Celestial Being Chronicles - Chapter 137
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.
Author's note: A petawatt is equal to one quadrillion or 10,000,000,000,000,000 watts.
Her protector was a creature, one of vaguely reptilian origin, though sized to be almost as large as her Gundam, making it definitely the largest land bound critter she'd ever laid eyes on. Although actually it had seemed to come from the sky, despite a visible lack of wings. But it was definitely a lizard of some sort, though the large pointy horns on its head were unlike anything she'd ever seen on a lizard before. It wasn't until her Gundam's sensors registered the thermal signature of a large nuclear reactor and the magnetic resonance of armor grade structural metals within the reptilian's body that Cagalli realized she was't looking at an entirely natural creature, but some sort of cyborg. Cagalli was forced to assume it was in fact an ally. The fact that it had just saved her life from her own murderous brother was a significant factor in helping her accept this idea without too much trouble.
Kira seemed to be having a certain amount of trouble getting to his feet again after the surprise assault, which had left deep gouges in the MCPS armor along his back and shoulders, and seriously bent one of his wings, and even when he did succeed and managed to whirl on his attacker, he seemed rather confused by what he was suddenly facing. Though it might have been because he was actually seeing three or four overlapping images of creature, courtesy of the hit he had taken when his head slammed into one of the sub-screens.
Kira felt his nerve signals dragging like they were wearing lead weights as they passed through his body, his reactions slowed by a noticable fraction of a second as he squared off against the abomination in front of him. A gesture activated the Divinity's gravity manipulation system and recalled his accidentally thrown sword from where it was lodged in the ground to the hilt about half a block away, but even with a sword in one hand, and a combined beam rifle in the other, along with the twin buster rifle mounted on his physical shield, Kira felt a bit wary of this new foe. He decided to step back a bit and try probing its defenses from range. He was still more powerful at range than up close, if not nearly as adapatable. Still, he'd fought brilliantly without a DRAGOON system when he was in the Freedom, he didn't need the DRAGOONs any more than he needed crutches to walk with a lightly sprained ankle. They helped, but they weren't required. Kira shifted backwards about eight hundred meters and a block to the right, the movement causing sonic booms to ripple outward from the machine, blowing out what few windows remained in the surrounding buildings.
Almost at once his heightened senses screamed at him, but even forewarned, Kira barely had time to dodge forward as the reptilian creature appeared almost out of thin air right behind him, moving with such speed that Kira only caught a blur out of the corner of his vision even with his heightened senses. Spatters of sticky black nanomachines, which automatically repaired the Divinity Gundam when it took damage, dangled from his attacker's dextrous foreclaws as it stood studying him with its cold, flat golden stare as Kira once more faced off with it from just outside melee reach. Kira was really starting to miss his DRAGOON units now, having forgotten exactly how much he relied on being able to form a shield wherever and whenever he needed one, which now, thanks to Hope and Mayu, he couldn't do anymore. He had never seen such speed. The last time he'd fought anyone that was little more than just a blur to him had been Shinn in the original Destiny Gundam, and that had been millena ago! Kira fell backwards, reacting even without actually thinking about it, and that was all that saved him as the creature, which his computer finally identified as the CB-X01M Mudkip Gundam, pounced at him again, the claws on its front toes extended to kick through the Divinity's torso armor.
Primary attack missed, the four legged bio-machine lashed out with its tail as it passed over the angel-winged Gundam, deeply gashing the armor on its left arm and once more jarring loose the sword from that hand's grip. The angle wasn't quite right, but it squeezed off a streamer of acid from its tailsting as well, though it only melted concrete and earth instead of armor. Beginning to become frustrated at the elusive nature of the prey, even though it stood right there in front of it, Mudkip charged again as the prey quickly rolled to his feet, grabbed his dropped sword and slashed out with the recovered blade. Altering direction without changing momemtum, Mudkip dodged the strike and leapt upon the prey's back, bringing the surprised Gundam to the ground, unable to react in time to its speed. Rasing its head, Mudkip let out a victorious howl as the angelic Gundam flailed spastically, one of its arms bent at an extremely awkward angle beneath its body. She bent her head to chew through the spine of her prey, but was interrupted when the Divinity Gundam suddenly dissolved into a cloud of brightly glowing GN particles.
