Celestial Being Chronicles - Chapter 66
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.
"You are not going!" Kira's voice, raised into an emphatic shout, momentarily brought all eyes in the Excalibur's hanger towards his location, moments before everyone whom was not immediately involved in the conversation, or an otherwise vital task, got the hell out of the hanger, not wanting to be around for the confrontation which they all saw brewing. "It is far too soon! You should be resting and recuperating!" The Excalibur was currently in its custom dock in Orb, but the ship and its crew was quickly preparing to move out.
"You can't tell me what I will or will not do! Fuck resting, fuck recuperating...this is the release that I need!" Cagalli retorted hotly, her voice equally loud, tapping her hand firmly on the Akatsuki's armored leg. "I'm not a little girl or a helpless child! I can handle myself just fine! I'm feeling great, really. Or I was until you started being a jackass!"
"You should be in bed! You were assaulted by enemy soldiers and tortured! That's not something people just shrug off! Not you! Not Athrun! Not even me!" Kira snapped back. "I admit, I probably should still be resting too, but plain facts are, I heal faster than you, and I didn't get injected with a concentrated dose of one of the most addictive drugs around! What if you suffer a depression attack in battle? You could die!"
"I could die whether or not I was in a Gundam, if I really do have one of these 'depression attacks' people keep on assuming I will have! Which is far from certain...no one knows for sure how this drug will affect me. Yes, it makes me cry a lot! Yes, I sometimes just want to curl up in a ball and lie there for the rest of eternity! But I know that's not me! I don't let those impulses control me! Frankly, I have more problems with depression because of what you people do 'in order to protect me' than I would if you just left me the fucking hell alone! Where the hell do you get off telling me what's a good idea and what isn't anyway?"
"You're not just putting your own life in danger, you're risking the rest of us as well! If you have a problem, we're going to have to save you!" Kira answered firmly.
"Oh, so I'm a burden now, am I? I see! Well thank you for that opinion, jerkoff! I'm sometimes pretty sure you're a burden too, but at least I don't act self-righteous about it! I...can...handle...myself! Why can't you understand that?" Cagalli snarled, her nose mere inches from his.
"Because you're my sister and the only blood family I have until the others decide to pop out a few children! I'm worried about you! Is that so hard to believe!" Kira yelled back. He forced himself to keep his hands at his sides, fists clenched, no matter how badly he wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake some sense into her. God, but she was so pig-headed sometimes!
"Your worry is stifling me! You're my only sibling too, you know...I'm just as worried about you, if not more so because you take risks that I would never try! I am going with you, and I am launching into battle. That is final! There is nothing you can say to me that will change my mind about that! If you can't stand that idea so much, you're welcome to stay behind, but the Excalibur flies under my discretion, not yours! Make up your mind quickly though, because we need to leave soon!" Cagalli's hands were likewise clenched into fists, and it was a real struggle for her to not reach out and beat some sense into him!
Kira had made it, unmolested and most probably unnoticed, from the Excalibur to the area he had selected for his first anti-war operation. It was not a particularly suspicious place, any more so than a half dozen locations he could have chosen around the world, and in truth, he'd more or less picked a name out of a hat. The Earth Alliance had built a large naval base on the Eastern shores of the island, part of a chain that extended outward from Orb and Carpentaria, and was steadily expanding inwards, towards several small communities of civilians who had retreated up into the mountains when they had noticed the first signs of military activity in the area. Sadly, that retreat didn't seem to be enough for the Earth Alliance commanders, as teams of Earth Alliance mobile suits and ground forces were now probing into the mountains in pursuit of the refugees, either looking for prisoners for intel purposes, or, much more often, just shooting up the wildlife for shits and giggles.
Just thinking about what had happened to his family, even in passing, caused grief and regret to well up anew, raw and blazing hot, constricting his throat closed as he let out a whining sob, something he never would have done were he not alone. Unfelt tears poured down his cheeks, the Divinity's reactors fluttering in sympathetic motion to his labored, ragged breaths as he sobbed, his grief building emotional pressure inside his mind faster than his body could release it. It was infinite, self-multiplying, this sadness, this outrage, this pulsating dark desire to scream at the world and hurt and kill things regardless of their guilt or innocence, to finally lash out once more at everything that had ever wronged him and those he cared about!
