Celestial Being Chronicles - Chapter 64
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Gundam series, nor any of the various series which are used or referenced in my fic, so please point that damned lawsuit cannon at someone else, also, don't read this if you are not of legal age to read such material. The story contains possibly disturbing content and should not be read by close-minded people (i.e., people who are easily offended.) Everything in the story is fictional. I am also not responsible for any actions taken by people who read this story and society's problems. I do, however, own my original character; Hope Yamato.
"Commander Yamato! This is the Excalibur! Be warned...the enemy fleet has launched their nuclear armed forces, and those forces have fired their missiles. Their chances of hitting the PLANTs are low; less than twenty percent per missile, but that is of course still far too risky. We are unable to intercept the missiles as they are already out of our line of fire."
"Understood, Excalibur. I'll take care of it." Kira switched channels. "I'm leaving the fleet for your guys to mop up, the other Gundams and mobile suits just don't have the speed to catch up to those missiles."
"Yes, sir!" Kira's teammates replied in unison. One of them stayed on the line...the man piloting the Infinite Justice Gundam. "Are you sure you can catch up to them yourself, sir? Those missiles have a pretty good head start."
"We'll find out, won't we?" Kira replied as he flipped the Divinity around and once again gunned his thrusters. With a single thought he modified the timing of the heat up/cool down cycle of all of the Divinity's power sources, boosting their outputs up to one hundred ten percent, all of which he diverted to his thrusters. The Divinity shrieked through space, its structural frame vibrating wildly under the stress, cooling canes starting to glow white hot. "Come on, Divinity...hold together." Kira muttured.
"Coolant heat levels rising into the yellow zone. Thruster output shows one hundred fourteen percent. Current speed estimated at five miles per second and rising. ETA to closest missile is twenty seconds." Athrun called to his friend, monitoring the Divinity's systems through his remote link.
The Divinity caught up to the first missile and struck out in passing with a single fist, denting the thruster section of the missile inwards, causing the nuke to veer wildly to the side, corckscrewing off into deep space. Now approaching a cluster of missiles twelve strong, it was all Kira could do to lash out with sweeps of his beam shields, knocking the missiles off course or crushing their fragile bodies with pushes from the magnetically contained beam fields. Activating the shields slowed him a bit, at most speeds the shields had no effect on his speed, but at his current velocity the shields were hitting so much interstellar dust and gas that the impacts were actually acting as counter thrust. He was still flying faster than the missiles though and he caught up to the second cluster. Holding his arms out and back, he spun the Divinity wildly, dragging his beam shields like huge beam blades behind him, disintegrating missiles left, right, top and bottom as he passed through the cluster. Only one cluster and a pair of leading missiles left...only one thousand kilometers to the first PLANT in the path of the missiles; Mauis Ten. Kira disengaged his shields, he needed every microsecond speed could grant him now. He caught up to the cluster of missiles and reached out with both arms, grabbing the trailing missile and diverting its course slightly and then gave it a boost with his own thrusters, causing the forty ton missile to skip forward at an angle, striking and destroying three other missiles. Pleased with this maneuver, Kira repeated it twice more. Now, he only had two missiles remaining, two missiles and three hundred kilometers, fifty seconds at his current speed. The missiles were fifteen seconds ahead of him, both on direct courses for the colony. Kira threw the Divinity into what might have looked like a headlong dive, pushing both hands out and ahead and moving the feet straight back so he ws flying through space like some superhero of old. He caught up with the missiles with thirty seconds to spare, it was too dangerous to use the shields to destroy them at this range as the missiles were probably already armed by this point and a single impact might cause a detonation that could damage or destory the colony. Punching out their thrusters was also not an option, at this point a random course could lead to them crashing into another PLANT. There was only one course of action and it was sheer madness. Kira shrugged the Divinity's shoulders...brilliance...madness...he couldn't tell the diffrence these days.
"Kira..." Athrun said with worry. He was as much a Coordinator as Kira was and he remembered Junius Seven as well.
