her admittedly foolish charge against him. "I thought I could at least distract him long enough to give Athrun an advantage, since we had him sort of hemmed in between the buildings. Failing that, I was hoping to buy time for Kira and Ysak to recover, and for Dearka and Mir to get into a better position. I accomplished that anyway... though I almost died and the Rubicon got decapitated and disabled before Dearka saved me. Its just not fair... I try so damned hard, and I get my ass handed to me every time I get into a serious fight! Kira wasn't joking though, when he talked about how there's a difference between how he piloted the Pulsar, and how Frost does... theres just no comparing it!"

"But you say that Frost has left? Did he run away?" Lacus was frowning... it didn't seem like something Frost would do, running away from a fight where he was, at least nominally, winning, even if the odds were five or more to one against. Indeed, Frost seemed to enjoy MORE the fights where the odds were against him, and she'd only known him to retreat after being beaten to the point of nigh destruction, and sometimes even then it wasn't voluntary.

"Don't think so, doesn't seem like something he'd do... especially given that we haven't even really scratched him yet. Whatever it is he's doing though, he was shouting something over all channels about his destiny and someone called Noah or something, and then he took off towards orbit, or so it looked. Mir was saying that she'd intercepted some comms traffick from the Isolationist forces up in space... apparently ZAFT has realized that someone... us... has warned the Earth about Operation Overload, and they're breaking with their timetable to attack... now, actually."

"Never rains but it pours!" Waltfeld commented, slapping a hand to the side of his head in exasperation as he caught the tail end of that conversation. "So now we could have gigaton category EMP bombs raining down from orbit sometime within the next hour or so? ZAFT can't afford to be too choosy about their placement anymore, they're probably just going to drop em and detonate them as quickly as they can, and damn the coverage. Of course, its going to be catastrophic for the Earth, either way."

"We won't let it happen." Lacus said firmly. "We won't let a single bomb detonate. We've come to the very brink, but we WON'T step over it into the abyss beyond! I won't let us!"

"Um, no offense, Lacus, but we might not be able to do much..." Cagalli said slowly. "Kira and the others are going with Ashino, who says he has some way of getting them into orbit without using a mass driver... something called Shooting Stars..."

"Its something Sai had built recently, in order to provide our forces with more mobility in the advent of a serious ZAFT orbital attack." Glory spoke up. "Realizing the advantage of holding the high ground, and recognizing the impossibility of being able to rapidly deploy countering forces to orbit from Earth without using mass drivers, of which we only have two at the moment, and neither close by, Sai commissioned the Shooting Star program. They're not complicated, old tech really... just really big, one shot chemical booster rockets. Harness a Mobile Suit to one or two of them, light the ignition circuit, fire your thrusters and hang on for dear life. Its not pretty, or especially fun, but it'll get you there. I can't stress enough to you how expensive they are... old tech still costs an arm and a freaking leg, even one shot rockets, but Sai was never afraid to spend the money when needed, unlike most Presidents..."

"Right..." Cagalli shot a small glare at Glory for the interruption. "Anyway, Kira and the others are headed up after Frost. But they're going to have their hands more than full dealing with the Pulsar... I don't know if they're going to be able to spare much to intercept the Angry Sky bombs."

"We'll find a way." Lacus replied, her voice totally sure. The sound of helicopter blades made them all look up. The med-evac had arrived. And none too soon.

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"HO... LY... SH... IT...!!" Dearka screamed, his face turned to one side as he fought against the G-forces pressing him painfully into his piloting couch. He had one eye squeezed shut, and was darting glances at his screens with the other half open and filled with tears of effort. He was ignoring pretty much everything that didn't have to do with his angle of movement... which was pretty damned near straight up. It had to stay that way too... too much of an angle in any direction but directly up, and the rockets would run out of fuel before he ran out of gravity, and then he and Mir would have about five to ten minutes to enjoy their VERY LONG free fall back to Earth, with little chance of any sort of enjoyable landing. It was harder than he'd thought, keeping them on course... while the rockets themselves, of which there were three for the Grand Buster's great mass, were aerodynamic and went pretty much where they were supposed to... but the Grand Buster was emphatically not very aerodynamic, and the irregular air resistance the Gundam's profile was exerting forced Dearka to be constantly adjusting them with their thrusters. The noise of the chemically fueled rockets drowning everything out, so he could barely even hear himself think, with a vibration that seemed to be tearing his flesh loose from his bones, didn't help matters.

