Maryland's Gunpla Convention
Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam, it is the property of Sunrise.
End of the third round
"You alright, you crazy oldtype?"
"Yes, I'm alright Sumeragi-san. I could've done without the oldtype."
"Well, if you're having a reaction like this to something that only a Newtype can truly use, then by that definition, you're an oldtype."
"Sometimes I just hate the way that people will quote from the anime or something similar because it just goes to show that they are, in some shape or form, snooty."
Monica just giggled at Kale's comment and helped him up. Kizu walked up to Kale and Monica. Kizu stayed quiet for quite some time before he uttered, "Nice fight. Win more battles." Kizu then walked away with his teammates.
A week later.
In the old days, when I fought by myself, I would never get to this point, but I got here because of the team effort. That and some coaxing from a certain Gunpla Academy graduate, but that's beside the point. Anyways, sitting in the back of my old man's car is not fun when the younger brother is in the front and everyone else is stuck, crammed into the back row, and our team's things for our table at the convention is in the trunk. "Dad, when you promised to give us a ride, I didn't think you'd just cram us in the back."
"Well, your mother wanted to come with the team's parents, so it was that simple."
Darren simply blurted out, "You could've at least left Lyle with the missus!"
"And get my head knocked upside-down by a rock? I don't think so young man." Darren, rather everyone but Monica and Lyle, gave me a look that asked "Really?" I shrugged because mom would do anything to get dad to do what she needs him to do.
Kaila tried to keep the roll going, "Well, at least those last two matches were easy," but no one answered or commented at the least. I was busy just thinking about who would be at the convention because it was really a chance for every team across the world to get to know each other and to size up their competition and not every team was required to attend. Even the fact alone that Yajima Trading is bringing the convention to a state like Maryland is shocking; one would expect that Yajima would bring the convention to a place like Paris, or Madrid, even Seoul, so a place like Baltimore is even more shocking because it's a city in an eventless state in the United States of America. I don't get Yajima's reasons or its reasoning, but whatever those reasons are, I'm pretty sure it's for the good.
Darren: "Are we there yet?"
Dad: "No."
Kaila: "Are we there yet now?"
Dad: "No."
Me: "Are we even close to being there yet?"
Dad: "No and stop asking before I turn this car around!"
"We're there!" Lyle pointed to the Baltimore Convention Center off to the right and Dad stopped next to the curb.
"Alright, you guys better get your stuff out and sign in while I park the car."
Darren, ever the rude idiot he is, said "Will do old man." At the mention of old man, my dad paled and gave Darren a sad look. After he left, Darren said, "Man, your dad is so sensitive to the names he gets called."
"Can you really blame my dad? He was one of the typical students who got bullied in the day. He got shoved into lockers and people called him names. Be nice to him Darren." While Darren hung back a little bit, some grade school kids ran in front of us, most likely going for the kit store. "Before I forget, Darren, go up to the front desk and sign us in!"
"Why do I have to do it?!"
"Because you're our 'speed asset'!"
Darren muttered, "I regret saying that." Darren dropped the boxes he held and ran towards the front desk while the rest of us redistributed the weight and walked towards the tables for teams.
As we put our boxes down, an interviewer came up to us. "Hi, my name is Mallory Seabook and I'm going around and asking the teams different questions for WJZ Baltimore channel 11. Do you mind if I ask you some questions?"
Kaila asked, "Is it live?"
"Yes."
This is another of the dreaded team moments. "We don't mind, right Kale?" Before I managed to get anything out, she pushed me into the camera's line of sight. "Good to go miss."
"Okay." Mallory turned to her cameraman and started with, "Hello, my name is Mallory Seabook reporting for WJZ Baltimore channel 11 at the Baltimore Convention Center with Maryland's representative, the 00 Trailblazers, and the leader who has spared his time to talk with us is Kale Cassel." The cameraman pointed the camera at me. "Mr. Cassel, please tell us, what are your current feelings about being one of the States 50 representatives?"
"I don't know where to begin." Truthfully, I didn't, because I had never been at this stage of my Gunpla career.
"Start anywhere."
When she says that, it doesn't make the situation any better, but I think I have an idea as to where to start. "Well, I can certainly thank the team for where I… we are now."
"How so?"
As if it weren't simple enough. "I never get this far by myself, so the team effort was a nice change and it has helped immensely, even if we hit a lot of bumps in the road."
Mallory laughed at that. "Well, that could've been expected for every other team. Tell us more about the team experience."
