Celestial Being Chronicles - Chapter 83
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.
After the three hour flight, the Divinity Gundam finally tranformed out of its mobile armor mode and back into its mobile suit mode, with the Strike Freedom Gundam quickly following suit. The two pilots instantly found themselves looking down at the biggest, ugliest, meanest looking scorpion which they had ever seen, but never had nightmares about.
"Holy shit." Murrue whispered from within the Strike Freedom's cockpit, her plans for revenge against Kira instantly forgetten as she stared at the abomination far below.
Fortunately it was also a dead thing, visible holes from various sized rounds and even a few beam blasts dotting its sandy brown carapace in tight groupings, showing where it had taken multiple weapons from multiple angles at close range before subsiding and being buried by drifting sand. The body was about as thick as a human torso, the legs each about the size of a human leg, and there were ten of those, each of the back six ending in a wickedly barbed point, while the front four were equipped with pincer claws, two that were truly huge and two that were smaller, but not by much. There was no neck to speak of, the head grew right out of the abdomen, graced with clusters of dull eyes beneath heavy brows of chitin, wicked looking mandibles placed to either side of jaws that were filled with actual teeth, fangs and multiple tongues that looked like they were made for sucking blood or other fluids. The tail was as thick as a human thigh before narrowing to a bulging stinger spike that was at least six inches long and serrated like a combat knife. All told the thing probably stood two and half to three feet tall when standing, and was about the size and weight of a cow. Its carapace was an exact match for the color of the sand around it, only the dark eyes stood out, and even those appeared to have semi-translucent eyelids that could cloak them as well.
"Jesus H. Christ, what the fucking hell is that thing?" Shinn stammered in a half strangled voice as he, along with everyone else present on the Excalibur's bridge, stared at the creature as its image was fed through the live video feed from the Divinity Gundam.
"It's a monster! I've never seen any thing so hideous in my entire life!" Lunamaria commented, turning away from the grotesque thing on the monitor with a shudder. "I guess we found out what happened to the missing ZAFT landing party though. They must have stopped for a rest or something, and this thing was waiting for them in the sand...dear god, those poor people probably never saw it coming."
"Kira, what are you doing?" Cagalli yelled, even as the Divinity Gundam carefully landed on the desert floor, the angelic machine kicking up a large cloud of sand as it gently set down. "There could be more of those things around!"
No sooner had those words left her mouth than the sand directly beneath the feet of the Divinity Gundam suddenly exploded upwards like a geyser. Kira blinked as four clawed limbs whipped out of the sand, wrapped themselves around the Divinity's limbs and closed with bone crushing force, one claw pinning the left arm in place, before the stinger tail of the emerging creature slammed into the Divinity's chest, only to be deflected by the machine's MCPS armor.
"Logging data in targeting databanks for future reference." Lexi's voice spoke, even as the angelic machine quickly broke free from the creature's grasp, unleashed all 36 of its DRAGOON units and once more took to the skies. "Attacking object, to be hereby designated as Lambda 1, is roughly 1500 pounds and three feet tall at the shoulders, while the stinger can probably be raised to a height of nearly 10 feet." She paused for a few seconds beforeadding. "These things are most likely from alternate realities which we haven't seen yet."
"Eat this!" Kira screamed, even as he opened fire with all of his DRAGOON units, but to his horror, the searing green energy blasts were either absorbed or deflected off the creature's thick exoskeleton. "I think that thing would be much more appropriately called a Deathstalker, given the fact that it hides in the sand like a lazy fucking coward until a meal comes along!" The amethyst-eyed man roared as his DRAGOON units fired a final, yet futile barrage of beam blasts, the glowing beams once again being absorbed or deflected by the scorpion's thick hide. Kira scowled as the large creature roared at him. "Fuck you too!" He screamed back, lifting the Divinity's right arm and raising the middle digit in a most conspicuous salute, even as the DRAGOON units once more docked on his machine's back. The Deathstalker roared again, aiming its stinger at the hovering Divinity Gundam. "If you really think that you can beat me, then bring it on!" Kira challenged, carefully landing the Divinity back on the desert floor.