Still, he couldn't deny that, given what the rockets were supposed to do, they were doing a DAMN fine job of it. The rockets were one shot platforms for getting Mobile Suits and even small warships into space directly from the surface of the Earth, without recourse to a mass driver. The rockets were extremely expensive, could only be used once, were far from comfortable and required skills to use correctly... but BOY, were they ever quick and convienent! His airspeed was approaching Mach 6, which wasn't a speed he'd ever expected to see a Mobile Suit reach, outside of pipe dreams! It wasn't a speed Mobile suits were designed for, really, and he was somewhat afraid that he was going to lose an arm or leg on the way up, though the Grand Buster seemed to be holding together all right so far, with barely a tremor here and there. There were a series of stupendously loud clunks and thumps, and his heart rose into his mouth for a moment before he realized that the rockets had just exhausted a fuel stage and were moving on to the... the next stage kicked in before he could finish his thought, pressing him even harder back into his seat. "OW... W... W... W..."

Before he was fully ready for it, the thundering of the rocket booster died away all at once, and he felt the familiar stomach flip that came with sudden exposure to micro-gravity. He'd... made it to orbit? The crushing G-forces fell away all at once, and he sucked in several deep breaths, luxuriating in the lack of stress on his body. The Grand Buster shuddered slightly as the triplicate of booster rockets, their size reduced by three quarters because of the loss of the expended stages, disengaged from the Grand Buster and drifted slowly away, to eventually join the junk belt of space debris that encircled the Earth. Dearka brought all of his screens back to active duty, noting the dots on his close range IFF display indicating the four other Mobile Suits that had likewise ascended to orbit on the huge wings of fire provided by the Shooting Stars. He had mixed feelings about counting Ashino as an ally... he was a BCPU as well, just like Frost, and Dearka had fought against him several times before as dire enemies... but it was also true that they'd never have made it to orbit without him, and also true that when fighting Frost and the Pulsar, they needed all the help they could get!

"Mir, you okay?" Dearka asked, realizing that Mir had yet to activate her screens as well. He winced... the ascent to orbit had been brutal, even for him... for a Natural it must have been...

"One more thing..." Mir's voice was weak, but growing stronger by the moment. "... To add to the list... of things... we're NEVER... EVER... going to do again..." She raised an arm tiredly, and gave him a lopsided thumbs up gesture. Her screens winked on, one by one, and painted a picture that cut short any further banter between them. They were in low orbit, a few hundred kilometers outside of the red zone, the upper limit of Earth's gravity well. "Above" them, further out from Earth, a huge mass of ships and smaller craft swirled and eddied, turning in on itself constantly in the most violent close quarter's fleet engagement Dearka had ever seen. Capital ships were blasting at each other from more than just point blank range, some of them were barely more than a few hundred meters from each other, which in space terms was practically touching! Some ships had RAMMED each other, though whether that was accident or artifice, he couldn't tell. Squadrons of Strike Daggers and Strike Crusaders, along with the new Isolationist Space Mobile Armors, the Moebius Flare's, darted and wove through the battle zone, pursued by and pursuing teams of Elementals, Guiazes and even the odd CuGue... ZAFT was plainly scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of war material, since the most modern CuGue was still almost two years out of date... and it showed.

"I don't see any immediate sign of the Puls..." Miriailla was cut off by a string of detonations that danced their way through the middle of the battle, Nelson Class destroyers and Nezca Class frigates spinning away in wreckage, gouting plasma fire and oxygen into the void. "Never mind, there he is. Nobody has a heat signature like him!"

"Something is wrong here." Ashino's unexpected voice came over the comm line. Dearka shivered a little... the guy was as cold as fucking ice! Not even Ysak, or Athrun, was THAT calm during battle! Creepy...

"Yeah, a homicidal madman in possession of the most powerful Gundam around is wreaking bloody havoc and we might not be able to stop him. I'd call that pretty fucking WRONG!" Ysak spat derisively.