"Sure. Uh, it, obviously, is different and allows for more variability in the Gunpla that you build and allows you to test yourself, see if you work well with a team, find out what you can and can't cover, and the fun is surely amplified."
Darren pulled up to where we were standing. "What you doing?"
"I'm being put on television dummy."
"Really? Before I forget, there was a sign-up for a Gunpla Battle in the auditorium."
"Alright, sign yourself up."
"Actually, it's a mandatory battle for team leaders or whoever is representing the team."
That did not come into my brain correctly, did it? "So what you're saying is that you signed me up for a Gunpla Battle..."
"Without your permission. That's right."
I actually felt a couple of nerves popping out. "When we go back home, you get an additional hour of trying to dodge barrages from Kaila and me." I said with a fake smile which practically said "you're dead and you can do nothing about it".
Mallory was standing awkwardly and asked, "Is there anything that's bad about the team experience?"
"Yes, the stupidity increases with some people." I completely stared at Darren while saying this with a smile on my face. He stared back with shame such that he was reflecting on the bad things he did around the "house".
Mallory asked one more question. "Is there anyone you would like to acknowledge for where you are right now?"
"Sure, there's my brot..." Just like that, I froze up again.
"Mr. Cassel?"
Monica, Raymond, Darren and Kaila knew what was happening and shooed Mallory away. "We're sorry, but that's all we can do for now. Please come back later if you need anything else." Mallory left and they sat me down on the chair that was already set up. "Kale, are you okay? You just suddenly froze up when you were about to say brother."
"I'll be okay. I just gotta catch my breath for a sec."
The PA blared out when we were just about to open up shop. "Will all the fighters for the celebratory Gunpla Battle please report to the auditorium?" I glared at Darren venomously.
Darren only looked back shamefully. "Alright, it was a mandatory battle anyways." I grabbed, with a form of regret, Crossbone Zabanya and headed for the auditorium with Monica in tow.
Monica, who always brings something up the minute she hears of it, actually beat around the bush this time. "So, are you feeling well?"
"I'm fine, Monica, thanks."
"Are you reviewing your tricks for the different stages?"
"Yes, I am."
"Did you feel anything weird at all when coming here?"
"I know you're not the type to beat around the bush. Just ask me what's on your mind."
She stepped in front of me. "You might be battling Kyle here. Knowing him, he'll probably destroy the Crossbone."
I sighed and looked down. "Do you not believe me?"
"I believe in you! But I also believe in my prediction."
I put a hand on her cheek. "Believe me. I can come out of this without losing my mind." I continued my path for the auditorium and she soon followed.
After coming up to the battle system, I saw Athrun, some other fighters I didn't know and a Domon-look-alike in all but his face. He came up to me with, "Look, the Undefeated East is burning!" Total G Gundam weeb. "Mr. Cassel, Ms. Monica, good day to you and good luck."
"Wish I could say the same to you…"
"Yoo-hwa Lee. You can call me Young, most of my friends do."
"Alright, Young, good luck." We exchanged handshakes and he left without another word. Looking back at him, he wore Domon's travel clothes.
"Well, it looks like you're making friends."
"Please Monica, if he didn't make the G Gundam reference, I would have just blew him off as a creeper."
[Gunpla Battle, combat mode, startup. Model level damage, set to A. Please set your GP Base.]
As usual, the blue particle rose up to the ceiling and the whole room darkened. What was unusual was that it seemed darker than before.
[Field 3, Forest. Please set your Gunpla. Battle start.]
"Crossbone Zabanya, Kale Cassel, Monica Crain, deru!"
As Kale set down onto the forest floor, he was immediately greeted with fire from a customized GM III. He locked on the GM and identified it as that of Raul Machado. "Well isn't it rude to open fire on someone who just entered the battlefield?"
"It depends on who it is and if they're ready to receive said fire."
They stood there for a long, pregnant second before Kale stated, "How long will you stare down at me with a mass production unit?"
"Whenever you move, I shall fire upon you."
"Not unless you were to be separated from Amfortas fire!" Said Amfortas cannons were fired and left a line a whole Gunpla wide and both fighters on the ground backed away. A Flame Saviour Gundam was in the sky above them.
"Athrun Castleton, do you mean to interfere with my own battle?"
"It's not just your battle, it's everyone else's battle." The three sat there for quite a while. "So, what would you like to do, Raul?"
"I would like to finish my business with Mr. Cassel, but it seems like I will have to attend to it later." Raul thrusted away from the vicinity towards the east.
"Thank you Athrun."
