Celestial Being Chronicles - Chapter 131

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.

Kira Yamato and Hope Yamato responded instantly to the shaking that they knew were explosions. Looking at each other, they nodded.

"What was that?" Sai Argyle asked, nervous. "Were those explosions?" Not wanting to find out, the others began heading for the door, and the shelters beyond. Cagalli, Kira and Hope quickly followed them, heading out into the hallway. When Cagalli ran off, they both cursed silently.

Looking towards Sai, Kira yelled. "Hope and I will get her! You guys go ahead!" Ignoring their protests, the two Coordinators rushed down the hallway, each silently promising themselves they'd get a good explanation from the Princess of Orb.

A good minute later, they finally caught up to Cagalli, who was looking out over a large hanger. Down below, they saw three mobile suits, all in a nondescript gray color scheme.

"Damn it...the Earth Alliance's new mobile weapon...Father, you traitor!" She cried, slumping down. Kira and Hope exchanged looks, a mix of amused and stupefied expressions.

"Come on, Cagalli, let's get you to a shelter." Kira said, grabbing her hand and dragging her up. She snatched her hand away, looking angrily at Kira.

"What's your part in this? Did Father get you to help with this, Kira, Hope?" They both shook their heads, trying not to smile.

"We're here because we got into the Earth Alliance's files...and found this project." Hope began. "But, that's a story for another time!" Kira grabbed one hand while Hope gripped the other, both overpowering her and dragging her to the nearest shelter. Kira jabbed at the intercom, opening a channel to the occupants.

"Can you guys take my friend?" He yelled over the din, the chatter of rifles continuing.

"Sure, but that's all the room we have!" A man's voice replied, sounding tense.

"That'll be alright. I'll find another shelter." The two Coordinators then shoved Cagalli in the entrance, Hope waving idly as she raged in the elevator-like tube.

"Well, now that we've dealt with her, what'll we do about the Gundams?" Hope asked.

"Well, we could steal them...but what if we managed to get the crew to defect?" Kira grinned, sounding hopeful. Hope just stared. "What? I've looked over the crew manifest. If ZAFT managed to take out the higher officers, like we think they did, then the rest are just normal civilian workers. Most of the Alliance's command structure consists of the Nazis in Blue Cosmos affiliates over the more sensible people." Kira defended himself, against Hope's accusing stare. After a moment Hope relented.

"I suppose it could be possible...hey, isn't that Asuka?" The brown-haired woman pointed at the figure climbing the ladder of the mobile suit in the middle, one known as the GAT-X02E Berserker Gundam.

"I wouldn't be surprised if it was. You know her, always concerned about her projects..." Kira said, heading off towards the unit in the back. "You take the Strike, I'll get the Freedom."

"W-what?" Hope stuttered, staring after her lover.

"We both know how this shit will play out..." Kira finally muttered, before jumping over the railing.

Kira raced along the walkway, moving to a position directly over the GAT-X10A Freedom Gundam. 'Thank goodness for all those exercises.' He thought, moving swiftly in the lower gravity. Across from the Gundam's crotch, he saw two ZAFT Reds firing at the woman and man crouched on the mobile suit's torso and leg. One Red fell, at the same time as the man did. Kira saw both soldiers yell out at their comrades, although even his Coordinator hearing couldn't make out the words over the sound of mobile suits, machine guns and infantry assault rifles.

Running, he leaped over the railing, landing gracefully on the Gundam. The woman behind him fell back, startled as the ZAFT Red raised his rifle to fire. As Kira braced himself, the ZAFT Red looked over his weapon before throwing it aside, drawing a long combat knife instead.

Kira smirked slightly as he reached back for the pair of beam sabers he kept in his belt sheaths. As the ZAFT Red drew close, the visor angled so that the light no longer reflected off it, and he saw the soldiers's face. 'Athrun Zala?' In the helmet, Kira saw Athrun mouth his name, before a pair of bullets ricocheted off the Gundam's armor. Athrun threw up his arms, using his pack to jump backwards. Looking, Kira saw his old friend jump onto the forward-most Gundam, briefly glancing at Kira before entering the cockpit. Kira struggled a bit between desire and self-imposed duty, when the woman called out to him.

"Hey, you!" Turning, Kira looked up at the Alliance soldier, one whom he instantly recoginized as none other than Murrue Ramius. She seemed to be injured, holding her hand to her arm. He moved quickly over to her, mentally beating down his desire.

"Here, get in." Obeying, Kira hopped down into the cockpit after her, moving behind the pilot seat. His eyes moved quickly over the controls, memorizing every button, switch, the stick, the throttle, and the screens. He watched as Murrue grabbed the controls, moving them carefully, as though she held grenades in her hands without the pin, but with the arming lever intact. It was obvious that this was not his lover, or at the very least, it was obvious that his lover had not yet merged with this particular past-self. Either that, or she was simply acting to avoid drawing suspicion from those around her.

