Kira x Murrue fanfic continuation - Chapter 16
Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam SEED, Gundam SEED Destiny, or Gundam 00, so please point that damned lawsuit cannon at someone else!
Three months had passed since the Archangel, the Ptolemiaos, and the Celestial Being colony ship had begun their journey towards Jupiter, and its moon Europa.
Kira Yamato, the pilot of the now destroyed Freedom-Raiser, had fallen into a coma only few days after the destruction of his Gundam and as a result his wife; Murrue Ramius, was spending as much time as she possibly could by his bedside. "Murrue, you need to be spending time with our children, not sitting here worrying about me." Murrue jumped when she suddenly heard Kira's voice, but when she looked at him, she saw that he still appeared to be unconscious.
"K-Kira?" Murrue quietly asked, as she stared at the still unconscious form of her husband. She honestly didn't expect any kind of response, and was clearly surprised when she heard his voice again. "Please stop worrying about me, go and spend some time with our children, I'll be fine."
By this time, Murrue was confused and nervous. One of her nervous habits had always been to play with her hair, and at the moment she was rapidly twirling her fingers in some of her hair which had previously been resting on her left shoulder.
Meanwhile, Shinn and Setsuna were sitting in the crew lounge, discussing what they could possibly do to sure up their defenses.
"Well," Shinn said, "before I defected from ZAFT during the second war, I had heard about plans for a mass-production version of the original Freedom Gundam. While it would have probably been loaded with an OS which could only be used by Coordinators, it wouldn't be very hard to rewrite it so that Naturals could use it as well."
Setuna nodded slightly, then he said. "Well, currently our forces consist of the GN Archer, the 00-Raiser, the Cherudim, the Seravee, the Seraphim, the Arios, the Exia, the Infinite Justice, the Destiny, not to mention the captured Freedom and Strike Freedom, as well as the two dozen Murasames that we recovered earlier, ten of which were Murasame Reconnaissance Types, so either way we are far from defenseless."
Suddenly the PA System came to life, the voice of Mileina Vashti echoing throughout the ship. "Attention, we are currently approaching the asteroid belt. All hands are to brace for sudden impacts and possible damage." The exact same message was also being announced onboard both the Archangel and the Celestial Being.
"Something just appeared behind us on the radar, but I can't get a solid lock on the signal for identification." Mileina Vashti suddenly announced, as the three ships continued to approach the asteroid belt. Before anyone could reply, a barrage of beam weapons fire slammed into the surface of the Celestial Being, the sudden attack shocking everyone.
Sumeragi was the first to recover from the shock of the sudden attack, and she immediately began to bark out orders to the other two ships. "All ships take evasive action! We need to get our asses out of here! Deploy all of our available mobile suit forces. All weapons free on all three ships and the mobile suit forces."
"I have Freedom and Strike Freedom ready for launch." Mileina reported three short seconds later.
"Who's piloting them? Sumeragi asked, and as if to answer her question the faces of Lacus Clyne and Cagalli Yula Athha appeared on her screen.
"I am piloting Freedom, and Cagalli is in Strike Freedom." Lacus said. "We just want to protect those we care about, and we will fight if we have to do so."
Sumeragi nodded in understanding then she turned to Mileina and ordered. "Launch them as fast as possible, Mileina. There is no priority at this time except getting them out there and ready."
The ship shuddered slightly as the launch catapults fired off the first two of the mobile force, being the Freedom and the Strike Freedom. Thirty seconds later, the Destiny, piloted by Shinn Asuka, was shot out the port side catapult.
Sumeragi Lee Noriega watched the screen with interest. To the Ptolemiaos's rear starboard side, there was one ship; the heat signature was that of the Alliance's new battleship, the Girty Lue. To the rear port side were three more ships; their heat signatures identified them as one Nelson-class battleship and two Drake-class destroyers. There were mobile suits approaching from all four ships.
But the interesting thing was the mobile armor approaching from the Girty Lue.