"You don't seem to be feeling well, so consider it a favor. I won't ask what's ailing you, and I won't give you a solution to it either." Athrun went away towards the north.
Kale sat his Gunpla's butt down and he relaxed a lot more than he normally would in a battle. "Geez, I'm totally not up for this!"
"Well, maybe you should've told Darren to wait for a group session."
"In the end, all of you would've chosen me."
"You know us well Kale."
"Too well. I wish that you guys would also take it easy on me."
"Sorry, but being a team member comes first, being your girlfriend comes second."
Kale was about to reply when a Shining Finger Sword came crashing down from the east, where Raul Machado went. "The hell? No one would go for a killer move like that straight away." He then rethought about it. "Unless it was someone who could force the user to perform it right away."
"AGAIN! TAKE IT ALL AND GO TO HELL! SHINING FINGER SWORD!" The person, who was shouting as if his lungs were giant tubas, Yoo-hwa Lee, was using it against a Hyperion Gundam.
"Boring flashy move. Armure Lumiere!" The Umbrella of Artemis came out of triangular emitters on the Hyperion and proved to be largely effective against an energy-based attack such as the Shining Finger Sword. "I think that I'm running low on energy. Where can I get a massive source of energy to fuel my Hyperion? Oh, I think I'll take it from you!" The Hyperion maintained Armure Lumiere, but the God Gundam's, instead of the usual Shining Gundam because Yoo-hwa Lee has the mindset that anything a Gunpla has should be passed down to the next Gunpla, Shining Finger Sword began to shrink in size and lost heat intensity as a result. Very soon, the Finger Sword became no bigger than a beam dagger from one such as the Pixie. "Now, take this and go to hell!" The Hyperion deactivated Armure Lumiere's defensive mode and went straight to the offensive and pierced the God Gundam's side.
"Kuh! Bakunetsu God Finger!" The God Gundam, futilely, went straight for the Hyperion's head and got a beam knife in the gut.
"Sora sora doushita!?" The Hyperion's pilot went in a craze as if he were Shinn's anger reborn.
"Please move God Gundam!"
Kale could not stand where he was and watch this display of carnage. He proceeded to intervene when Monica opened a channel saying, "Kale, don't do it."
"Why?!"
"Because that Hyperion was built by Kyle."
Kale hesitated after hearing this. "So what?"
"You know as well as I do that his Gunpla are well built and surpass the quality of most builders."
"Even so, I can't stand to see a Gunpla tortured like that! I have to go!" Kale rushed while firing smoke missiles.
As the smoke surrounded the Hyperion and the now-sprawling God Gundam, the Hyperion's pilot said, "If I was blinded by smoke, expect fire from all directions!"
Hyperion's pilot did as he thought to do, only to be greeted by nothing. To himself and his guests, Kale said "Like hell I'll stay within your immediate area jackass." With Yoo-hwa Lee in tow, Kale dropped down to where he saw hints of a certain group of people gathering behind a cliff. "What's going on here?"
The man behind the Flame Saviour answered. "Well, it seems that all the fighters have decided on a temporary alliance to defeat that Hyperion." Athrun chuckled a bit. "What it takes to combine different people in times like this."
The man behind the customized GM III replied in kind. "It would only take an annoying fighter who happened to be a total jerkbag to piss this many people off to make this happen."
Rhetorically, Kale asked, "Really? Because it seems to take a Shining Finger Sword to do this. Anyways, what shall we do about this situation we're in? As you can see, he has an insane arsenal in his hands. I'm also betting that he can use the N-Jammer Canceller as well."
Athrun enlightened Kale. "We plan on using remote weapons for this combined front. As you might remember, and this is just for reference, in a certain Gundam animation, Canard lost to Prayer because he let his guard down after cutting the Pristis away from the X Astray, thus thinking that the remote weapons were rendered useless."
"Come on, you have to know that this Hyperion's pilot isn't that stupid and we don't have an X Astray with us. True we do have remote weapons, but they aren't connected like INCOM weapons or the Pristis. The only way that I see is to destroy the shield emitters when Armure Lumiere is deployed."
The two stared at each other while the other fighters were standing uncomfortably as they were. Yoo-hwa spoke up. "Why don't we rush him with all the remote weapons in front of the group?"
Kale thought that Yoo-hwa was kidding, thus he replied with, "Not a bad idea, but he'll just use his heavy duty cannons to get rid of them."
Raul piped in. "So spread them out."