"I got this, don't worry!" Kira called back. "This'll be one for the history books...good or ill." He muttured after shutting down the communications line. He caught up with the two missiles, which were flying almost parallel, about twent feet apart. Stretching his arms wide, he spun the Divinity like a top so its thrusters were facing towards the PLANT, flying backwards through space. His arms clamped down the forward sections of the missiles, as gently as he could manage while still maintaining a strong grip. To his immense relief, the missiles did not detonate. Then the thrusters, wings of light and Trans-Am all kicked in and the Divinity screamed in metal agony as the angelic machine struggled to cope with the stresses of redirecting a pair of forty ton objects traveling at six point seven kilometers per second into a trajectory exactly one hundred eighty degrees opposite its former heading. He didn't dare look at his cooling system indications as he threw the Divinity up to one hundred thirty percent power.
Alarm sirens and warning lights popped up on Athrun's computer faster than he could click them off. Coolant overheating, structural fractures, thruster overtemp warnings, melting armor, imminent nuclear reactor failure, Zero Point Module systems starting to meltdown. He just kept clicking override, not daring to cut in the safety systems which would shut down the mobile suit, and allow the two missiles to strike the helpless colony. either the mobile suit would hold steady through stresses at or beyond its design tolerances, and the PLANT would be saved, or else it would fail and detonate in an explosion that would utterly drown out the paltry nuclear missiles. To the people who happened to be in positions to watch from the inside of Maius Ten, it was an almost surreal sight. A single overwhelmingly bright blue drive flame twinkled in the lower east sky, framed on either side by the orange warheads of two nuclear missiles, visible through simple binoculars. The mobile suit holding on to the missiles and attempting to overcome their inertia was barely visible around its drive flame...all most people could see was twelve spiky projections that were glowing such a bright white color it was impossible to look at them without causing damage to the eyes. A hundred thousand people felt their breath catch in their throats as the mobile suit was force inexorably towards the colony by the twin thrusters of the missiles, each putting out more than eight hundred thousand pounds of thrust. It seemed impossible that a single mobile suit could output the kind of thrust needed to counteract the momentum of the missiles. The Divinity's thrust backwash struck the outer surface of the tens of meters thick armored transparent alloy that formed the giant window panes that framed each PLANT. The Divinity was slowly winning out against the missiles, his backward speed was down to only thirty meters per second. Thruster backwash melting runnels in the alloy, the Divinity's feet came down to rest on the alloy window. The missiles were now held only eight meters from their impact points and were inching downwards for all they were worth. The missiles seemed almost alive, eager to reach their targets and explode, sending the helpless civilians inside flailing out into the cold embrace of space.
"I...Don't...Fucking...Think...So!" Kira gritted out. All of his power sources were up to one hundred fifty percent, the legs of the Divinity were starting to bend backwards. Nuclear reactor and Zero Point Module power continued to rise as he mentally held down the override button, despite the searing agony of the feedback which he felt, he couldn't let another Junius Seven happen, he would rather die the most hideous and painful of deaths first. At one hundred sixty four percent power, the Divinity finally overwhelmed the forward momentum of the missiles. At one seventy percent power, with so many alarms blaring on his computer that he could no longer read any of the data he was receiving, Athrun observed the Divinity actually start pushing the missiles back, inches at a time at first, but quickly speeding up. Once he'd pushed the missiles a good mile from the PLANT, Kira flipped the Divinity around again, spinning the missiles around as he did so, so that now all three of them were pointed back they way they came. He slowly eased back on reactor power, wincing slightly as the Divinity's cooling systems struggled mightily to preserve the integrity of the multiple reactors powering his machine. "I believe these are yours." Kira contacted the Alliance commander through gritted teeth. "I've always believed in a catch and release policy."
"How did you...what did you...?" Captian Icarus, commander of the Alliance warship Wrath, sputtered before his sharp mind figured out what he was seeing on the sensor screen. The impossible enemy mobile suit, the Divinity Gundam, was coming back towards the ragged remains of his fleet, who were barely holding off the Celestial Being mobile suits. And it was coming back fast, sensors showed speeds of seven miles per second and increasing steadily. It would be on top of them in minutes. It's speed made no sense, it hadn't moved that fast before, even when going at what had to be all out thrust, but then what the pilot had said clicked, he was riding the missiles back. He'd somehow managed to turn them completely around and now he was combining his thrust with theirs, using them like afterburners. "ALL HANDS, ABANDON SHIP!" Icarus cried, wasting no time in heading for the exit himself, there was no sense in dying for a lost cause, he was ashamed that he'd failed this mission, his career in Blue Cosmos was over. But there were other powerful figures looking for supporters out there.