For his part, Kira was legitimately scared, because even with his predictive abilities and all his experience fighting super fast foes, he could still barely even keep up with his enemy's movements, and not even very well at that, given how close he'd just come to death. Even if he could feel the attacks coming, they simply came far too quickly for him to effectively react to. The difference between felt prediction and action were much less than a second. He was normally able to see farther ahead than just the next couple of seconds, but he was still so pissed off from what Hope and Mayu had done to him that he just couldn't focus, not even in the unfocused way that was conducive to utilizing some of his less divine abilities. Lack of thought was the ideal there, and he was anything but lacking thoughts at the moment, as all the pain and suffering he'd gone through in the aftermath of Lacus's possible death had been ripped back into the forefront of his mind by Mayu's little stunt at his expense. He needed time to get ahold of himself, but he couldn't get away from this thing! It was just faster than he was.
And then it was pouncing once again, and he was forewarned, but barely in time to interpose his sword between them, and even that was deflected with a casual twist of the monster's horned head, as its serrated jaws filled his field of view and its massive clawed toes raced for what would be his bowels if the Divinity were a living creature. But much as he hadn't foreseen the strange creature intervening on Cagalli's behalf, so too did he not see the intervention upon his behalf before it actually happened. And he wasn't sure whether that was because he just couldn't use his abilities properly at the moment, or because his mind just couldn't accept what happened as truly real...after all, just about the last person he would ever expect to intervene upon his behalf was Shinn, but that was indeed the case here, as the Eclipse Gundam seemingly materialized out of thin air at the Divinity's side with unreal speed and swatted the pouncing Mudkip Gundam away with a punishing backhand.
"You've left yourself open." Misato's voice suddenly said, as Kira and Shinn found themselves standing on the rails of the mass driver an instant later. A loud rumbling and thrumming of the track they were now standing on brought them back to the here and now, as some smartass in the Mass Driver's Command Center had apparently decided to try and get cute, by attempting to get rid of both the Divinity and the Eclipse in the same way that one would clean out a clogged hose; by ramming something heavy and stiff through it, or in this case, powering up the rail they were on and launching an empty shipping container at them at close to fifteen hundred miles per hour. Moving at such speeds, the still accelerating cargo container, which was normally used for shipping bulk goods up into near lunar orbit during peaceful times, crossed the distance between its loading bay and the Eclipse and Divinity in a matter of seconds. If it were to strike them, even the two Gundams would be splattered like bugs on a windshield.
This speeding cargo container the Orb forces thought to swat and mash him with, was actually just the tool of mass destruction that Kira had been wishing for. He raised both arms, locked his gravity manipulation system upon it at once, and stopped it dead in its tracks. A bullet or most other kinds of projectiles, which were propelled through a single application of explosive or heat type force, this meant that the object halted in midair, but for something like the cargo container, which wasn't so much shot as it was propelled by the power coursing through the rail beneath it, when it stopped, the ripple of power pushing it tried to surge and to force it forward, but to no avail. Unable to complete its circuit, the power pulse backed up like water behind a dam, more and more power piling in and trying to shift the load, and in a matter of milliseconds, the track section which the cargo container was stopped upon overloaded. Nearly two and a half petawatts of power erupted like a large nuclear bomb and flash melted the track into metallic vapor. That was one track they wouldn't be launching anything else on anytime soon.
"COULD SOMEONE KINDLY EXPLAIN TO ME WHAT THE HELL SORT OF CREATURES HAVE JUST BEEN ORBITALLY DROPPED INTO MY GODDAMN COUNTRY?" Cagalli shrieked across the communications channel that Lexi had created for her, connecting her with Fleet Admiral Joseph Icarus aboard the Incarnate, the Earth Alliance's flagship, which was even now assuming geostationary position above Orb's main island. The portly Fleet Admiral did his best not to appear flustered by Cagalli's words or her tone of voice, though it took several tries and a heavy swallow before he was able to articulate a coherent reply.
"They are the newest top secret weapon of the Alliance, uh, your Majesty. We call them Mudkip Gundams." Icarus began to explain.
"I don't care what you fucking call them! Who deployed them, why didn't I know about them until after they landed, and why the fucking hell can't I communicate with them? Give me some fucking answers you unbelievable asshole of a stooge!" Cagalli snapped back, as she observed the lizard-like Mudkip that had saved her from Kira's wrath only a few minutes before from what she hoped was a safe distance a half kilometer or so away. Given how fast the thing seemed capable of moving, she was beginning to think that maybe she ought to take a few more steps back. Like another kilometer or two. Because as far as she could tell, it had her brother, Kira Yamato, stumbling around all but hopelessly on the defensive! Just because every time he knocked it away, it was back in his face before he could even plant his feet properly.