Outside, the remaining ZAFT soldiers watched as the 18-meter tall mobile suit stood, moving slowly and cautiously. The other one, in the middle had already chased after the one Athrun had taken, sprinting after it like a wolf on the hunt. The Freedom plodded out the hanger door, it's unskilled pilot handling it tenderly. Kira had to reign in his impatience, knowing that he could move the Freedom much faster than this.

They then saw the GAT-X02E Berserker Gundam facing off against a GINN, three GuAIZs and the GAT-X303 Aegis Gundam stolen by Athrun. As they watched, the Aegis fired its thrusters, moving towards the outer hull door. The GINN faced them, drawing a long blade. As the mobile suit charged, the Alliance officer drew the Freedom's arms above its head, crossing them as she pressed a large button. The Gundam flared into color, its gray tones replaced by white, black and gold. The blade clashed with the limbs, sparks flying as the GINN pilot tried to force the blade through them.

Apparently frustrated, the GINN moved back, and started in again with the sword, slicing at the torso. Murrue quickly responded by fired the head-mounted CIWS, but the rounds missed what, by all means, should have been an easy target, the bullets digging into the concrete. 'This Gundam's weapons haven't been calibrated yet?' Kira thought disappointedly. The next slice sent the Freedom tumbling back, crashing into a building. As he recovered from the impact, Kira's eyes fell on one of the secondary monitors. It showed Sai, Tolle, Miriallia and Kuzzey running, Tolle pulling Miriallia behind him. Murrue moved the Freedom back up, facing the GINN, which was preparing to stab the Gundam. Murrue moved the mobile suit back a step, far too close to the teenagers for Kira's liking. His conscience, always the dominant part of him, had him gripping the throttle and firing the thrusters, charging the GINN. It fell back, and as its pilot attempted to rise, Kira pushed Murrue aside, seating himself in the chair. Pulling out the keyboard, he began typing in the changes he had long since been planning, restructuring the Operating System to his liking as the brown-haired woman looked over his shoulder.

"How the hell can you pilot this with this OS?" Kira muttered, his hands moving swiftly over the keyboards.

"Don't blame me...we weren't able to finish it..." Murrue trailed off, obviously astonished at the scene unfolding in the cockpit. As he looked over the Operation System, Kira saw more and more tell-tales, affirming his suspicions. 'This is definitely Hope's handiwork...Orb, or at least someone with a lot of power helped the Alliance with this...and they seem to have taken a lot of technology from Celestial Being' Once he finished, he reset the keyboard, taking hold of the main controls as the GINN righted itself. The ZAFT unit took a swipe at him, blade whistling towards the Freedom's head. Ducking, Kira moved the Gundam's hand down, and up, in a devestating uppercut that slammed the GINN to its full height. As its pilot shook off the shock, the mobile suit sheathed the sword, instead drawing its machine gun.

As the weapon fired, Kira effortlessly moved the Freedom to the side, before jumping it up with the thrusters and landing next to the GINN. Acting quickly, he drew two of the Freedom's four weapons, a beam pistol for the left hand and a beam saber in a reverse-grip in the right. He shot the GINN through its thigh with the pistol; blasting actuators into melted scrap, and sliced its head off with the glowing energy blade, the blade changine color from pink to white as it slashed through the enemy machine. Kira followed up by slicing the left arm off and shooting the right shoulder, effectively disabling most of the GINN's main weapons. Out of one monitor, Kira saw a green-suited figure jumping out from the GINN's back, and had an instant to figure out what would happen next. Moving the Freedom back, he shielded the torso with its arms, just in time for the GINN's battery to intentionally overload, initiating a self-destruct sequence that caused an explosion equivalent to a car bomb.

As the GINN began to explode, Kira utilized some of his more divine abilities, allowing the Freedom to lock onto the fleeing soldier, and with an electric crackle, the rail gun on the Freedom's left hip suddenly swung up and fired, the hyper-velocity shell vaporizing the cowardly ZAFT pilot. As the explosion faded, the Freedom turned to face the retreating Aegis and ignited its thrusters.

"Athrun Zala!" Kira roared, as the Freedom caught up with the Aegis less than half a second later, bodyslamming the red mobile suit into the colony wall. The amethyst-eyed man grinned madly, flexing his fingers before gripping the Freedom's controls tightly. Then, he started killing.