Sumeragi studied it closely. It was a sleek, dark-painted machine with two massive cannons. There were a number of Windams clinging to it, as well as two Gundams, and one custom purple-painted Windam. It was heading right towards them.
"They must've been expecting us to try and escape," grumbled Mileina. "Captain, should we activate the Mirage Colloid?"
Sumeragi sat back. "The Alliance must want us out of the way," she posited. "I guess they think we're going to escape, so that we can get reinforcements, and interfere with their plans later."
"We cannot let them stop us here," Lacus said confidently from the cockpit of the Freedom Gundam. Sumeragi nodded in agreement.
"We'll fight them here," she announced, with a thin smile.
With the flash of an explosion, Cagalli glanced to her right as a Windam came streaking towards her. She swung her left leg up, using the Strike Freedom's left leg beam blade to knock aside the Windam's saber, and with a point-blank beam rifle blast, it died in a fiery explosion. She glared over her shoulder as a second Windam swept in from behind, its rifle raised, and in a flash, Cagalli whipped around, firing the beam rifle in her right hand, blowing it apart in a blaze of fire.
As another Dagger exploded violently, Lacus allowed a slight frown to cross her face as she turned the Freedom Gundam's beam rifle on a second Dagger and blew its head off with a single shot.
"Gotta hand it to the Alliance," she grunted, pausing to grab a beam boomerang from a disabled mobile suit and fling it down at another foe, slicing its head off before it could react. "They sure do know how to build mobile suits."
A Doppelhorn Dagger came streaking in, cannons blazing. Lacus skirted its shots effortlessly, firing the rail guns mounted on the Freedom's hip armor and severing the Dagger's head. Lacus whirled around, catching the boomerang on the rebound, she then grabbed the now headless Dagger and swung it into the path of another trio of Daggers as they opened fire, accidentally destroying their comrade. Lacus then fired the Freedom's beam rifle, cutting the three Daggers down.
She glanced over her shoulder; another Dagger, toting a bazooka, swept in behind her, lining up for a killing shot. Lacus smirked, whipping around, igniting a beam blade on the Freedom's foot and wiping the Dagger out with a lightning-fast roundhouse kick that sent the beam blade tearing through the Dagger's head.
Just as the Earth Alliance ships began to retreat, six ZAFT ships dropped out of warp and quickly began to launch their own mobile suits. The six newly arrived ships consisted of two Prometheus-class ships, two-Minerva-class ships, one Nazca-class ship, and one Eternal-class ship.
Shinn glowered at the ZAFT ships as the newly arrived ZAFT mobile suits opened fire, fanning out around the three ships of Celestial Being.
"Return their fire!" Came Cagalli's order as the Strike Freedom boosted towards the enemy machines. "The Murasames can protect the ships! Engage them as far out as possible!"
Shinn scowled; the Destiny charged, arming its beam rifle.
A storm of beam shots shrieked by the Destiny, Shinn skirted aside as a familiar net of beam fire moved to surround him. Another beam shot came streaking out of the darkness, Shinn batted it aside with his beam shield, glaring up ahead as his foe came charging in.
Inside the Legend Gundam, Rey Za Burrel scowled down at the Destiny.
"You have run loose long enough, Shinn!" he growled.
The Legend's DRAGOONs swarmed around the Destiny, Shinn scowled in frustration, activating the beam wings and taking off over the Legend's head with a blur of afterimages. He dove aside as the two beam spike DRAGOONs streaked towards him, the Legend charged up towards him, beam javelin drawn, and the two mobile suits crashed together as Shinn blocked the javelin with his beam shield.
"I'm not here to fight you, faggot!" Shinn snapped. "Kira Hibiki is still alive! Where is he?!"
The Legend surged forward, throwing the Destiny back, and Shinn rocketed aside as the DRAGOONs opened fire again. "That is not your concern!" Rey shouted. "You will not face him until you have defeated me!"