As soon as the Divinity Gundam's feet had touched the sand, five more Deathstalkers erupted from below the swirling desert floor. With the disregard for life and limb that only those with insectile minds could possibly hope to comprehend, the six Deathstalkers charged towards the angelic machine fearlessly. Kira responded instantly, opening fire with all of his weapons and sending gouts of dark black-blue ichor gushing from the bodies of the Deathstalkers where rail guns shells and beam blasts managed to burst through their thick hides. Despite the obvious damage, the nervous systems of the Deathstalkers were essentially immune to sensations of pain, and even when whole limbs were blown off they still continued forward, confident in the primal knowledge that any wonds which did not kill them would be regenerated during the next time they molted and grew out of their shells. Quickly closing on the angel-winged machine, three of the Deathstalkers hawked and spat out basketball-sized globs of viscous saliva from their mouths, while the other three projected needle-like streams of poison from their engorged stingers. The potent cocktail of exotic toxins sprayed into the face of the Divinity Gundam, only to harmlessly spaltter away from the machine's armor. The acidic saliva was a different matter altogether, and it began to steam wherever it touched the Divinity's armor, the outer surface rapidly beginning to melt away under the hissing fluid.
Kira stopped, dropped and rolled furiously in the sand when he caught a chest full of toxic saliva. Fortunately the sand seemed to scrape the worst of it off his machine, although the armor screamed at him, warning of external damage. "You stupid douchebag!" He roared, as the stinger tail mounted on the Divinity Gundam's back suddenly flipped forward, the twin beam cannons framing the head of the machine and unleashing a pair of green energy bolts. Much to his annoyance, however, this pair of beam blasts was deflected as well. "Fine then, it's time to take this shit to the next level." The amethyst-eyed man sighed. "TRANS-AM!" Kira smirked as the six creatures began to carefully back away as the angelic machine suddenly lit up with a blood red light and a pair of bright pink energy wings erupted from its back.
"Kira, we have a slight problem." Murrue's voice spoke from the cockpit of the Strike Freedom Gundam as it hovered high above the fight. "A huge formation of German aircraft is coming towards us, and according to what Asuka has translated from the intercepted radio transmissions they are very pissed."
"Have Asuka tell the Germans to fuck off!" Kira grunted, taking a punishing hit from one of the huge claws before the Divinity's faceplate split and the machine bit down on the offending appendage. The angelic machine let out an unearthly scream as it ripped the claw from its socket and began to beat one of the other scorpions with the severed appendage for a full ten seconds, before finally driving the limb through its head. The amethyst-eyed man smirked as he brought his right hand to his left shoulder, freeing the beam boomerang from the storage rack, igniting the weapon and finally hurling it at the remaining scorpions. As the twirling beam blade spun towards the creatures, the beam saber in the Divinity's left wrist came to life with a flash, even as Kira brought his rail guns and plasma cannons to bear. Finally, Kira ejected the Divinity Gundam's left hand, the dicarded appendage exploding upon hitting the ground, and allowing a razor-sharp, three-bladed, beam-edged claw to slide out from within the machine's forearm. The amethyst-eyed man grinned ever so slightly as the three-bladed claw that now took the place of his machine's left hand began to rapidly spin.
Kira watched the brightly glowing violet seed, veined with gold, fall through the pitch black void in his mind, before striking an infinitely dense barrier and shattering with a blindingly bright flash of pure white light. Back in reality, Kira's eyes opened, once more shaded in a metallic color, though they were more gold than violet now, his pupils expanding until his corneas were nothing more than a thin rim of violet around the gold, like the glowing corona of a sun during a total eclipse.
"Murrue." Kira's voice suddenly spoke through the communcations line. "Return to the Excalibur."
"What?" The marigold-eyed woman replied, even as the Strike Freedom freed the twin beam rifles from its hips, combined the weapons and aimed the now combined beam rifles, which functioned as a an extremely effective sniper rifle when combined, at the cloud of approaching aircraft. "Well, fuck me." Murrue muttered as the information regarding the approaching aircraft quickly began to appear on her sub-screens. There were more than 1,000 aircraft approaching the Divinity and Strike Freedom Gundams, and the force was a mix of fighters and bombers from various periods of history, but all of them bore the German swastika on the wings and tailfins.