She'd never seen this creature before, nor the other one she could ocasionally catch glimpses of at it rampaged through another section of what she still thought of as her capital city, where the fighting between the ZAFT invaders and the Orb defenders had become particularly fierce, the other one being some sort of six legged crocodile the size of a tuna trawler that breathed lightning. She honestly wasn't even going to try and classify that! And although they appeared to be on her side, as they were engaging the ZAFT forces with gusto, they were also completely wrecking her city in the process, as they seemed to have no grasp of the sheer scale of the collateral damage they were inflicting. Yes, the buildings could be rebuilt, and it wasn't like the city hadn't been all but leveled in the past, but what she couldn't possibly accept as friendly fire casualties were her own soldiers, whom were now caught between the new arrivals and the enemy, and being butchered regardless.
It was really starting to look like she didn't just have one maniacal killer freak on the loose, aka Kira Yamato, since he seemed to have once again gone insane, she now had three of them tearing up her city and the forces battling to defend or attack it, and she couldn't even communicate with them to try and point out that they were killing as many of Orb's own troops as they were the enemy, possibly more actually, since there were a lot more Orb troops in the battle zone than ZAFT troops. Even the international distress channel didn't seem to register on these new arrivals, these things, and so Cagalli had Lexi force her way through to the seniormost Alliance official she could find on short notice, so she could get some answers.
"They were developed and deployed on a need to know basis. You must not have been judged necessary to need to know, I'm very sorry. I wasn't made aware of them until just as they were being loaded into my drop pods aboard my ships!" Icarus retorted with shaky vehemence. This wasn't strictly true...he'd been kept peripherally in the loop on the Mudkip project after all, but having them deployed from his warships without reference to him still rankled enormously, enough to fuel a convincing tone of voice for Orb's fiery Queen. "I'm sure the President will inform you on the proper protocols for combats involving those machines soon. For now, I just recommend stepping back and letting them do what they were designed to do...destroying the enemy on their own terms."
"Like hell!" Cagalli spat back. "Maybe you weren't aware, way up there in orbit, Fleet Admiral, but these things are fucking running amuck down here and they're killing two and a half of our troops for every enemy they kill! And if you won't yank on their leash, I'll do it myself!"
"Only two for every one? That's not such a bad ratio, is it?" Icarus remarked dryly, though he realized it was a mistake even as he did so.
"These are my people that are dying to your rampaging creations and you're making jokes? You're lucky you are in orbit, Icarus, or I'd probably do something to you right now that would see me on death row! Get these shitty things under control right this fucking moment or I promise you, you won't like the results even if we end up winning! I don't have any more time to waste on your stupid ass right now! I have a country to defend!" Cagalli snarled and cut the communication line before she felt tempted to fly into orbit and do something violent against the Incarnate. Still fuming at Icarus's cavalier attitude towards the situation she and her people, and his people too for that matter, were facing at the hands, claws and teeth of these things, Cagalli searched for a way to productively channel her rage.
Her crosshairs suggestively flickered over the Divinity Gundam, where her estranged brother and lover was combating his reptilian adversary with obvious shock and bafflement, but even though he really had just tried to kill her not long before, Cagalli couldn't find it in her to try and return the favor.
Cagalli activated one of the Akatsuki's recently added ranged weapons, which were mounted in the somewhat bulbous yet still streamlined and rounded forearms of her Gundam, armored shutters sliding back as the mechanisms of her twin eruption cannons moved into firing position. Eruption cannon was a fancy name, but in reality they were nothing more than large hyper-impulse cannons, three 325mm hyper-impulse cannons per arm, mounted in a rotary fashion around a central power feed. Each hyper-impulse cannon, tuned to fire orange beams of coherent light nearly as thick as a well muscled human thigh, could be fired individually, in a slow gatling-type style that had two lenses cooling and recharging at all times while one was firing, allowing for a continous sweep of energy beam fire. However the weapons were most effective when fired in eruption mode, which spun all three barrels per arm at a rapid rate and then fired with all three beams per arm at the same time, while the barrels continued to rotate. This created a full meter-wide energy beam that actually twisted like a drill bit, applying a much increased degree of cutting action over a mere straight line beam, which was highly suited to piercing through defenses such as energy shields and heat resistant armor.
Firing in eruption mode required a brief spin up time and almost a three minute cooldown time between shots, but if she could but hit a target for even half a second with an eruption shot, it wouldn't matter how long she needed to recharge, that target would be down and done, for good. Even something like the Divinity. And if the Mudkip couldn't get out of the way in time, well, friendly fire went both ways, after all. Cagalli was prepared to sacrifice pretty much anything, and especially so a certain rampaging Alliance superweapon that had been kept a secret from her and her people. She lined up her shot, politely waited an extra half second for the Mudkip to get swatted away again, the creature almost seemed to be enjoying the rough and tumble battle more than anything else, and then opened fire with her left arm Eruptor. It was a perfect shot, Kira was distracted, half turned away and had always been slightly contemptuous of her anyway. It would be out of character for him to regard her as a threat, and plainly he hadn't, which meant he wasn't even paying attention to her.