Mu La Flaga was turning his X-02A Wyvern around for another pass on one of the Alliance warships when Kira threw the two nuclear missiles towards the Alliance fleet. For a moment Mu forgot how to fly his fighter, his jaw dropping. "Holy shit!" He closed his jaw, quickly pulling away from the enemy fleet before his jaw dropped again. "The kid is a freaking god!"
Thirty miles from the remains of the Earth Alliance fleet, Kira released his grip on his captured missiles and slowly decelerated. He'd ordered the Celestial Being forces out of the line of effect almost immediately after he'd turned the missiles around, no sense in nuking his own side. It was getting warmer than a hotspring inside his cockpit, the Divinity's cooling systems were still laboring overtime due to the abuse that Kira had just put his machine through, but he did not head back to the Excalibur just yet, this deserved to be watched. Both missiles flew unerringly, aimed by the hand of one amethyst-eyed man's divine power, directly into the Wrath, detonating in twin explosions of blindingly bright purple-white light that almost instantly grew into huge globes of destruction that utterly wiped any trace of the Alliance's twelfth lunar fleet from existence. Kira breathed a huge sigh of relief, once again, the PLANTs had been saved by the thinnest of margins.
The Divinity Gundam now stood in Berlin, Germany. Kira had found several refugee bunkers, places where the support staff and non-combatant families of the German troops had gone to hide when the angelic machine suddenly appeared in the sky. He put down his hand-carried weapons and used the Divinity's hands to scoop off the meter thick metal roofs of the bunkers to reveal the screaming people within, like crowds of wriggling pink sardines. Long range beam cannon fire bounced harmlessly off the Divinity's back, wings, and shoulders as he bent down and swept his hands through the press of civilians, crushing dozens and picking up five people per hand. "Whee!" Kira cried joyfully, flinging them high into the air in an arcing throw. He'd brought the hands back for the next group before the first group started to fall like obscene raindrops around the Divinity. The next group he tossed straight up, so that they splattered against the head, torso and shoulders of the Divinity like rotten fruit, giving the mobile suit a red polka dotted appearance. He worked the Divinity's arms tirelessly, crumpling mobs of people up into flesh balls and hurling them at any German vehicles that approached within firing distance. He nailed one GINN-based mobile suit right on the camera-eye with a ball comprised of fourteen middle-schoolers, all mostly crushed together into a sort of potpourri, but still twitching and screaming, at least until they hit anyway. From the way the mobile suit staggered back, one would have thought it had actually sustained serious damage, rather than just a new layer of filth on its paint. A message light flashed insistently on his threat board, but he ignored it, he was having too much fun to be interrupted.
"And now for my next trick; a break dancing mobile suit!" Kira crowed, as the angel-winged machine leaped onto the nearest shelter full of people, crushing it in like a man stamping down on a soda can.
The Divinity was not designed to break dance, or to dance period, but since the Divinity Gundam was his own body, Kira managed to pull it off. He rubbed off a lot of the human smears on his shoulders from the blood, but gained many, many more from crushing hundreds of refugees beneath his torso and legs as he danced about, immune to the fire and smoke and falling debris. When he finally brought the Divinity back to it's feet, it's legs were solid red from the knees on down, and more red than the paint scheme of white, black, and red from knees to hips. The palms of the hands were also dyed a deep crimson from making what he had dubbed as peopleballs. It would take some serious cleaning when he got back, but blood didn't cut down on mechanical effectiveness in such comparatively small quantities.
"Aww, I think I broke them." Kira gestured at the ruined bunkers, formerly full of people, now no more than ravaged tombs. "Will the rest of you play with me instead? Oops, theres one more group!" Kira swept his hands down and came up with a group of twelve high school girls, it was too bad Kira thought, some of them were pretty cute. He trapped them between the Divinity's cupped hands and looked out at the dozens of incoming German mobile suits. "I've got hostages!" He called out as loud as his speakers could manage.