The Divinity's hands curled into fists as the beam claws flared to life and tore shallow, pitch black scars in the MCPS armor across its face and chest, without compromising the protection which the advanced armor offered, before the Divinity, and Kira, threw back their head and howled their torment across the airwaves, the incoherent, pained shout stirring up dust and startling animals into silence for dozens of miles in every direction, echoing through the mountain valleys like a deathly knell of a lost soul. Emotions temporarily exhausted by that scream, Kira and the Divinity staggered forward a step, sweat pouring off Kira's body, the Divinity's armored skin twitching in sympathetic movement as he panted for breath, tasting hot copper on his tongue from where he'd accidentally bitten the side of his cheek trying to hold the agony in. Blips of sound and color appeared on those sections of his mind hooked up to the Divinity's sensor systems, and Kira straightened up once more, icy resolute calmness pouring through him as the Earth Alliance troops began advancing into the valley.
First came a light screen of Armored Personnel Carriers acting as scouts, and then behind them came a large vanguard of M1 Abrams Main Battle Tanks and more Armored Personnel Carriers, followed by the main force of bulk infantry transports and heavy support vessels, including a pair of Petrie-class land battleships and a single Archangel-class battleship flying above. Alongside the Petrie-class ships, marched an even four squadrons of Earth Alliance troops, in GOUFs, ZAKUs, GINNs, Strike Daggers and Windams, all of which had either been stolen or reverse-engineered from Celestial Being's own mobile suits. Behind them were several convoys worth of supply carriers, most likely carting the base materials that would be used to rapidly construct a forward base deeper in the mountains. Leading the large procession of mobile suits was a single Gundam, and to Kira's horror, the machine appeared to be a red and black colored Exia Gundam. Kira suspected that the Exia Gundam was piloted by an Earth Alliance Commander who probably didn't command the entire force, but no doubt was the 'leader' nonetheless.
Kira let them advance a few hundred meters into the valley, until he was sure that there was no more than a token rearguard of tanks and mobile suits bringing up the rear, and then he stepped forward and dropped his Phase Cloak, standing in plain view of the oncoming armored column. The constrenation of the scout vehicles, and the disarray among the main van of mobile suits, brought a hard edged smile of bitter amusement to Kira's face, though they recovered quickly enough from their shock, no doubt emboldened by the fact that there was only one mobile suit. They advanced cautiously all the same, obviously remembering that most of Celestial Being's machines could remain invisible even to the most powerful of modern Earth Alliance sensors, expecting to be ambushed from either side while Kira distracted them.
Kira detached a few of his DRAGOON units, just enough to create a single light bending prism, and fired just one of his twin buster rifles, bending the bright yellow beam blast so that it cut a very visible line through the dirt and rock about halfway between him and the oncoming Earth Alliance forces, scorching the ground glassy and black wherever the beam touched. "This is Gundam Miester Kira Yamato, in the Divinity, addressing the Earth Alliance taskforce now advancing towards me." The amethyst-eyed man began, even as he holstered the twin buster rifle behind his back. "I have drawn my line in the dirt. Anyone who crosses that line, or who initiates hostile action will be destroyed. This is your only warning. If you would prefer to leave this place alive, you will dismount from your mobile suits and vehicles and return to your base in your armored personnel carriers. I will not allow you to wage war upon the helpless and the dispossesed." Kira announced firmly, deatching the rest of his DRAGOONs and putting them in a loose defensive orbit around himself, his hands relaxed at his sides, fingertips just barely brushing the grips of his beam rifles. He stood like that as he waited for a reply from the Earth Alliance, whose advance had now slowed to a crawl with uncertainty.
The mobile suits, led by the Exia, deployed to the front of the line, spreading out in a wide line with the Commander in their midst, and clanked to a halt just shy of the line Kira had emblazoned into the ground. Behind the hulking line of bipedal war machines, the armored vehicles ground into their own offensive formations, training their guns upon the stationary Gundam, although Kira did note, with a smirk, that nobody was yet painting him with any targeting sensors, obviously fearing, and rightly so, that he would intrepret it as a hostile action. Kira's communications lines crackled in his inner ear, as the Earth Alliance force replied to his announcement. "Say again? Who the hell do you think you are? You honestly think that we're just going to disarm and turn tail and flee?" A incredulous voice asked him. "I don't care who you are, you're..."