Athrun, in turn, piped in. "The problem then will be his use of those submachine guns: if he attaches them to the mobile suit while using the N-Jammer Canceller, he can just spread out his shots accordingly, infinitely and indefinitely."
Monica, being the tactical genius that she is, was planning their strategy while listening to everyone argue. "Okay everyone shut up! Here's what I have." Monica shared it across a wide open channel between all the gathered fighters. "It's gutsy, I know, but we don't have a choice here."
As all the fighters agreed on Monica's plan, Athrun put forth, "What if it doesn't go according to plan?"
"Sadly, nothing truly goes according to plan, so I would be surprised if it did."
"That's not very comforting, but very well."
All the fighters got into ready positions and waited for the go signal. "All units, go!" [Cue "Watashi wa Souzou Suru"]
All the fighters charged out of their hiding place behind the cliff and roared at the top of their lungs. "Front line units, deploy remote weapons!" The front did so and kept a constant rate of fire at the Hyperion.
"This is nothing! Mugen no power wo miyo! Mugen no Armure Lumiere, tenkai!" The Hyperion had activated it's N-Jammer Canceller according to Monica's plan.
"Kale, shield bits!"
"Alright!" Kale, incidentally, put a fresh set of reinforced shield bits that would work well with Monica's plan concerning counter-fire from Hyperion. "Be careful though! I can't cover everything!"
The front charged with long-range cover keeping the Hyperion at bay and unable to use a majority of its weapons. "Keep going as planned! You have a little more to cover!"
Despite taking ensuing fire from the Hyperion, the front continued to fire their assorted funnels, bits, and INCOM in hopes of making the Hyperion overheat. "Just fall already, you damn creation of Kyle!" Kale was especially determined to destroy the Hyperion that Kyle made because it was a curse on his childhood. Soon, it came down to Kale to close in and finish the Hyperion off. "GN Swords!" Kale drew his swords and stabbed at the lightwave shield's emitters.
"My infinite shield! How dare you!"
"No, how dare you toy and destroy other's creations for the simple hope of satisfying your own hunger!?" Kale pulled back to allow Athrun and Raul to deal the finishing blow.
Both shouted , "Take this!" The Hyperion was destroyed in an anticlimactic way. As this one battle ended, the fighters cheered.
[Cue cut-in of current song]
In the midst of the celebration, Kale took the duty of talking to the unnamed fighter upon himself to ask a few questions. "Do you know Kyle?"
"Never met him nor heard of him."
"Don't lie to me, I know you've talked to him. What did he tell you to tell me?"
"I told you, never heard of him!"
Kale concluded that he wasn't getting anywhere and wouldn't get anywhere with this approach. Then, he considered what had transpired: "If Kyle had just given this guy a Gunpla he built, then it would be easy to hide his involvement. But if that's so, then where is he?" He looked around at the other fighters and stopped at a straight-build Crossbone Gundam X2 Kai. The X2 pilot noticed Kale staring because the X2's facemask opened as if the pilot was smiling mockingly. Kale's reaction to this was, "Trans-Am!"
[Resume music]
"Kale?!"
"This guy is Kyle!"
"Eh!?"
The X2 disengaged and destroyed all but 3 fighters, Kale, Raul and Athrun, to witness his handiwork. "I must admit little brother, you haven't changed a bit."
"You've changed too much!"
"I would like to say evolved. I have risen towards a new level as both builder and fighter. A level you plebeians will never reach." Kyle barely moved and the survivors' Gunpla were in pieces.
"Crossbone Zabanya!"
"See, what did I tell you? You can't possibly match me the way you are now. Not now, not ever."
[Battle ended]
The particles fell back into the battle system. All the fighters and audience gathered stood or sat there slack-jawed. "This is the way that Flanagan does things, it's also how I will eliminate everything at the World Tournament. I am Kyle Cassel, remember me as the one who came back from the dead!"
Kale: I've given up.
Monica: We're Celestial Being! We don't give up!
Raymond: But there's limits to what even the best man can take.
Darren: And it seems like he's gone crazy from this loss.
Anew: Next time, "The Youngest Brother's Plight"
Lyle: I need my brother more than ever.
A/N: I'm so sorry about the delay and the fact that this chapter is somehow shorter than normal, but my laptop practically bit the dust and I'm getting a new one in June. Typing on my phone is hard because it's slow and whenever I type, it types out the wrong word or wrong letters. Also, watched Ginga Kikoutai Majestic Prince. I highly recommend it for those who like mecha anime and absolutely mind breaking animations, meaning like smoother animations and great transitions, and of course comedy.