"You fucking cowards!" Kira snarled as the Freedom's right hand darted into an object attached to its left hip, a long gauntlet-like weapon with fingers tipped by two-meter long claws with beam-edges, although the gauntlet was perfectly capable of slicing through entire GINNs without the beam blades being active. The gauntlet detached, coming up and around as the Freedom moved for the Aegis Gundam. The red Gundam's eyes turned to regard the Freedom for an instant before the claws took its head. Kira chuckled as he kicked the Aegis in the chest, knocking the transformable mobile suit over. Turning slightly, he regarded the GINN on the left, which had raised its rifle at the Gundam. The beam claws flashed to life for a millionth of a second, slicing the weapon into five pieces before deactivating, and faster than anyone could blink, the solid blades scratched across the torso armor, leaving relatively shallow rents, but allowing Kira to see the terrified pilot. A fraction of a second later, the beam claws once more flashed to life as Kira severed the GINN's arms and legs, before then taking its head with a blast from the beam pistol. With the immediate threats dealt with, Kira turned to look at Murrue, who was staring at the main monitor in shock and disbelief.

"W-who are you?" Murrue asked after nearly ten seconds had passed.

Kira had to resist the urge to brutally disarm and disrobe Murrue. Sticking to the overall plan was not only objectively obvious, it was pretty much nesscary. Subjectively, however, Kira was finding it hard to not tackle her to the ground and impregenate her right there, in full view of everyone.

And it certainly didn't help that Hope was grinning at him from the cockpit of Strike, but then the situation got even more complicated.

"Hey! What are you doing with Kira!" The shout came from beyond the Freedom, and looking, Kira could see Tolle, Miriallia and Sai running around the shattered, melted wreckage of the GINNs, each looking rather indignant. Kira felt more than heard as Murrue shift her aim from his back to Tolle's head, and his muscles tensed automatically, readying him to spring back and break her arms. Instead, he forced himself to relax. A second later, he was gratified to hear the Alliance officer start talking instead of shooting. He'd read her right.

"These mobile suits are Earth Alliance property." She stated, somewhat nervously. 'Wrong, they belong to Celestial Being.' Kira silently thought. "Because you saw them, I cannot allow you to go freely until validated by an officer overseeing the project." In the corner of his eye, Kira could see Hope grinning slightly

"Excuse me." Kira began. "But could you tell us who the hell you are?" The brown-haired woman paused for a second before answering.

"Lieutenant Murrue Ramius, Earth Alliance, 8th Orbital Fleet." Kira relaxed upon discovering this. This beautiful woman was one of the sensible ones in the Alliance. Murrue stepped back to the Freedom's cockpit, looking around and checking something. "What did you do?"

"I wrote some code to allow for the gaps in the Operating System, and overwrote some of the lines controlling the electroactive polymers for better efficiency." Kira replied.

"I don't even recognize this! How did you do this?" Murrue went on, before stopping herself and just staring in astonishment. "Never mind. I can't pilot it like this, so I guess you'll have to."

'Score: Celestial Being 1, Earth Alliance 0.' Hope thought triumphantly. As Kira climbed into the cockpit, Hope heard a groan from inside the crimson Berserker Gundam, loud enough even for Ramius to hear it. 'Shit.' Turning, she saw Asuka descending from the cockpit on the zipline, fire in her eyes. Stopping for a second as he feet touched the ground, Asuka's expression shifted to a smirk that wouldn't have looked out of place on a lion on the savanna that had cornered a mouse. 'Fuck. She's got me and she knows it. Probably just relishing the irony.'

"Asuka? Are you okay?" The red-haired woman spared a glance towards Hope before replying.

"Yes, Lieutenant, I'm fine." Hope was practically sweating. If Asuka got her killed, Hope would wait in hell until the end of Asuka's natural lifespan, and pounce on the other woman when she arrived. The funny thing was, Asuka would probably laugh at that.

"I guess I should thank you. If you hadn't programmed the Berserker, we probably would have been killed." Hope continued staring, albeit for a different reason. Murrue turned to Hope, suspicious.

"You reprogrammed a Gundam, too?" The marigold-eyed woman asked in shock.

"The three of us attend the same class." Hope answered truthfully, jabbing a thumb over her shoulder at the Strike and Berserker Gundams. That didn't dispel the glare. Behind the Lieutenant, Asuka was motioning in Orb Sign Language, punctuating with unrelated insulting gestures every so often. Murrue threw up her arms in exasperation, a bemused, annoyed look on her face.

"Well, nothing to do about it. I guess you'll pilot the Strike then." There was a little mocking cheer in Hope's head as she bowed.

