Celestial Being Chronicles - Chapter 143
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.
Dozens of beam shots flashed by as Athrun Zala's ZGMF-X09A Justice Gundam, nestled within the menacing confines of its METEOR support system, roared towards Jachin Due. Atop the Justice's subflight lifter crouched Cagalli Yula Athha's MBF-02 Strike Rouge, and to Athrun's left was Kira Yamato's ZGMF-X10A Freedom Gundam, also protected in a METEOR.
Somewhere behind him, Athrun heard the duel between the LCAM-01XA Archangel and the LCAM-02XA Dominion suddenly draw to a close. A pair of Earth Alliance GAT-01 Strike Daggers charged towards the Archangel, but Mu La Fllaga's GAT-X105 Aile Strike Gundam took them both down with a single beam shot. The Dominion's three Gundams; the GAT-X131 Calamity, the GAT-X252 Forbidden and the GAT-X370 Raider, closed in, in defense of their mothership, but the Archangel's Lohengrin cannons fired and the positron blasts slammed into the Dominion's bridge. A moment later the ship exploded into a multi-armed fireball, ripping the ship's center apart and sending the engines and legs flying, and the Strike backed away as the Dominion's three now-orphaned mobile suits floated around the wreck, motionless.
There was no time to reflect, all that remained now to Athrun Zala was the fortress ahead, and the massive superweapon GENESIS that hung in space next to it. It had to be stopped, not just GENESIS, but this entire war, before anymore blood was needlessly shed. He had to break in on foot, find the main command center, find his father, and stop him and his weapon and his war before they all went completely out of control.
"Kira, are you alright?" Cagalli's voice crackled over the radio.
Kira was silent.
"Kira?" Athrun asked.
"Yes." Kira answered at last. Athrun gazed inquisitively at his friend. Something was wrong.
A pair of GINNs stormed towards them, and Athrun cut off his rumination to blast off their heads with his METEOR's beam cannons.
Kira had gone through some kind of hardship, but wasn't letting on what. Athrun cleared it from his mind and returned his focus to the fortress; soon it would all be over, and they could return to their peaceful lives. Kira would be okay. Cagalli would be okay. Lacus would be okay. It would all be okay, as long as he could get to that fortress and stop this insane war.
Suddenly, Kira's METEOR broke off and disappeared in another direction.
"Kira!" Cagalli shouted.
Athrun looked over at Kira in confusion. 'Where is he-?'
"Something's come up." He said shortly. "Look after Cagalli."
Athrun looked on ahead, and magnified the scene, to find Rau Le Creuset's ZGMF-X13A Providence Gundam, its DRAGOON units weaving a web of beam shots around the GAT-X103 Buster Gundam. There was the Dominion's escape ship not far away. Athrun momentarily thought of breaking off to help, but Kira was on his way there. He would deal with it.
"Alright then." He said quietly.
The METEOR-clad Justice Gundam roared on towards the fortress known as Jachin Due.
The beam shots slashed through the Buster Gundam's Phase Shift armor, and as the cockpit machinery threw sparks and warning lights flashed, Dearka Elthman cursed. The Providence's DRAGOON units darted around him, surrounding him in beam fire. In a series of hits, the Buster's left arm, head, and right leg were gone, and the Buster's power was almost fully depleted. He cursed and looked back up at the victorious Providence.
"Dearka!"
Dearka blinked and looked up, finding Yzak Jule's Duel Gundam Assault Shroud diving in to the rescue. Beam shots from the Providence forced it away; then a storm of missiles flashed around the hulking Providence, and Kira's Freedom Gundam dropped in with a slash from its METEOR beam saber. The Providence and its DRAGOON units moved off to engage the Freedom, and Yzak's Duel moved towards the ruined Buster.
"Dearka! Can you move?" Yzak exclaimed, as the Duel took hold of the Buster's remaining arm.
Dearka tried to move the Buster's controls, but nothing happened. "No, there was a power surge." He answered "The battery is fried."