"More than that." Ashino replied. "They're not acting as a cohesive whole. It's like the chain of command has been cut somewhere, and the individual commanders are being forced to rely on their own judgements. I can't get through... they're in a panic, no one is responding to my hails!" Frustration was evident now in Ashino's voice. The Isolation forces here heavily outnumbered the ZAFT forces, but without cohesive tactics and a directing presence, their combat effectiveness was incredibly diminished. Who was giving orders? WAS anyone giving orders?

"The chain of command HAS been cut." Kira's voice, strained and tight, echoed over the comm. "Frost killed Sai."

"No! That's not possible!" Ashino shouted in anger. "I warned..."

"I saw him do it with my own eyes. He swatted them like they were bugs." Kira's voice was gentle, though it was obvious to Dearka that Kira badly wanted to shout and rage too. "I'm sorry... but he's gone."

"Surely there's a backup!? Someone who can take charge if the commander in chief is incapacitated!?" Athrun asked, concern and frustration twinging in his voice.

"Cyprus was second in command, as commander of the Military. But he was with Sai." Ashino said slowly. "As commander of the Mobile Forces, I'm likely the senior officer here... but I cannot get through to the Orbital Defence Forces without the proper codes... which Sai and Cyprus have."

"GOOD CHRIST, WHAT A FUCKED UP SYSTEM! GOODAMN, WAS HE THE FUCKING PRESIDENT, OR FUCKING EMPEROR!? I THOUGHT THE ISOLATION WAS A DEMOCRACY, NOT A DESPOTISM! DIDN'T HE TRUST ANY FUCKING AUTHORITY TO HIS SUBORDINATES!?" Ysak exploded in a disbelieving rage. "WHAT A FUCKING MORON!"

The Independence swung around,to point its gatling cannon not so subtly at the Duelist. "Do not speak ill of President Argyle, or I'll take issue with you." Ashino said, voice deadly calm again. "In answer to your question, no, he did not. How could he, especially with something as dangerous as the military might of the Isolation? That kind of power, in the hands of someone unscrupulous... it wasn't worth the risk of some fanatic or hatemonger trying to use the Isolation to renew the war. All our strategic assets and major troop deployment orders, even most minor strategic orders, all have to be routed through the President. It makes for a lot of paperwork, but made an artificial paralyzation of the military forces easy to achieve, preventing anyone from acting without the President's say so. It was part of his process towards building peace, you see... remove the ability to make war easily."

"GREAT! FUCKING PERFECT! ALL THEY CAN DO IS FOLLOW FUCKING ORDERS! WONDER..." Ysak was cut off when Kira sent a bone jarring squeal of feedback across the commline.

"Thats enough. We have enough problems, without creating more by fighting amongst ourselves. If we don't work together, we won't beat Frost. Its that simple, and we ALL know it." Kira took a deep breath, obviously calming himself down too. "Mr. Ashino, personally I agree with Ysak, but thats neither here nor there. I don't much like you, but Lacus vouches for you as a good person, and that is enough for me, right now. Please, do what you can to contact the Isolation forces... at the very least, see if you can get them to not try and shoot us down... we don't need people taking pot shots at us while we're engaged with Frost."

"I shall do as you ask, because, despite my personal dislike of YOU, , you are indeed right. Though there is not a thing I can do about ZAFT, and I will destroy as many of the aggressors... which means ZAFT... as I can. I won't let Sai's sacrifice be in vain by letting the PLANTS destroy civilization on Earth with their EMP bombs!"

"Dearka, Mir, I want you to hang back more towards the edges of the fight... the Grand Buster would be unnecessarily vulnerable at close ranges, especially in that melee over there. If you get a good shot at Frost, good, take it... but primarily I want you to be coordinating our efforts and watching out for any sign of the Angry Sky bombs. Taking those out is your top priority, okay? The rest of us are going to have precious little attention to spare for them."

"Kill the bombs, you got it."

"Athrun, you and Ysak and I will go after Frost directly. Mr. Ashino, can you use those lightning projectors again?"

