Disclaimer and Notes of Ownership: I do not own the Gundam Franchise, or any of the characters from said franchise. If I did, I would probably use the massive fortunes resulting from that to develop real-life mobile suits and conquer the world, with a corresponding level of glee and madness.
("He actually drew up plans for it too.")
I do however, own all the technical designs labeled with PGAT, XHMA, MMA, XSBF, XABF, PMU, MLWS, CI, CPH and SDDGN in their alphanumeric designations, along with a portion of those labeled XGAT. I own Jack Kagizaki's mind, body and soul, as well as those of Captain Gary Shimizu and his Shoki Team. Along with that goes the Abaddons, the Grigori, and good ol' David Sariel. Drake too. If anyone should use any of these without my permission...well, I'll mope. And then I'll find you and crush you underneath a tank. Filled with high-explosives. And all the mopey, whiny Gundam protagonists that didn't grow something resembling a spine.
Similarly, Velshard has dibs on almost the entire line of replacement units for ZAFT, excluding one. He has administrative privileges over the Noctoraptor (Enhanced), Ferox, and Verin Gundams. He also has ownage over the horrifying abomination or deification (depends on your point of view) of all that's good and pure in this universe, otherwise called the Tetsujin. The beings of Andrew Victor Payne, Karlton William Hertz, and the Van Dalygon family are belong to him.
The Megalodon design belongs to...well Kojiro Kun gave me the idea.
The ZONGS design belongs to animefan29.
00virtuezero's contributions include the Gundams Repulse and Outlaw, and his OCs Wesley Mercis, and Michael Archer.
Gundam Seed: Killer's Realm
Phase 31: Civility, Part 3
- The Crucible -
Laurasia-Class Frigate Ziegler, Low-Earth Orbit over Alaska
April 13, 71 CE
11:45 AM, PLANT Time
The Ziegler traveled upon its designated path, literally dozens of other Laurasia-class frigates in formation with it, and Nazca-class destroyers accompanying them.
Rau waited in his Charcharius SCAU-XU, entombed in a drop pod alongside a unit made, unusually, completely of SCAU mobile suits. In another timeline, another universe, he would have committed to this assault with his original team, pilots who he knew the mettle of and could trust to survive.
And, maybe, 'accidentally' die to color the Supreme Council's view of the Earth Alliance more.
The drop pod detached, essentially an enormous hollow shell plated with thermal energy-resistant material and with a built-in ECM device. The pod shook like it was being pounded on all size by mobile-suit-sized mauls, and the temperature would have been enough to cook the occupants if it weren't for the pod's construction. After reaching an altitude of two hundred kilometers, small charges blew the pod into pieces, both to free the six mobile suits within and to generate chaff to confuse anti-air defenses.
With literally hundreds of drop pods, the air was raining bits of metal and cermet and mobile suits. Pulse lasers, flak, and surface-to-air missiles blasted through the air, occasionally hitting an actual mobile suit, but more often blasting a scrap remnant of a pod into dust.
The sea churned as submarines launched SIMCAs to deal with underwater defenses and any Megalodon schools, before WAAMs launched to lend their heavy firepower to the surface fight. Surface transports beached themselves and unleashed high-speed GAHMU suits to dance around and destroy armor brigades and turrets, while CUMAR deployed from other such ships to hammer more heavily fortified defenses down to their foundations. Based off of the working machine progenitors of all mobile suits, CUMARs resemble ZAMS torsos mounted on enormous quadruped legs, with such heavy armaments they mass almost as much as small frigates. Linear artillery cannons pounded bunkers into dust as gatling guns and micro-missile launchers aided the GAHMUs in their harassment and destruction of the armor units.
The first substantial resistance came when concealed tunnels popped open to unleash teams of Constantines equipped with Energy Assault Packs, with heavy battery backpack attachments and high-output beam guns mounted on their shoulders in addition to the beam rifles they held.
Green lances of concentrated plasma reached out, melting through the CUMARs' chobham armor plating and igniting ammunition and overcharging capacitors and battery packs as the Constantines fired on the heavy artillery suits, before GAHMUs and descending ZAMS and ZONGS started carving into the Constantine ranks. The Alliance mobile suits were much less effective than they could be, their attention divided by the CUMARs in front, the GAHMUs on the sides, and the falling humanoid mobile suits.
Despite their valor, the Naturals were quickly dealt with with perhaps twenty CUMARs destroyed and an additional fifteen heavily damaged, the GAHMUs having taken advantage of the Constantines' singular focus to attack from either flank and disable or destroy them with a combined flurry of missiles, bullets and the occasional beam. With the defensive line thus crushed, ZAFTs mobile suits began to advance even further towards JOSH-A. Minefields were defeated by grenades and missiles thrown or launched into the defensive lines, bunkers were busted by CUMAR and submarine-launched cruise missiles, and infantry generally died under ZAMS and ZONGS CIWS guns and the grenade launchers of the GAHMU.