The German fighters consisted of Arado Ar E.561s, Arado Ar E.581.4s, Focke-Wulf Fw-190s, Focke-Wulf Ta-183 Huckebeins, Hienkel He-162 Volksjagers, Lockheed Martin F/A-22 Raptors, Lockheed Martin F-117 Nighthawks, Messerschmitt Bf-109s, Messerschmitt Me-163 Komets, Messerschmitt Me 262 Swallows and Northrop YF-23 Black Widows, while the bombers consisted of Arado Ar E.340s, Arado E.555s, Boeing B-52 Stratofortresses Convair B-58 Hustlers, Focke-Wulf Fw-200 Condors, Hienkel He-111 Zwillings, Horten Ho-229s, Horten Ho-18As, Horten Ho-18Bs, Junkers Ju-87 Stukas, Junkers Ju-88 Destroyers and Northrop B-2 Spirits.
"There's not really time for sex right now, Murrue." Kira smirked, even as the Divinity Gundam brought its left arm back, before then thrusting it forward. The rapidly spinning claw effortlessly drilling through the face of the Deathstalker directly in front of him, sending torrents of dark black-blue ichor gushing from the body of the now very dead scorpion, even as the claw slowly stopped spinning.
The three remaining Deathstalkers quickly began to burrow frantically into the sand, with hopes of escaping with their lives. But with the Wings of Light and Trans-Am both active, very few things could even have a hope of outrunning the Divinity Gundam, and that point was made very obvious as the three creatures found themselves careening through the sky two short seconds later. As the Divinity ignited its thrusters and rose to hover beside the Strike Freedom, the pilots of the approaching German aircraft found themselves staring at a trio of giant flying scorpions.
"What the fuck are those?" One of the Fw-190 pilots asked as he turned shaprly to the right, barely dodging the trio of bodies as they smashed through the huge formation, taking more than 200 aircraft with them, before they finally began to lose their momentum and plunged earthward once more.
"I'm not sure." One of the Stuka pilots replied, surprise obvious in his tone of voice, as the aircraft began to fall into formation again. "But they looked like giant scorpions."
"This is becoming insane." Kira sighed as he ejected the Divinity Gundam's right hand, which like the left hand had done only a few moments earlier, exploded upon hitting the ground, allowing a razor-sharp, three-bladed, beam-edged claw to slide out from within the angel-winged mobile suit's forearm. The amethyst-eyed man sighed as the three-bladed claws that now took the place of both of his machine's hands began to rapidly spin.
"Why don't we just stay out of the world's affairs for a century or two, Kira?" Murrue suggested, even as she effortlessly dodged multiple streams of cannon fire from a group of five Messerschmitt Me-163 Komets, before disabling each one of the small fighters with a well placed burst from the Strike Freedom's head-mounted machine guns. "No one seems to like us much now that the timelines have been fractured."
"Really?" Kira sarcastically asked as he transformed the Divinity into its mobile armor mode, the three-bladed claws that now took the place of the machine's hands whirling rapidly, giving the angelic machine the appearance of a delta-winged, twin propeller-driven aircraft. "I would have never guessed that everyone on Earth hates us now."
"What the hell are those things?" One of the Bf-109 pilots asked, only for his engine to be disabled a half second later by a burst of machine gun fire from the Strike Freedom Gundam.
"I guess a couple centuries of not having to fight wouldn't be a bad thing." Kira smiled, even as he opened fire with all 10 of his 76mm wing-mounted machine guns, sending a hail of projectiles and energy blasts screaming through the sky. "What's the current year?"
"Well, to be completely honest, I'm not too sure what the current year is, but the year we had originally returned to was 1947." Murrue replied, rolling through a hail of bullets as she was fired upon from multiple angles.
"Yeah, a century or two of rest from these continous battles may be a good idea." Kira finally said, even as he opened an open-channel, all-frequency communications line. "All Celestial Being forces are hereby ordered to cease all intervention activities and return to the Excalibur immediately." With that, the Divinity Gundam and the Strike Freedom Gundam took off, heading back towards their massive, dagger-shaped warship.