"I can acquire a charge rapidly enough, I believe."

"Good. We're going to try and herd or lead Frost to you. Those blasts were the only thing I've yet seen that even remotely troubled the Pulsar's shields... even if you can just knock him off balance again, it might be enough for us to get in a telling blow... one good hit is all we need, and then the Pulsar will rip itself apart if it tries to maneuver away."

"It's possible that the Isolation fleet has a few FRALA units... they can pierce the Pulsar's shields with ease. I'll let you know more if... and when... I get into solid contact with the fleet commanders." Ashino added.

"Okay. Be careful... we're going to need ALL of us to beat him, so don't do anything too reckless." Kira admonished.

"You too, Kira... I remember Jachin Due, even if you don't." Athrun retorted, with a small smile, as the five of them flew to confront the madman and his destiny.

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"Ma'am. Ma'am! Ma'am, you can't go in there! It's restricted area! You should be in the medical ward, ma'am. HEY, are you listening to me!? HALT! HALT NOW! HALT OR I'LL SHOOT!" The Military Policeman standing guard in the hallway leading to the central communications hub of NORAD mountain, which was the de facto Isolation Military Headquarters these days. Usually there was a lot more than one guard on duty, but all non-essential personnel had been called out into the search and rescue efforts being directed towards the ruins of Denver, leaving him to confront this damnably hard situation by himself. He had his orders and they were clear... no one without proper access was allowed to even touch the door to the comms room. He was allowed to use lethal force to prevent such unathorized entries, or attempts at entries. He had his gun out even. But his hands were trembling, and he was praying, and praying hard that he wouldn't have to use it. Quite how he'd ever manage to explain that he'd been forced to shoot Lacus Clyne was beyond him. Why Lacus Clyne was here at ALL was beyond his ability to comprehend, but even with her face and arms bandaged, he could not mistake her for anyone else, and one look into her metallic, lavender blue eyes convinced him utterly that this was the real deal.

"Stand down, PFC. Thats an order." Sergeant-Major Thomas Glory said firmly, shooting the trembling MP a nasty glare. Lacus didn't even spare the man a second glance... she knew he wouldn't actually shoot her... knew it even when he himself didn't. And if he tried, well... she hoped it wouldn't come to that, because she was feeling bad enough after her mental manhandling of Glory and Ramierez earlier.

"I... I'm... I'm sorry, Sergeant-Major, but you are not in my chain of command! I cannot follow that order, respectfully!" The MP replied, swallowing hard. He was right, but Sergeant-Major's scared him. They scared everyone who was enlisted. This particular Sergeant-Major was just about the epitome of everything scary about Sergeant-Major's... he was HUGE, and rough looking, with a nasty look in his eyes, covered in wounds that he was apparently ignoring somehow, and he was growling, or perhaps mumbling darkly to himself, but the MP found a reserve of courage somewhere. His orders were clear... NO ONE without clearance was to go into the comms room, even if they WERE Lacus Clyne!

"We don't have time for this." Waltfeld said grimly, flexing and unflexing his prosthetic fingers with tiny electrical hums, the tiny motion nonetheless drew a great deal of the frightened attention of the young MP, who flinched every time Waltfeld curled his mechanical hand into a fist.

"I agree." Katie said,one hand ever so slowly inching towards her belt, where she had a small knife stored. She didn't want to get into an altercation with this guard, especially since he had a gun and she didn't, but Waltfeld was absolutely right. They didn't have much time at all. With Sai basically out of the picture, and the next two people in the chain of command either missing or incommunicado, the Isolation was staggering around like a chicken with its head cut off. Damn stupid of Sai to concentrate basically all executive order giving powers into the hands of himself, his wife and his two best friends, but really, if the situation hadn't been what it was, the system could have worked, and worked well, for what he was trying to do. Sadly, the situation was what it was, and now the Isolation was flopping around, mostly uselessly, and they HAD to do something to give it life and direction back, or else, even if they beat Frost, the situation wouldn't really improve, with ZAFT still engaged in a fruitless struggle to destroy civilization on Earth.