"How the fuck can we negotiate in good faith with you, after watching the atrocities you've committed?" A strained and tense voice answered from the closest mobile suit, the GINN-based model he'd plastered with a peopleball.
"Aww, come on, it wasn't that bad was it?" Kira mocked him. "I mean, I only just crumpled up little kids and girls and threw them at you, or rolled around and crushed them, or flung them up to fall to their deaths. It was funny, wasn't it? I certainly got a laugh out of it."
"You make me sick, you monster!" The German pilot retorted, drawing a sword and stepping forward.
"I suggest you stop, unless you want a second peopleball to the face." Kira cooed, slightly tightening the Divinity's hands, to a chorus of panicked screams from the girls in his grip. The enemy mobile suit froze in midstride.
"What do you want, you bastard?" The enemy pilot snarled.
"You're negotiating with me, that's good." Kira smiled. "Now, I might let some of these girls live, after having my way with them, that is."
"You're disgusting!" The enemy pilot roared, only for his mobile suit to fall onto its back as a pair of rail gun shells slammed into it, severing its left leg and right arm.
"You think you're so cool." The German pilot growled. His weapon systems were no longer responding and his machine quite literally only had one leg to stand on. The GINN-based mobile suit still had its flight capability but maneuverability and speed were going to be negligible, there would be no way for him to flee unaided, and since his own forces had either already flown away or were currently boarding ships that were about to leave, and on the other side of an entire Celestial Being defense line. He was out of luck when it came to backup. With a slight sigh, the German pilot caressed the self-detonation switch. If he was going to go, it wouldn't be alone. The self destruct sequence on the GINN-based mobile suit was easily enough to reduce everything within one mile to ashes in an instant. He kept his hand on the control, but didn't operate it just yet, he had a feeling that the pilot of the angelic machine would feel obliged to answer, then he'd have time to choose his moment.
"No! I'm the exact opposite of cool. I hate every last bit of this shit. War is not cool. Killing is not cool. Genocide is not cool. However, as much as I loathe this war and every reason it is being fought for, I loathe just standing by and watching it happen even more. I don't want to do the things I'm doing, but doing them is much more preferrable to me than just standing on the sidelines and letting ZAFT and the recently formed Earth Alliance completely annihilate each other! As a Citizen of the Earth, I cannot allow it! As an Ultimate Coordinator, I cannot allow it! As a human being, I cannot allow it!" Kira replied, his voice rising in volume as he struggled to control his rapidly rising anger, his temper and his passion to end war were both running near the boiling point right now.
"You make such pretty speeches. But in the end you're still going to be the one pulling that trigger." The German pilot replied with a smirk. "You say you don't want this war to continue. I say if that's really how you feel; why are you even interefering and prolonging it? This war would have been over hours ago if your ship and its mobile suits hadn't shot down the nukes."
"You expect to hurt me with your words?" Kira asked, his voice once more calm, not at all surprised by what his enemy had said. "People have been trying to twist my words, actions and reasons around to mean what they want them to mean for millenia, ever since I first got trapped in the cockpit of the Strike Gundam on Heliopolis. At first it was really bad at Artemis, but it has been prevalent throughout each and every conflict I've fought in, always there are those who call me traitor or coward or fool or puppet or even murderer. I've grown so used to defending my actions in the eyes of people who have no idea what sort of choices I've had to make that I've got most arguements memorized and instantly know how to counter them effectively. Personally, it upsets and bothers me greatly; the fact that I would grow so used to explaining why I acted, that I actually plan ahead to think of what I would say if I did act. It's so fucking stupid and pointless. Actions are the results of choices, and choices are the results of actions, it's a never ending cycle that no one can ever escape from. I'm acting now, to kill you, because of a choice Lacus and I and everyone we know and trust jointly made. You and those like you present a real and deadly threat to the safety and peace of the world. We may not have the right to judge your actions, in the legal sense, but this is the battlefield, not the courtroom and we have to live with the consequences of our choices."
"You have no right to judge anyone, you damn bastard!" The German pilot shrieked in outrage.