Kira gently eased the Freedom into a crouch, watching Murrue for signs that he was doing anything wrong. All he saw was her thumbs up as she ran into the pack transporter. Right now, Murrue was having him and Hope recharge their mobile suits, but where Hope had the Strike hooked up to a mobile chemical microreactor, Kira was equipping the Freedom. Apparently, each of the striker packs, which took their name from the fact that they had originally been meant exclusively for the GAT-X105 Strike Gundam, included an extra capacitor in its main unit, and the Juggernaut striker pack had the unique ability to equip a second striker pack, allowing the mobile suit to further enhance its firepower, melee combat abilities or manuverability. Within a minute, Kira watched the icons on the HUD overlay change from white to gunmetal gray, signaling the attachment of each piece of the Juggernaut Equipment Pack. Then, an alert sounded, and the inner portion of the hull door exploded inward. On an auxiliary screen, Kira saw the white and silver GuAIZ emerge from the dust and debris, its monoeye locking onto the Freedom. 'Rau Le Creuset!' Kira felt his heart rate jump, and adrenaline instantly flooded his system. Everyone knew the famous ZAFT ace, who fought in the lunar battle, destroying three Nelson-class battleships and their escorts in GINN! It was as perfect an opportunity as Kira could ask for. Murrue waved at him, signaling that the loading was complete.

The Freedom rose, the gunmetal-grey pack releasing the pair of long-barreled weapons at its sides into the Gundam's grip, activating the Gatling gun units mounted on the main unit, and initiating the flow of energy from the secondary capacitor. Kira briefly consulted the armaments screen, selecting the Gatling guns. He would have loved to see what effect the 350mm hyper-impulse beam cannon blasts had on a mobile suit, but in Heliopolis, the collateral damage could be catastrophic. The masive Gatling gun fired, the rounds, while relatively large, would just leave disfiguring scars on the inner hull of the colony if he missed. Kira took careful aim, and fired, the burst of 85mm projectiles going exactly where he wanted. Just to the side of the GuAIZ, coming close enough to look like a rookie miss, but far enough that it had little chance to hit the fast mobile suit. Continuing the barrage of just-missing bullets, Kira reached into his pocket, drawing out a radio earpiece. Pressing a pre-determined sequence of buttons on the earpiece, Kira spoke on the command frequency for Rau Le Creuset's team.

"This is Kira Yamato, pilot of the Freedom Gundam. Rau Le Creuset, can you hear me?" There was a brief pause, a burst of static, before the reply came through.

"This is Rau Le Creuset. What do you want?"

"I would like to request your assistance in an operation."

"Oh, this is rich. You, an Earth Alliance officer, want me to help you?"

"I am an officer of the Orb Intelligence Agency, investigating subversive elements within the higher echelons of the Orb government and military."

"And you would like me to aid in this investigation while you're shooting at me?"

"I do have to maintain my cover."

There was a momentary pause, but finally Rau answered. "Alright then, what do you want?"

"Quite simply, continue operating as if you were attempting to catch this mobile suit, and the experimental carrier."

"There's a carrier?"

"Yes." Kira answered, and at that very moment, an explosion sounded, a column of dust preceding the appearance of an enormous ship, more than a third of a mile long. It was shaped like a long, thin wedge, tapered towards the front, ending in what looked like an enormous gunbarrel. On the sides were wings shaped like elongated right triangles, and on the dorsal surface was a smaller wedge-like structure with a large blocky object on top of it. In the back, six enormous thrusters, shaped vaguely like pods, flared with blue light, pushing the ship forward. On the forward-most part of both the dorsal and ventral surfaces, there were a total of four rounded and tapered rectangular objects. All over the ship, small triangular sections showed the placement of CIWS turrets.

"What is that?" Rau whispered.

"That would be the Archangel, prototype flagship and mobile suit assault carrier." Kira explained. At that moment, an orange and white mobile armor appeared, coming through the hull door. "I'm about to fire one of my main weapons at you, please escape through the hole it makes in the hull. And move quickly, the nano-repair systems are designed to work fast." All he heard was a grunt from the other end of the line, as the GuAIZ maneuvered to avoid not only the intentionally missing Gatling gun rounds, but the CIWS guns from the Archangel, and the linear cannon shots from the Moebius Zero. Leveling the right-hand weapon, Kira took careful aim, feeding his targeting information to Rau Le Creuset's GuAIZ so that the ace would know how to dodge. The hyper impulse beam cannon fired. Rau Le Creuset elegantly danced around the stream of blue-hot plasma, which still blasted within centimeters of the GuAIZ's leg armor, impacting the hull. The high-density alloy resisted for an instant, causing the plasma to spread out, affecting more of the hull. The end result was a gaping hole just big enough for a mobile suit to fly through. Even as the GuAIZ moved towards the exit, a thick silver fluid was already leaking out, the nanomachines suspended in it working to seal the breach. The mobile suit just made it through, the plasma thrusters blasting some of the fluid into the colony as Rau Le Creuset made his escape.