Gundam Seed: Killer's Realm

Phase 10: Praetor Revealed

North Africa, Sahara Desert, City

January 30th, 71 C.E., 9:08 A.M. Local Time, 7:08 P.M. Orb Time

Abaddon watched as his subordinate glanced nervously about, almost seeming to shudder. In a way, Sariel's caution and paranoia was understandable. Here, in North Africa, they stuck out like sore thumbs. Both were rather pale, an effect from the combination of already pasty complexions and the Grigori's artificial lights. Also, Edward had the rather unique combination of black hair and blue eyes. And the sharply angled features of his face made him very recognizable to those who knew him. David, on the other hand, showed his distant Irish ancestry in his red hair and green eyes. Both shared the same short hair style, close to regulation length yet not quite there. Abaddon was dressed in his usual civilian clothes, white shirt and light blue pants, with steel-toed brown boots. Sariel, in an effort to adhere to his espionage and assassin training, wore clothing similar to the locals, consisting of a tan shirt, dark brown pants, and boots. Along with this went a tan hat and black sunglasses.

"Why are we here Edward? Not only is Andrew Waltfeld here, but Rau Le Creuset too! And let's not forget Kira Yamato..." David said, shuddering a bit as he said those names.

"It is precisely because they are here that our presence is necessitated David." Abaddon said. "Both Waltfeld and Le Creuset have been thorns in our sides for almost the entire war. And Yamato has proven to be a very, very troublesome person. Thus, we are here to judge just how much more damaging they may become, and if necessary, eliminate them." Sariel gulped then, because Abaddon's eyes seemed to gleam at that last part, with the irises seeming so much bigger.

-About 25 meters East of Abaddon and Sariel-

"Here we are!" Waltfeld declared happily, leading the group of himself, Kira, Liene, Jack, Cagalli, and Mu towards an open-air restaurant. After everyone settled down at a table, he ordered six kabobs for the whole group. Cagalli, Jack, and Mu practically drooled, whereas both Kira and Liene shared the same blank look.

"These things are great Kira!" Cagalli said to her brother, snatching a red condiment bottle out of the center of the table. "You just add a little of this chili sauce-"

"Woah! Hold up there miss." Waltfeld interrupted. "Chili sauce? Yogurt sauce is better, or rather-" He continued, grabbing a white condiment bottle. "It is the only thing to put on kabobs."

"Where did you grow up Waltfeld?" Jack demanded. "As much as Cagalli and I disagree on... certain matters, we are united in this." Jack picked up a second red condiment bottle, exactly the same as the one Cagalli held. "Chili sauce is the best thing on these kabobs."

"You got a long way to go Jack." Mu said, picking up a second yogurt bottle. "I'm afraid I must agree with my colleague. Yogurt sauce is better." Pretty soon, the table was split into three groups: The Chili group, consisting of Cagalli and Jack, arguing for chili sauced kabobs, the Yogurt group, made up of Waltfeld and Mu, the two proclaiming for be-yogurted kabobs. And finally, the I-Really-Don't-Give-A-Fuck-And-Just-Want-To-Eat-And-Get-Out-Of-Here-Before-These-Idiots-Make-Me-Look-Like-I-Know-Any-Of-Them party, made solely of Liene and Kira, both of whom started eating, without sauce. Noticing this, both Chilis and Yogurts tried to spread their respective sauces on the neutral party's kabobs, intent on showing the Who-Gives-A-Fuck people that their sauce went best with kabobs. About all they managed was spraying Liene and Kira with a large quantity of both chili sauce and yogurt sauce.

"Oh shit." All four muttered simultaneously, as Liene and Kira assumed their respective threatening expressions. Liene's was a little smug, and extremely creepy. Kira's blank-faced look could have given an autonomous cybernetic organism specializing in termination of important individuals a run for its money. Before anything potentially dangerous could happen, someone yelled.

"For a pure and blue world!" This phrase caused Jack to kick the table on its side, grabbing Cagalli and Liene and shoving them behind it; Waltfeld and Mu to pull pistols out of hidden holsters, and Kira to draw the ever-present balisong knife. From around a building came several people carrying various weapons, ranging from assault rifles to old pistols. One was carrying a Molotov cocktail, rag lit, and threw it at the group.

Kira reached out, caught the makeshift grenade, and threw it at its former wielder, hitting him in the head. The Coordinator didn't even flinch when the Blue Cosmos thug started screaming, instead choosing to decapitate a guy approaching with a switchblade. Leaping out from behind the table, Kira charged a guy with an assault rifle, moving to avoid his aim. When in hand's reach, Kira grabbed the rifle, tugged the man off-balance, and sliced open his stomach. Flipping the assault rifle and grabbing the grip, the Orb Prince sprayed the approaching maniacs with a liberal dose of bullets, even while moving for some cover in the from of the adjacent building's wall.