Rau's SCAU team landed on the coast, near where ZAFT amphibious and airborne units assaulted the small flotilla of warships that defended JOSH-A's dock entrance.
And accompanying them was a special warship. The Grigori.
- The Destroyer -
Grigori, Bridge
Abaddon sat in his chair, imitating the Thinker statue, or whatever it was, as best he could. Not intentionally, he was just musing over why the hell Azrael would restrict the BCPU Gundams from participating in the defense action, considering that they could actually be the keystone that allowed the defenders to beat ZAFT back.
The line about them being 'secret weapons' was okay when they were talking about dealing with the renegade Gundams, something concerning but not immediately dangerous to the overall war, especially considering that they had been heading for Orb, the most non-aggressive nation extant. But when the topic was the headquarters of the entire military...that was when you pulled the big guns out.
Of course, ZAFT's attack was actually weaker than expected...Clyne must have pulled more out of their armed forces than they thought after all.
This did not, however, mean Abaddon was thinking of it as an easy battle. Oh no. Abaddon still had that insane desire to manipulate the ZAFT forces into a situation that ensured nothing less than their destruction, up to and including a Mutually-Assured Destruction scenario.
It was just that kind of enthusiasm for elimination that had gotten him noticed.
And, here he was, sitting on a chair, watching younger people go off to fight and being unable to join them in the slaughter of their counterparts.
Promotions really sucked.
"Strategos 3 is landing for resupply." Reported Gabriel, their mobile suit team coordinator.
"Allocate greater power from reserves to port laser batteries." Abaddon ordered, the crew in CIC hurriedly obeying.
"Sir," Ivan called, "ZAFT reinforcements from the drop pods that landed on the coast. Counting thirty-nine ZAMS, seventeen ZONGS, six SCAU and a modified model identified as Le Creuset's customized model." The crew noted Abaddon's change in posture, leaning forward from a chin-on-fist posture as his hands went back to grip the chair's armrests and his eyes narrowed, almost as though he could pick out the SCAU-XU from over ten kilometers by eye-sight alone.
Without an order, Ivan pulled up a computer-enhanced zoom image and showed the formation, ZONGS and SCAU on sub-flight lifters while the grey and white mobile suit of Rau's led from the front, its enhanced thrusters allowing it to fly unaided.
"Commander Abaddon," The Vice-Admiral spoke, having picked up the comms phone, "Keep an eye on Le Creuset. His suit closes in two kilometers, you run him down and eviscerate him."
"With pleasure Vice-Admiral." Lena's voice hissed, and on-screen, the Samyaza's angelic head turned to glare at the approaching ZAFT Commander, even as she split a IAAMS in half with an off-handed swipe of her Achilles Anti-Ship Sword.
- The Troopers -
Amidst the mid-air explosions, the beams and bullets and lasers, the flak, the chaff and the debris, it would have been easy for the combatants to miss the five relatively puny dart-shaped objects dropping from High-Earth Orbit into the ocean. Even if there hadn't been a big battle going on, the Mirage Colloid cloaks these objects possessed made them completely invisible to standard radar and ladar sensors, and rendered them practically invisible to normal sight, disregarding a slight shimmer in the air.
After they submerged in the sea, their density and weight causing them to sink fairly quickly, the majority sunk their tips into the seabed, although one scraped against the side of a submarine, causing the crew to have a slight heart attack as they waited for a torpedo explosion.
That pod tipped sideways and dropped onto the seabed on its side.
"Well, fuck!" Gary muttered, before throwing himself side-to-side.
"Need some help Shepherd?" John noted humorously, having already busted out of his Ryuuzaken and crouched next to his Captain's as the pod shook side to side. The water in no way hindered their movements, the advanced computer entombed in their OMU's helmets compensating for the increased drag on their limbs by increasing power to the motive systems, and the nanomachine colonies in the facial area of their helmets sucking in seawater and extracting oxygen from it before mixing it with select elements from the soldiers' exhalations to create an approximation of the Earth's atmosphere that they inhaled with every breath.
"Fuck you Mjolnir! I just need to roll this damn pod around enough to get the hatch to blow open!" Gary growled, slamming a shoulder into the wall.
"Hold up, you're stuck in a crevice." Lilou reported, after looking around Gary's pod a bit. "You-"
"Fuck this!" With a hiss, a bright beam of blue plasma sliced through the hull of the Ryuuzaken, instantly ionizing and evaporating the water around it and continuing to do so as Gary cut the pod in half. "Hah! Forget lockpicks and hacking, with one of these babies, all you need is a slice!" Gary crowed, deactivating the experimental plasma sword. Unlike the rather more advanced and efficient design of mobile suit beam sabers, the plasma sword was essentially a miniaturized plasma torch that generated hotter plasma. Whereas beam sabers utilized powerful magnetic fields to contain a generally constant supply of plasma, the plasma sword just threw out plasma that cooled soon after contacting the air into gas, constantly drawing in more matter to heat and ionize. As a result, it was horrendously inefficient.