"I am Kira Jesus Yamato, and I've said what I have to say. The choice is yours now, you stupid fuck." Kira cut him off harshly, broadcasting to each and every one of the enemy machines individually. Just in case they thought he was bluffing, he sent a picture of his face as well, to quell any possible doubters. Kira wasn't sure whether he felt gratified when most of the Earth Alliance machines physically flinched or took a step back as the pilots came to grips with the reality of who they were facing. Even the commander seemed wrongfooted, well that he should be. How the hell were you supposed to react, when you found yourself caught between duty and a living legend? Kira waited patiently, his body tense and coiled for instant action, as he prayed for the Earth Alliance commander to make the right choice. Unfortunately for them, in the end, duty won out over common sense, and hurbris only reinforced the error.
"Kira Yamato, huh? Well, our base commander will be very happy with us if we came back with your head in a bag." The Exia raised one foot meaningfully, moving its arms across its body at the chest and waist, activating the beam shield projectors mounted into the tops of the forearms to cover the Exia's body from head to toe in bright pink energy. "Don't be afraid, men, its Kira Yamato, the man who does not kill! He may destroy your machine, but your life is in no dang..." The commander stepped arrogantly forward, his raised foot slamming down on Kira's side of the line in the dirt. Barely had the dust started to rise from that step when Kira drew his beam rifles and fired a single shot from his right hand weapon, vomiting forth a brilliant pinprick flare of oscillating red that trailed a halo of twisted air currents in its wake as it sped across the few hudnred meters seperating the Divinity and the Exia.
The crimson beam blast struck and passed through the Exia with a ripple of warped superdense plasma, the vacuum tunnel implosion that followed the speeding particles as they ripped the beam shields to shreds a millisecond before the particles themselves struck the Exia square in the middle of its torso, directly over the cockpit section, initiating a limited nuclear chain reaction that atomized the center section of the Exia in a brilliant flash of light, a cone of destructive energy extending out through the back of the Exia to melt the sensors and weapons off the Vindicator that had been standing behind his leader, slagging his frontal armor into a smoking black ruin as the GOUF slammed onto the ground on its back in surprise. The Exia's arms and head crashed to the ground in three seperate locations, while its lower limbs stood bisecting the line in the dirt, smoking rising thickly from the waistline, above which nothing remained of the Exia Gundam or its overconfident pilot. Silence and stillness descended upon the scene like a choking fog, as the echoes of the explosion rebounded from the mountain walls again and again.
An instant later, Kira suddenly detected dozens of target locks forming on the Divinity as the soldiers reacted to the unexpected death of their leader, caution thrown to the wind under the influence of anger and the desire for revenge. He wanted to be saddened by this outcome, but he found that only a welling of excitement existed inside him. He needed this release, this carthartic exercise of the grim anger that broiled inside him. He had given his warning, and it had been completely ignored. His fragile sense of mercy was swept aside by his disgust and fury. If they wanted a war, then he would give them one beyond all of their expectations.
Return fire snapped belatedly from the remaining mobile suits, and the armored vehicles behind them, the searing blasts of beam fire mixing with the contrails of missiles and the yellow-orange tracers of traditional cannon and linear weapon fire, all converging upon his still stationary position. Dodging the incoming fire would have been the simplest of matters, he could have moved the Divinity more than a mile away before the closest weapon even passed through his previous location, but he wasn't here to fight, he was here to destroy, to make a point, to wage a war beyond all wars. The DRAGOON units swarmed, beams splintering and refracting as they were bounced between the remote weapons, sometimes interdicting physical projectiles in the process, but always curving around and coming right back at those who had initially fired them. Meanwhile, Kira gestured with his left hand, having stowed that beam rifle in order to free up the Gravitic Manipulation Field Generator in the hand, which he used to grab hold of missiles and shells and hurl them straight back the way they had come.