"I don't have to justify myself or my actions to anyone and certianly not to someone like you!" Kira snarled, as the Divinity Gundam's eyes flashed with an intense amethyst light. "Despite all that you and your nation have done to me, to my friends and family, and to innumerable other people during your life, including your own family; you still deserved more epitaphy than just a simple execution shot. You were once a human being, even if you don't remember, I know this to be true, you had a mother and father at one point, just like everyone else, but this is the end for you. To paraphrase something someone once said; may God have mercy on your soul, because I have none left to spare for you." With those words, he fired a full-burst from his weapons, vaporizing the group of machines that were standing in front of him.
"It's time to end this shit!" Kira roared as he stormed onto the Excalibur's bridge an hour later, causing everyone to turn and stare at him as his body once again began to glow with a blood red light, illimunating the entire bridge. "Take the Excalibur into a high stationary orbit and bring all weapons online!"
"Target planet; Earth, will be outside minimum safe firing distance for both the GENESIS and the World Devestator cannons in t-minus sixty seconds and counting." Andrew announced from his position at the weapons, his voice booming from the Excalibur's PA system. "Now commencing final readiness checks on all energy weapons, loading anti-ground missiles in all missile tubes, opening dorsal missile bays and ventral bomb bay, preparing to begin both passive and active communications and radar jamming procedures on all frequencies. No signs of hostile or friendly presences within the minimum predicted operational area. All power sources are online and operating within acceptible parameters. GN field and positron shields are online and stable. We are green for firing all weapons."
To an observer outisde the Excalibur, the massive ship suddenly lit up like a Christmas tree. One moment, the huge dagger-shaped ship was almost as dark as the blackness of space itself, but then it was suddenly glowing with a blood red light, even as the ventral bomb bay opened up, while the entire dorsal section of the vessel lit up with millions of pinpoints of bright green and blue-red light.
Much to Kira's annoyance, as the Excalibur's weapons finally reached full power, he was stopped from unleashing his wrath on the planet below by a communications line from the infirmary, which echoed throughout the bridge. "Commander Yamato, please report to the infirmary immediately!"
Kira stormed into the infirmary a few minutes later, not caring that his right hand had brushed against Lacus's left leg, the glancing touch causing her to entire body to shudder in pleasure.
"What is it?" Kira sighed, trying to contain the anger he was feeling, since he had just been denied his revenge on the planet below.
"We've come up with a temporary antidote for the conditions which your lovers are currently afflicted with, sir." The male doctor replied.
"Thank god!" Cagalli, Hope, Lacus, Murrue and Mayu choursed in unison.
"They don't need it." Kira replied. "Also, release them from their restraints."
"S-sir?" The doctor asked, clearly shocked.
"Did I stutter?" Kira growled.
"N-no sir." The doctor quickly replied, before walking over to the controls for the restraints and reluctantly releasing the five women.
An instant later, the infirmary was filled with a blindingly bright flash of light, and when the light faded, Kira found himself staring directly into a pair of eyes, one gold and the other purple, both of the eyes were glittering with a mix of rage and lust.
"Kira." Yumi hissed, her tone of voice making it completely clear that she was very pissed off. "You isolated the five of us here in the infirmary for six months, with no contact with the rest of the crew. While it is true that you visited us everyday, you wouldn't even touch us!"
"That's bec-" Kira began, only to be cut off as Yumi grabbed his right wrist, tightly squeezing it as she glared heatedly into his eyes.
"Give me my powers back." She snarled. "Give them all back to me, and do it now!"
"No." Kira replied, his response earning him an eye-watering smack across the face.
"Do I have to order you to return my powers?" Yumi growled, squeezing Kira's wrist even tighter.
"I said no." Kira repeated, only for Yumi to deliver a devestating kick to his groin, the blow sending him tumbling to the floor in pain.
"Do it." Yumi growled. "Or I'll keep kicking you in the groin until your dick and both of your balls have been pushed completely into your body!"
"O-okay, you win." Kira whimpered, causing Yumi to smile slightly as she hauled him back to his feet.
After taking a few seconds to compose himself, Kira returned all of Yumi's powers, and as soon as he did, his vision was filled with a blindingly bright light. When his vision cleared, Kira realized that Yumi had teleported them both into the Inner Sanctum.
"Computer." Kira quickly spoke. "Surround the Inner Sanctum with a level ten force field, no one gets in or out without my permission!"
"Force field established." The computer responded an instant later. "Inner Sanctum secure."