Back at the table, Jack, Cagalli and Liene crouched behind the table with Mu and Waltfeld, the latter two popping up every now and then to take a few potshots at their assailants. Then, Jack noticed a guy with a headband peeking around the corner of the restaurant. Chimamare took over at that instant, propelling himself at the man. Said man turned around the corner, aiming a somewhat battered looking handgun. However, he wasn't fast enough to hit Chimamare, the alter wrapping his arm around the Blue Cosmos vigilante's head, jerking it until his neck broke with a sickening crack. Wrenching the handgun from the corpses grip, Chimamare then grabbed the body and held it up before him as a shield, firing the gun.

There were maybe five of the thugs left when Kisaka came on to the scene, followed by a troop of ZAFT soldiers led by Waltfeld's aide, DaCosta. Soon after that, the remnants were cleaned up, the single surviver taken to be........ 'questioned' later on.

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Barachiel, Manufacturing Bay

10:15 A.M. Local Time, 8:15 P.M. Orb Time

Liene frowned, a slight twitch of his lips as he comprehended exactly what was before him.

As with many of Jack's ideas, Liene's brain fritzed out before he got to the point.

"What is this?" Liene asked, very calmly at first glance.

"It's a beam rifle, with a chainsaw bayonet." Jack said happily, inspecting his creation. It was a Gundam-scale beam rifle, same as the one the Angelos pack used, or the Enmity's. However, instead of a grenade launcher, it had an enormous fang-shaped chainsaw with glittering, yes, glittering teeth.

"Why would a beam rifle need a chainsaw for a bayonet?" Liene queried, still mulling this over.

"Well, you know how I need to sheath one of the Chilongs to use my beam rifle right?" Jack asked. At Liene's nod he moved on. "Well, if my other Chilong is occupied, and theres some other guy closing in too fast for me to get a shot off, I just rev this bayonet up, and no more threat." Liene just stared. "Look, they've got compressed diamond blades, frictionless rails, a high-efficiency motor...." Jack trailed off as Liene walked off to begin his own manufacturing.

There, Liene queued up his items, ones he'd spent quite some time since yesterday designing. Kira said they needed to make ZAFT their allies. Well, Liene had some things that would make them go head-over-heels for Orb.

Barachiel, 2nd Hanger Deck

Thirteen Minutes Later

"Damn, Kira, you certainly know how to handle yourself." Waltfeld said, shaking hands with Kira. The Prince of Orb smiled, a bit grim, considering the subject.

"I took self-defense classes two years ago, along with Jack." At this point, Cagalli strolled up to them, intent on trouble, or at least mild embarrassment.

"They spent so much time with their instructor that at one point, me and Father thought they were doing something naughty." Cagalli said gleefully, watching as Kira grimaced and Waltfeld stifled a laugh.

"You don't say.." Mu said, sauntering up.

"I always thought you looked at me strangely." Athrun commented, seeming to appear out of nowhere. Kira was against a corner, and knew it. Before he could refute the slandering words of Cagalli, the alarm, once again, sounded. Kira gave a quick glance towards Cagalli before dashing for the first deck. It was the same look they had shared in many moments throughout their lives. Saved by the bell.

As Kira reached the 1st deck, Jack ran right by, a gleeful look on his face as he hopped into the Kiba's cockpit. Passing by, Kira did a double-take as he saw the beam rifle with the diamond-toothed chainsaw. He had a brief moment of indecision, before he just dropped it and jogged to the Kuro Tenshi Augury. Before he actually got into the pre-launch procedures, Kira pulled out the keyboard and quickly skimmed over the changes he and Liene had been making to the Augury's operating system. Hopefully, they'd be able to use some of these changes to drastically increase the Augury's base capabilities.

"Hoy Kira, what ammo loadout?" Murdoch asked, sticking his head into the open cockpit.

"Erm.....Sniper KP in the first barrel and.....Frag HEAP in the second." Kira replied, sweeping his hands over the keyboard. Murdoch shook his head.

"Why don't you just drop a nuke on them while you're at it?" Kira actually seemed to pause.

"You know, if ZAFT made the Neutron Jammers, then they can make something to cancel their effect right? And even then, Liene and the rest of Morgenroete have been doing some experiments with Femtotechnology and Induced Gamma Emissions...."