The end result of the Earth Alliance forces opening fire was that not a single attack got within ten meters of the Divinity Gundam, and they inflicted tremendous collateral damage upon their own allies, as Kira picked off and returned over eighty percent of the incoming weapons fire and redirected it into the reeling Earth Alliance forces. Seconds later, in the short lull that followed as over half of the front line forces staggered backwards, damaged or destroyed, Kira expertly manuvered his DRAGOON units, creating a glowing beam shield and creating a prism in front of himself and cut loose with a full-burst from his weapons, refracting each of his beam blasts into twenty different multi-colored beams that interlocked in a wide, conelike pattern of crisscrossing light that filled the far end of the valley for several seconds, illuminating the entire valley brighter than the noonday sun for the duration, the light so bright it was painful to the unshielded eye. Numerous explosions blanketed the area for almost an entire minute afterward, as the Earth Alliance force all but dissolved, sliced into sparking and bleeding cubes by the gridwork of beam blasts, over twenty five hundred soldiers were erased from existence in less than two full seconds.
Eyes aglow with anger, Kira holstered his remaining beam rifle and stepped forward into the hell he had wrought, using both of the Divinity's GMFGs to grab and hurl hunks of burning wreckage into each other, or those precious few undamaged machines that remained, explosions of junked shrapnel scything down the shocked Earth Alliance soldiers that had stumbled from the ruins of their transport vehicles. Kira did not go out of his way to attack these helpless, stunned men and women, but neither did he detour to avoid them. Above all, war was an uncaring thing, it was the ultimate equalizer, as deadly to the rich as it was to the poor. They had chosen to make this place a battleground, they had tossed their own lives upon the altar of war, it was no longer his problem if they lived or died. He turned his attention away from the scrambling infantry who fled before him, to a damaged Strke Dagger that had escaped the worst of the onslaught, somehow only having lost its primary weapon arm to the coruscating beam blasts. In an instant, Kira had his Quantum Crystal anti-ship sword in his left hand and he hurled the crystalline blade at the limping mobile suit, which was trying to head back down the valley, the way it had come. The blade spun through the air, emitting rainbow radiance of its own as the beam-edged weapon cleaved through the very molecules of moisture in the sky, before embedding itself through the back of the Strike Dagger, impaling the pilot in her seat.
Kira gestured with his left hand, and the sword pulled itself out of the Strike Dagger's back and unerringly returned to his hand in time for him to sweep it down and bisect a line of crippled M1 Abrams tanks crawling around his feet, crackles of electrical sparks exploding from the hulls of the tanks as the anti-ship sword slashed through them. Kira put the Divinity's toe under the only surviving tank, even as it continued pelting him with fire, and flicked it into the air like a small ball, catching it with the Divinity's GFMG and then hurling it straight up, almost a mile into the air, before Earth's gravity overcame the influence of the momentum and hauled the machine back to the ground, to shatter like it was made of glass upon the rocky ground, the Divinity already having moved a hundred meters further down the valley by the time the tank hit the ground. Kira did make sure to see to it that there were some survivors, because he needed this first demonstration to reach the eyes and ears of the greater Earth Alliance, for the same reason he left one of the recon mobile suits operational deliberately, so that its battle camera would provide visual proof of Kira's new determination.
Three minutes after the Exia had called Kira's bluff, the Divinity stood alone in the valley, surrounded by guttering flames and smoking wreckage, watching the pitiful few survivors fleeing with all possible speed down the slopes of the valley below, in full and unadulterated retreat. The DRAGOON units slowly returned to their docking berths on the Divinity's wings, and Kira crossed the Divinity's arms imperiously across his chest, a stern and unforgiving god of war surveying the carnage he had wrought, and finding it good. A part of him wailed in aunguish over the devastation he'd caused, but that part of him was no more than a dim whisper, buried beneath the ocean of his grief. Gundam Miester Kira Yamato felt a grin tugging its way onto his face. First mission, successful. The first step to eradicating war forever.
'Forgive me for my actions, but I don't see any other way to go.' Kira telepathically spoke to his lovers. 'We've tried words too many times, this ordeal will only be completed if I put my sword where your thoughts are. I love you all and I will make them pay for everything they've done to us! They started this war, but by all my love for you, I WILL end it, forever. They've sown the seeds, and I am the result which they shall reap!'
After a few moments of silence, the Divinity ignited its thrusters, taking to the air, transforming into its flight mode and streaking towards the horizon.