Suddenly, more than a dozen blasts of pink energy streaked out of the darkness and obliterated the Legend's DRAGOON units. With the loss of the DRAGOON units, Rey backed away from the Destiny, as an orange and white Gundam streaked towards him.
"Rey Za Burrel, why don't you stay dead?" The voice of Allelujah Haptism asked as the Arios Gundam, currently in its flight mode, slammed into the Legend, before then transforming into its mobile suit mode, igniting a beam saber and slicing the Legend Gundam in half vertically.
"Neither ZAFT, nor the Earth Alliance will ever attack our colonies!" An authoritarian female voice suddenly announced through the comm. line. "Bring the Halos online, and prepare them to fire. Our target is the ZAFT fleet!"
"All Halos are operational and preparing to fire." A soldier announced a few short seconds later.
All of the ZAFT soldiers looked at each other and asked. "Halos? What are Halos?"
The ZAFT soldiers watched as the area of space to the right of the Archangel, Celestial Being and the Ptolemiaos, suddenly lit up with a faint blue-white light. The lead Gouf pilot was the first to see that the Halos, which looked like nothing more than large rings floating in space, were quickly lining up, forming what looked like the barrel of a gun.
Everyone in the ZAFT fleet watched as the light intensified and a few short seconds before the Halos fired, the lead Gouf pilot muttered. "Oh, fuck..."
A fraction of a second later, the entire ZAFT fleet was vaporized as a blindingly bright blue-white energy beam which was nearly fifty miles in diameter, engulfed them. Unknown to anyone at the time, the ZAFT Eternal-class ship; Vengeance had activated its warp engines only a half second before the Halos had fired, and as a result it had escaped destruction.
"Celestial Being vessels, you are now free to enter the asteroid belt, welcome to Orb Union space." The female voice said as the blue-white energy beam which had been fired by the Halos slowly dissipated.
As Shinn moved the Destiny back towards the Ptolemiaos, he opened a private communications line to the nearby asteroid, which was where his sensors were telling him that the comm. line had originated.
"This is Shinn Asuka, pilot of the Destiny Gundam." He said as he landed his Gundam in the Ptolemiaos's port side launch bay. After a few seconds, he was pleasantly surprised when a video comm. line opened, the face of Lunamaria Hawke appearing on his screen.
"Welcome to Orb, Shinn." Luna said, smiling.
Shinn smiled as he replied. "Thank you, Luna."
Two months later, the Celestial Being colony ship slowly orbited Europa. The colony ship had been left in a stationary orbit above the ice-covered moon while the Archangel and the Ptolemiaos had landed inside the colony, which to everyone's surprise, had been built underneath the ice which covered Europa's entire surface.
And so, Chapter 16 is complete. As you guys can probably guess, some of the earlier clones had escapsed their training facilities and fled into Orb Union space.
A few question to the readers, the first three are repeated from the last chapter only because I never got any answers;
1) How big should the Orb Union colony/colonies on Europa be? (I.E. Overall population, size of the military force, how large of an area the colonies themselves cover, etc.)
2) Do you guys think that there should also be some Orb Union colonies in the upper athmospheres of some of the planets in the outer solar system?
3) I've been thinking about outfitting the Strike Freedom with an advanced Mobile Doll System like the one that was used by White Fang near the end of Gundam Wing, that way Murrue would be able to "pilot" the Strike Freedom, without ever having to set foot in the cockpit. What does everyone else think about this idea?
4) I haven't decided whether or not Kira should have recovered from his coma, which is why I didn't mention it at the end of this chapter, but as of now, he has been in a coma for nearly half a year, but anyway when do you guys think that I should have him come out of his coma?
5) Kira and Murrue's chilrden are nearly three and a half years old, and since all three of them are Coordinatiors, I've been wondering; do you guys think that their parents would want/let them eventually become pilots?
6) If Kira and Murrue do want/let their chidren become pilots, at what age do you guys think they should begin training?
AS ALWAYS, PLEASE REVIEW!