"Woah! Stop there Kira. I was kidding." Murdoch interrupted. Kira seemed to be disappointed for a moment before he turned back to the keyboard. After a few more taps, he nodded at Murdoch, folding up the keyboard and starting to flip toggles, hit buttons, and enter codes. In less than twenty seconds, the Augury was powered up, Kamikaze and CIWS loaded, and without a dent. Kira stepped the Gundam into the catapult clamps at the same time as Chimamare did in the adjacent facility, the new beam rifle already clutched in the Kiba's left manipulator while the Chilong in the right hand flexed. The next second saw the two flying out into the air, even as the Shadowfax and the Noctoraptor entered the catapults and the mobile suits in the 2nd deck streamed out four at a time. As the Kiba dropped, Kira opened the Augury's thrusters up, bringing the black Gundam into a level flight. From his birds eye view, Kira clearly saw the white Constantines striding over the dunes, any of the glitches or whatever there was in the previous models gone. Then he saw the leading one.

It was pitch-black, from head to foot, with red secondary coloring and golden cameras exactly like the Augury's and Kiba's. It had the same basic structure as the Constantines but it was different in some ways. For one, it had a structure just above the visor similar to the V-fin of the Gundams, except that there was a third arm coming up from the center. Second, the pauldron had three spikes in a triangular formation coming out from where it met the shoulder, each seeming sharp enough to cut air. The shield ended in a point, and had holes just large enough for a gunbarrel in either side. The rifle in its right manipulator had a grip like a minigun, and had a strip of metal going all along the bottom, from the tip of the barrel, extending past the elbow.

Naturally, Kira deduced that it was the leader of this particular group and fired off a shot from the Kamkaze's first barrel. This round was pretty much the same as 21st Century A.D. Armor Piercing Fin Stabilizing Discarding Sabot Kinetic Energy Penetrators. It pretty much looked like a bullet with an arrowhead protruding from its front and the feathered end protruding from its back. Almost immediately after firing, the sabot, the bullet-like part, fell off in three pieces, allowing the main arrow-like projectile, made of depleted uranium and tipped with magnesium, to proceed normally. Usually, when a KP round hits something, it tears right through, leaving nothing in its wake but holed armor and, in this case, molten scrap. This time, however, the black and red Constantine just raised its shield, and instead of the KP penetrating it, crumpling the shield around the entry hole as it pierced the mobile suit, the round flattened against the shield. Phase Shift Armor.

Before Kira could do anything else, the black mobile suit waved up at him and....disappeared. And Mirage Colloid?Kira wasted a few seconds scanning with the EWACS before he concluded that the strange Constantine had departed. Then he turned his attention on the other, more normal Constantines.

Down below, the Kiba had already started carving into them, Chimamare's omnipresent cackle sounding out, yet again, over an open channel. With the platinum Chilong slicing away, and the beam rifle firing randomly as its chainsaw bayonet revved up, slicing a Constantine completely in half. Needless to say, the OMNI pilots, whose comrades had long been noted for a very low standard of morale, ran to fight the other Gundams. Better to be killed quickly by beam or saber rather than sliced in half at the waist and left to bleed out.

Yzak couldn't help but smile to himself. The upgrades to the Enmity, while not immediately noticeable to anyone inexperienced in the piloting of mobile suits, made it a lot easier for Yzak to deal with the Constantines. For one, the supposedly improved reflexive control systems, which were supposed to make some of the 'twitch' controls, such as firing faster, had been fixed, allowing Yzak to quickly snap off shots, at one point hitting three Constantines in the battery all withing two point three seconds. The Redcoat had also managed to.... 'appropriate' a P-THEL from a Constantine, and started firing off shots. One particularly memorable shot speared five of the OMNI suits in a row, through the cockpit. Apparently, the software updates to the nano-adapters (which Yzak had not used before and had no idea how well they would've worked previously) were operating perfectly, slaving the P-THEL's targeting and firing systems perfectly to the Enmity's.

Waltfeld, about twenty meters to Yzak's left, grinned as one of Aisha's tri-shots ripped a Constantine in half even as the GAHMU's brand-new Phase-Shift claws tore the front of another off. Around them, Waltfeld's GAHMU support started in on the Constantines, beams, bullets, missiles, torpedoes, and all such projectiles flying.

Quickly enough, the majority of the OMNI mobile suits were destroyed, with the remnants putting up a good fight.

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"Well, there's proof of Battle Darwinism." Liene commented, watching the battle on the monitor of the briefing room.

"Battle Darwinism?" Cagalli asked, sitting next to him.