However, as Gary noted, it could cut through almost anything. The same measures used to protect objects from beam sabers, such as laminated armor, magnetic anti-beam coating, and of course, other energy weapons, simply did not exist on anything other than mobile suits, warships, and heavy base defenses. Considering that, as special forces infantry equipped with powered armor, the most heavily armored foe that their missions would pit them against would be a tank, the plasma sword could be counted on to be reasonably effective.
"How the hell is that thing not shorting out?" Boris rumbled.
"Orb technology." Muttered their newest recruit, Ryan, callsign 'Apollo'. He was replacing Kuro as their medical specialist, although he came well-recommended from the Orb Marines for anything from stealth assassination to mobile-suit theft. "Proof against all environments, from the depths of the ocean to the void of space."
"Shut it, FNG. Alright boss, what now?" John asked.
"...You weren't listening to the briefing, were you?"
"Shepherd, in the past four years that we've known each other, when have I ever listened to a briefing when I know you're going to be taking Cliff Notes to read to us later?"
"...Damn it. Alright, Andrew wants us to infiltrate JOSH-A and get anything out of their computers and what-not that we can fit on our OMU's computers. And he also wants us to proceed to some super-secret facility they have north of here to retrieve a large amount of sensitive and strategically important information from top-secret infiltrator in said super-secret facility."
"Ah, a raid."
"Correct, now get your cloaks on and let's get moving." Without further ado, each member of Shoki team draped the large pieces of strangely shimmering cloth around them, ensuring to completely cover up themselves, and set off. A few moments after, the shimmers intensified before the cloaks disappeared, along the soldiers underneath.
- The Crucible -
Rau dodged a flurry of missiles and upped the ECM to scramble their targeting systems, as well as those of the laser CIWS guns the Grigori sported. Despite the mutual antipathy between him and the Abaddon family, the ace couldn't help some frustrated respect for them. Their defenses were rather well-planned, and the younger Abaddon's piloting skills weren't something to be dismissed.
However, Rau didn't particularly need to deal with them at the moment. He just needed to put forth a token effort, enough to cement his position.
Temporarily cutting the power to his thrusters, Rau dropped the Charcharius down to just above sea level, the Grigori's forward-most pulse lasers streaking through the air behind him even as he kicked the white and gray mobile suit up to full speed, charging a particularly obstinate Eurasian frigate.
Thankfully, the targeting databases that the ZAFT suits accessed through the Network had been updated with new schematics of OMNI Enforcer's more recent additions to their forces, allowing Rau to quite easily deal with the frigate with a single beam rifle shot to each of its engines, and another to its ammunition stocks, delivering a coup de grace to the bridge via a burst of linear rifle rounds and a missile or two from his back-mounted launchers.
The explosion was quite satisfying, and opened a hole in the anti-air defenses, allowing a team of IAAMS and three ZONGS on Guuls to slip through, the IAAMS hanging around to divide the remaining defenders' attentions while the ZONGS made a bee-line for the docks.
Then Rau dodged a shell, the hyper-accelerated projectile streaking by the Charcharius' torso and shot into the sea. A mere second later, the sea erupted in something like a massive bubble, and the temperature raised high enough for the Charcharius' sensors to note it from over a mile away. Craning the Charcharius' head, Rau saw the Samyaza speeding for him, in jet fighter form. Not quite the best thing to happen in this battle. Nonetheless, easily dealt with. It merely required some flexibility of tactical planning.
- The Destroyer -
"Damn it Lena, get back in formation!" Edward growled into the phone, a truly menacing sound that would have caused his bridge crew to crap themselves if they hadn't acclimated to their commanding officer's demeanor over the years (albeit with a truly remarkable number of soiled trousers).
"I can get him!" Lena hissed back, and on the screen, the Samyaza shifted in midair to mobile suit configuration and the thrusters flared so much brighter to get the Gundam up to speed to slam into the Charcharius' waist and check it.
However, Le Creuset didn't spend the war sitting behind a desk, and proved it with a minimal bit of thrust that angled the SCAU-XU so that it faced down and fell like a rocket-attached brick. Behind the spot where he was, there was a group of six SCAUs armed with beam rifles and two IAAMS loaded up with missiles. The missiles fired, over three dozen total arcing towards the Samyaza, most of them intercepted by the Igellstellung guns, while a few were confounded by the waves of ECM from everywhere, leaving all but two for Lena to dodge around.