It was a perfect shot, aimed right at the base of the Divinity's spine, with enough power behind it to cut even a Soveregin-class heavy cruiser in half like a stick of butter, but even as Cagalli was pulling her trigger, outside forces were conspiring to ruin her aim. Namely, the Eclipse Gundam that decloaked directly above her and tackled the Akatsuki, causing her shot to go very much awry, digging a deep molten trench through four city blocks, just nicking the Divinity's right leg, enough to vaporize the bottom half of the limb, before almost slicing the Mudkip in half from crotch to crown if the machine hadn't already been in the process of leaping to the side.
Half pinned beneath the Eclipse, Cagalli tried to kick her assailant free, but the pilot was having none of it and Cagalli gritted her teeth as she realized that, yet again, that she was a bit outclassed here. It wasn't like she'd ever had real delusions of being a Gundam Ace or anything, like her husband or her friends, but she liked to think she was pretty damned capable within her role and comfort zone. However, her comfort zone didn't extend to being pinned down, sat upon and threatened with a pair of quantum crystal anti-ship swords. Fortunately, Cagalli had another guardian angel watching out for her, and this time he wasn't a giant reptile, but rather the much more aesthetically and personally pleasing form of the Chimera, her lover's Gundam, which dived down from the heavens in its mobile armor form and alighted within arms reach of the two struggling mobile suits.
Shinn swiped at the newly arrived Gundam with one sword, even as he pinned down with his legs, the lambent gold machine that had tried to snipe Kira in the back while he was busy with that abomination was. The Chimera sidestepped his slash, and then turned on him with fury, hosing the Eclipse and the Akatsuki below him, down with a deluge of chaotic free plasma energy from the twin flamethrowers in its arms. Suddenly inundated in fire, temperature alarms screaming at him as the Eclipse's armor began to singe and smoke and smoulder, Shinn had little choice but to retreat from his position. Even so, he was going to at least take solace in the fact that the Akatsuki had gotten toasted too, but the shimmering gold Gundam sat up at once and seemed absolutely none the worse for the wear despite being bathed in flames.
"Thanks." Cagalli said simply, glad that her Akatsuki Gundam was still equipped with experimental MCPS armor, which meant that she could stand in her lover's fire for almost an hour straight before it really started to affect any of her internal systems.
Lacus studied the clash between the Divinity and the raptorian Mudkip Gundam for several seconds, even as she kept another eye on the singed Eclipse Gundam that had been trying to kill Cagalli. That wasn't something she was going to take lightly. Still, she could not help but blink in shock and drop her jaw a bit as she processed the battle between Kira and the stolen, and highly modified Celestial Being Gundam. "Is...is he having trouble with that thing?" Lacus stammered, not sure whether to be giddy or scared.
"Well, he's not roflstomping it, like he generally does to everyone and everything else, including us at times." Cagalli answered, borrowing a term from her son's internet gaming. It didn't make much sense to her; how anyone could possibly roll about on the floor laughing and still step on someone, but it seemed to be a fairly apt term for describing how Kira usually prevailed against normal people like herself and her friends. "I really can't tell who's actually winning, to be honest. I'm not sure who I want to win, actually, and that really bothers me...I mean, at least we know what Kira's ultimate goal is when waging war, at least we know what his goal is when he's sane; ever-lasting peace."
Their little discussion was interrupted by Shinn moving to engage them once more, but it was more of a half-hearted effort to keep them from trying to interfere in Kira's fight again than any real attempt to kill either of them.
"Die." Cagalli and Lacus scowled in perfect unison, even as the Akatsuki and Chimera both effortlessly dodged the Eclipse Gundam's charge, and before he could even blink, Shinn suddenly found himself caught between both the Akatsuki Gundam and the Chimera Gundam. Finally, with a flash that lit up like a million supernovas, and a deafening boom that actually caused the ears of the two women to ring, the Akatsuki and Chimera both fired a full-burst from all their weapons. The Eclipse Gundam was almost instantly vaporized as the overwhelming firepower of four twin buster rifle blasts, four plasma beams, four rail gun shells and nearly a dozen CIWS beam blasts impacted on its armor simultaniously.