"Well, PFC, I do happen to have authorization. Let me show you." Glory said, sighing heavily, one hand reaching towards his pants pocket. As expected, the nervous guard leaned towards him, craning to get a good view of what he was desperately hoping was the answer to his inner conflict. He got it too, just not like he'd been expecting. Glory's other hand swung up high and then back down, his fist striking the back of the guard's neck just under the back of the skull. He didn't put his full weight into it, but he was too tired to pull much off it either, and the MP went down like a sack of wet sand, spittle flying from his slack jaw. The guard wouldn't be getting back up for a good while, but Glory was pretty sure he hadn't inflicted any lasting harm, besides the worst headache the man would ever experience.

"Thank you, Mr. Glory." Lacus said, nodding slightly at him. "I know it can't be easy for you to be helping us like this, but I want you to know you have my deepest apprecia..."

"Can it, Ms. Clyne." Glory took the pistol from the limp guard, and took his security badge from him as well. "I'm not doing this cause I like you, or even feel you're a particularly good leader. You're pretty, spirited, charming and idealistic, and you get big bonus points in the media for it too, but you're a bit too... hopeful, I guess, for me. I'm a cynic, so perhaps thats not fully your fault. But right now, one of the two men I respect most in the world is in the ICU, barely alive, and he might not live out the day even then. The other is still missing on the field of battle, almost certainly wounded, perhaps dying or already dead, much as I don't want to believe it. IF either of those men were here, now, able to give me orders or direction, I feel that they'd be telling me that you, Ms. Clyne, are the last good chance we have of pulling SOMETHING worthwhile out of this clusterfuck! So THAT's why I'm helping you. Not cause I like you. Not cause I want your appreciation. Cause Sai and Cyprus would want me too, capiche?" Glory stomped over to the door and swiped the guard's card, unlocking the door with a click... security this deep into the installation wasn't any tougher than mere security cards, what with all the safeguards in the first few security layers.

Lacus led the six of them... herself, Katie, Cagalli, Waltfeld, Murrue and Glory... into the mted sounds and semi-darkness of the communications hub. Ramierez was with Sai in the Intensive Care Unit of the installation's medical ward, while Alkire, Kisaka and Raine were in another medical suite nearby. As soon as she'd made sure her friends were receiving the care they needed, Lacus had asked Glory where the communications center was, and then headed off to find it right afterwards, refusing medical help of her own. Disregarding pleas from her friends to rest or to see a doctor, they'd had little choice but to follow her as she homed unerringly in on the communications center, plucking fragments of directions from the minds of the people she passed so she wouldn't get lost, leaving crowds of stunned and blinking people behind her as she went, wondering if that REALLY was Lacus Clyne, and why their heads were so damn fuzy suddenly? Lacus knew she was making it up as she went along, but something about the situation just felt so... right... that her confidence levels just kept soaring higher and higher. She was using her Newtype gifts in ways she'd never thought to before, and it was just coming naturally to her, as long as she didn't think too deeply about it.

"HEY! You can't be here! How the hell did you get in..." A Colonel, the current duty officer in charge of the comms center, sat up in surprise from his command chair in the middle of the room. His finger darted for an alarm button on his chair. That is, until his gaze met Lacus's, and he froze, stiff as an icebound tree. His eyes widened tremendously, and he gave a soft gurgle of wonder, or perhaps it was fear, and then his eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed bonelessly back into his chair, slithering down and out of it to fall again onto the floor. The five communications technicians on duty around the edges of the room stared in disbelief, stunned at the sudden intrusion of so many internationally recognized personages, much less the inexplicable behavior of the Colonel, who was not known to have fainting episodes.

"Please tell me he passed out from natural causes. Even poison needles or something." Glory commented sourly, goosebumps running up and down his arms and spine.

"I could tell you that." Katie said, swallowing hard. "I'd be lying though."

"Did Lacus just make him pass out?" Cagalli asked in a whisper, poking Katie's side. "How the hell did she do that... I mean, I thought he was a Stump... you know, like, immune to Newtype stuff..."

"Not so much immune as very, very resistant. Still, apply enough force and you can do pretty much anything, apparently." Katie answered, with a weak grin. "Lacus is currently applying enough force, it seems. Heh, heh... I'm scared of her, I'll have you know."