Of course, in the time period the missiles were firing, the SCAUs had opened fire as well, the generally white suits firing green beams as fast as their rifles' heat sinks and vents could cycle. Luckily for Lena, one of Thatcher's Seraph Pack-equipped Strategos swooped in and intercepted a few of the beams with its shield, and continued evasive maneuvers from the Samyaza and a more focused wave of ECM from the Grigori allowed Lena to get away with only a few disfiguring scorches on the Gundam's armor.
"Thanks Kyle." Lena radioed, rather absent-mindedly as she scanned for Le Creuset as the SCAUs retreated with the Grigori pushing forward.
"Lena..." Edward growled again, and this time half the bridge almost lost it. "Get back here."
- The Troopers -
They stared. Understanadable. It was a big door. But not, however, proof to Orb ingenuity.
A few seconds fiddling had the door falling inwards, with a resounding 'bam' as the triple-layered iron door fell.
"And that, dear rookie, is how you can get into a top-secret Blue Cosmos and/or OMNI Enforcer complex using nothing more than a gram of composition 15, Surin's titanium hair-pin, a bottle of super-glue, and five small-size lithium-ion batteries." John remarked, stepping through the entrance he'd created.
"Wow, impressive Mjolnir." Ryan commented.
"Damn right, and don't you forget that." John laughed, leading the way through. Since their last mission, he'd replaced the gauss launcher slung under his rifle barrel with a gauss shotgun instead. He kinda missed Karl. That guy was awesome.
"Shut it. Anyone else notice something strange?" Gary queried. They all paused for a second.
"No lights." Boris stated
"No people." Ryan hissed.
"No deadly acid pits, anti-personnel mines, rolling boulders or giant demonic robots." They all turned to glare at Lilou. "Hmm? Oh, sorry. I had an Armory and Androids session going on at a friends house last night."
"Ooooohhh, pajama party?" John asked slyly.
"Not your business perv."
"Getting back on track, this seems to be awfully deserted for a high-security command installation." Gary steamrolled over their conversation. The team proceeded down the hall, Colloid Lattice cloaks still over them. They had to keep their rifles parallel to their bodies for the most part, to ensure that the cloaks covered them, but it worked out fairly well. Weights at the bottom ensured the cloaks didn't randomly fly off or out due to wind or something like that, and the OMU's cameras were already modified to allow them to see out of the cloaks.
Then they reached the area that was supposed to be the command center, stuffed with techs and radio operators coordinating between the defense forces and somesuch.
It was empty.
The room was laid out in levels, like a university classroom, but instead of a podium where the professor would stand, there was a big screen showing the force disposition outside.
"There's no one here?" Gary muttered.
"No, there isn't anyone here, Shepherd." The screen flickered, and showed a big old-style gas mask. The big buggy eyepieces seemed to gleam, and Shoki team jumped backward in surprise. "Now, if you could hurry here before you're all boiled alive..."
- The Author -
yeah...took me some time. I got pulled out of my house to go to some resort in Florida...
("You know, I don't understand you.")
Yes?
("Most people would be ecstatic to go to a high-class hotel resort...")
Key word, 'most'. Anyway, Shoki team shows its face again...kinda. Rau's keeping up appearances, and the Alliance is a bunch of bastards. Feh. Oh yes, intrigue. Yes...much more intrigue...I guess.
Anyway, I've been keeping up with the new Evangelion movies. Gotta, say, I personally like them a lot more than the original show (for one thing, the Zeruel fight is so much more epic). Hopefully, the ending will be a bit less vague...cause even End of Evangelion was somewhat vague as to humanity's ultimate fate.
Alex Yamato: Yep.
Well, after this chapter it should be rather clear...I think.
It's too much fun! Granted, they'll probably be bad-asses in the sequel when I replace them with Shinn as the overall newb. And I'm speaking in general, so Lunamaria and Rey will probably be along for the newb-abuse ride.
Nah, not actual mobile suits. We already have some canon and new big-names in mobile suits.
He is a sneaky devil.
Just read.
And when theres one on each side...yeah, stay outta their way.
It's be fun...there's be candy...and assorted body parts.
Infinite Freedom: I think even they would have second thoughts about that...
Mathiasosx: I could do a sequel omake if you want...
...What's Flame of Recca? Tetsujin is Velshard's design, he kinda wants to stick with the -jin suffix with mobile suits, and Raijin/Fujin are the Shinto (?) gods of lighting and wind, respectively (I think) Which I thought would fit Jack and his AI clone, considering their Gundams' amphibious nature and how storms are devastating to islands.
G. Wagers: Yes, but there is actually a line of cooking pots named 'Le Creuset'. I'm serious.
Hooray!
I really haven't written anything that well when it comes to the canon secondary characters, have I?
Knightmare Gundam of Ni