"A sort of joke among Morgenroete about OMNI." Liene explained. "It's a..... 'theory', if such an official term could be applied to it, that, in a military that depends on quantity rather than quality, in any engagement, the weak and unlucky ones will be quickly mowed down, leaving the strong and lucky, or skilled, to fight for their lives against superior odds." At that point, the surviving Constantines surged forward, disabling plenty of the GAHMU's before being finished by the Gundams. "There you go. Unlike their comrades, they actually managed to inconvenience us by disabling the GAHMU's before the others finished them."

"Why did they just disable the GAHMUs?" Mu wondered. "Why not destroy them outright?"

"Oh, the GAHMU pilots managed to move their units so that the shots hit some important components rather than hitting, say, the cockpit or battery."

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Kira scanned the battlefield, looking for any survivors. Most of the Constantines were completely still, pretty much wreckage. Then he noticed a bit of movement amongst one that was mostly intact except for the head. The cockpit opened, and the pilot tumbled out. After getting up and stretching a bit, he saw the Augury and started hopping up and down, waving his arms over his head. Glancing at the others to make sure they weren't looking, Kira raised the Kamikaze and took careful aim. After about a millisecond, where the OMNI pilot realized his plight and turned to run, Kira fired. The KP round, meant for use against heavily armored targets such as, oh, battleships, or maybe military forts, pretty much liquidated the pilot.

"Now that wasn't very......nice, Kira. Although, you did murder my brother and his subordinates in a rather brutal manner...." Kira started, as the smooth voice came from the radio.

"Abaddon?"

"Hm. Nice that you remember me."

"For the record, your brother killed my parents, as well as a significant number of soldiers on his own side."

"All in the name of victory."

At that moment, the EWACS detected the Constantine after about thirty seconds of sifting through interference from N-Jammers and Mirage Colloid. Lifting the Kamikaze, Kira fired off one shot from the second barrel, the depleted uranium round streaking through the air. It impacted, the force-sensitive explosive detonating, sending shrapnel flying everywhere. Normally, superheated depleted uranium shrapnel would cause a mobile suit to look like a porcupine, considering the speed at which the explosion launched them. However, against the apparently Phase-Shifted shield of this particular Constantine, it might as well have been rain. As the mobile suit stood up from behind its shield, Kira pushed the Augury down, doing the same thruster-skating move he'd used the day before. This time however, it was much faster, with the Augury slicing in at the Constantine's head after three seconds of 'touchdown'.

The Excalibur slammed against a yellow-white beam blade, stopping before beginning to slowly slice through. Kira withdrew, backing the Augury off about fifty meters. The blade came from the strip of metal on the Constantine's rifle, extending three meters past the end of the barrel and two past the mobile suit's elbow. At the widest point, the blade was two meters, in the middle of the metal strip.

In the Praetor, Abaddon let his grin spread, even as he flourished the blade, bowing the OMNI suit.

Kira responded like wise, saluting Abaddon with the Excalibur.

Then they dueled, the Augury boosting at the Praetor, Excalibur slashing in. The Praetor stepped forward and to the left, spinning around the slash even as its blade stabbed in, elbow point leading. The Augury jumped over the stab, flipping as it landed on its feet with the Phase-Shifted point of the shield stabbing for the cockpit of the Praetor. The Praetor's shield blocked it, then forced it to the Augury's left. The Excalibur hacked towards the Praetor's back, only to be intercepted by the rifle-blade.

"Well, this is an awkward position." Abaddon commented. The Praetor was facing at a right angle to the Augury, with the shield outstretched to block the Gundam's own shield, and the rifle arm was folded behind its back so that the blade could stop the Excalibur. Then the Praetor jerked its head to the side as a lightning streak passed it. The Praetor jerked itself back, facing forward, forcing the Augury to follow, causing the Gundam to turn completely. Then the Praetor just kicked the Augury in the back, sending it smashing into the sand.

Kira got the Gundams hands beneath it and pushed up, seeing the suit that had fired the Ion Beam. The Charcharius.

"Ah, Rau! I was wondering when you'd show up." Abaddon said, sounding pleased, almost.

"Edward?" Rau gasped, the Charcharius actually taking a step back.

"Nice to see that you remember me. Traitor." the Watcher sneered, his mobile suit stepping back. "I'll see you two again. Soon." The Praetor disappeared, Mirage Colloid wiping it from view.

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A/N: Well..... looks like I had a few more tricks than I planned in this story. Anyway, sorry that this came out later than I hoped, but I just got some new games and... you know.

G. Wagers: To answer, I think 'on time' should be about two days after the last chapter, but I've been stalling and/or stalled because of my sister, power outages from trees, faulty internet connections, video game obsessions......life, basically.

Velshard: Yes. Yes it is.