"Everyone, I need you to please remain calm." Lacus announced, ignoring the looks pretty much everyone was shooting her. She'd have a lot of things to explain later... a lot of soul searching to do. But now wasn't the time. As she spoke, she reached out with her most familiar Newtype power, projecting the emotions she desired onto the people around her. She considered leaving her friends out of the effect, but her control was already tenuous at best, and making things more complex was probably not a good idea. She just hoped they'd forgive her, in this extreme situation. She saw the effect at once, as all five of the surprised technicians sat back down and returned to their tasks, though they did shoot her an awed and somewhat troubled glance every now and then. Plainly they hadn't the slightest idea what was going on, or why they were being so calm about it, but there wasn't much they could do anyway, was there? She encouraged those feelings, not hopelessness, but just acceptance of what was. Waltfeld gently removed the unconscious Colonel from the floor and propped him against the wall near the door, where Katie and Glory were standing somewhat guard, though they spent more time warily watching Lacus than the door.

"Thank you. Cagalli, please come up here with me." Lacus asked, sitting down in the now vacant command chair. She turned her attention to the communications techs. "I need to prepare an outgoing broadcast, on all channels, public and private, except for the international aid channel. That includes all news feeds, including any public stations the PLANTS can pick up. Can you do that here?"

"Well... yes... but we need authorization..." The senior tech spoke up.

"Staff Sergeant, the President is in the ICU. Supreme Commander Finch is MIA, and Commander Ashino is out of contact. The First Lady is dead. Before he went into the ICU, the President told me, Sergeant-Major Thomas Renault Glory, that he was investing executive powers in extremis to Ms. Lacus Clyne here. You have my word, as acting head of the Presidential Security Agency. She IS the President, until he takes his powers back, understand? Is that authorization enough for you?" Glory spoke up, his voice a blunt snarl. Of course, the six of them knew that Sai had said no such thing, indeed that he was in a deep coma and COULD not say such a thing. Glory wasn't even sure that such a transferral of authority was possible, much less legal. Still, he was betting this staff sergeat sure as fuck didn't know better, either way.

"Yes, Sergeant-Major, that will do fine! Sorry, Sergeant-Major but there are protocols we have to follow and..."

"Get on with it!" Glory barked.

"Captain Ramius, I'm sorry to ask you this, but I need you to help coordinate the techs, and act as my stage director. Can you do that for me?" Lacus asked.

"Shouldn't be a problem, Lacus. Andrew, I'll need your help too." Murrue replied at once.

"Say the word, Murrue." Waltfeld hopped down into the indented part of the floor where the comm techs had their stations, slipping on a spare headset and handing another up to Murrue.

"You're making it hard to think clearly." Cagalli complained quietly, once she was standing next to Lacus.

"I know, I'm sorry, but my fine control isn't what it could be. I can affect all of you, or none of you, but not something in between." Lacus replied, equally quietly. "Forgive me for influencing you against your will, but its the only way I can even begin to see having a chance."

"When its you, Lacus, I see it more as "guiding me towards the right solution" rather than influencing me against my will, especially in this case." Cagalli said with a tight smile. "Play the cards as you have to, Lacus... sometimes people need someone else to pull the wool off their eyes, because they just don't have the inner strength or perspective to do it themselves. Help everyone see what's really at stake here, what we're doing to each other... because if you don't, then things are only going to get worse." Cagalli paused a few moments. "Though, you better not do this very often, because I'm really creeped out."

"Communications channels accessed... boosting signal... boosting signal... required signal strength acquired... going live with video in real time in five... four... three... two... one... LIVE!" The senior comms tech announced, her voice clipped and professional.

Lacus faced the camera, and affixed her most serious expression on her face...not that it was too hard to do that, since she was as serious as she'd ever been before. She stared into the video lens, and concentrated on projecting EVERYTHING she was feeling out into her audience. This was not a time to dissemble, or hide, or speak in political platitudes. This was a time for a message from her heart and soul, and she could only pray it would reach people in time. "Hello everyone. My name is Lacus Clyne, and there is something of extreme importance I need to discuss with all of you, both on Earth and in the PLANTS..."