"Shit." Yzak muttered. The Duel glanced around the battlefield. A Strike Dagger came shrieking in, firing its beam rifle, but Yzak protected the wounded Buster with the Duel's shield and fired back, taking down the attacker in two shots to the torso.
Dearka looked over at the Duel. Yzak was bound by ZAFT military law to capture him and return him to his ZAFT superiors, where he would surely face execution. He had deserted and fought against his own side and killed ZAFT soldiers. He knew he had done the right thing, but his ZAFT superiors would not see things his way. He closed his eyes, expecting the end.
"The legged ship." Yzak said unexpectedly. "I'll take you back there. Where is it?"
Dearka blinked in surprise. Archangel? Would Yzak take him there? But he would be punished too.
"Yzak, ZAFT will come after you too if you do that!" He yelled. "I'm going to go back to ZAFT in chains to die, I can accept that, now don't go down with me!"
"Not if there's anything I can do about it!" Yzak snapped back. "Now tell me where the goddamn legged ship is!"
"I'm serious, Yzak, you'll be indicted too!" Dearka exclaimed. "I did what I did, I don't regret it, now the end's here and I just have to face it! Stop trying to go down with me!"
"Like hell I will!" Yzak shouted. Dearka fell silent, blinking again. "You did what you did, I did what I did, there's nothing either of us can do about it now, but I'm sure as hell not going to leave you out here! Now for the last fucking time, tell me where the legged ship is!"
Dearka looked away. Yzak didn't care about the consequences; he never did. Dearka resignedly punched in the coordinates, and Yzak's Duel took off towards the Archangel.
"You again, eh?" Rau Le Creuset grolwed as the Providence Gundam's DRAGOON units flashed around the Freedom, showering it with beam fire. Kira tried to charge through the net, but a volley of shots blocked his path. He looked up and saw the Providence, and heard Rau's voice.
"You shouldn't even exist!" Rau snarled. Kira ignited one of the METEOR's beam sabers and took a swipe, but the Providence expertly dodged and dove in with its own saber to slash the METEOR's own saber in half. Kira abandoned the ruined weapon as it exploded and charged on with his remaining saber ignited. "If anyone discovered you, they'd want to be like your kind." Rau went on, as the Providence dodged again and surrounded the Freedom with beam shots.
The Providence's DRAGOON units flashed in, forcing Kira back, and the Providence itself sliced the second beam saber in half as well. Kira drew the Freedom's sabers and hurriedly deflected the Providence's shots, boxed in by the DRAGOON units.
"You're not a person! You're not even a Coordinator! You're just an experiment, a tool, a weapon!" Rau laughed as the Providence descended on the helpless Freedom.
The Freedom dodged as a beam shot slashed near its head. "I'm not just a weapon!" Kira exclaimed, firing back with the Freedom's cannons.
The Providence dove out of the way. "And who will understand that?" Rau laughed. The Providence's DRAGOON units darted around Kira again, as he backpedaled away from the Providence itself. "No one will understand!" he shouted. The DRAGOON units stormed in, Kira found his METEOR being blasted away from the Freedom, and the Providence itself raged in for the kill. "No matter who!"
The Providence came down with a beam saber slash, and Kira ejected the remaining parts of the METEOR before they exploded around him. He drew the Freedom's shield and beam rifle and went on the attack. Rau laughed as Kira charged.
"It's useless!" He cackled as the Freedom struggled to hit him and was surrounded in a web of beam fire. "You know you're fighting for the wrong thing!" Rau looked off to the side, as the DRAGOON units fenced Kira in. The Dominion's escape shuttle was there, and there she was, Fllay Allster, another piece to this puzzle. He flashed a grin towards the Freedom, feeling a twinge of pressure from his white-armored foe, Kira had detected Fllay's presence, although he would not yet know how or why…and if Rau had his way, he never would.
The Freedom slithered out of the net the DRAGOON units had woven and charged, and Rau deflected the Freedom's beam saber swing with the Providence's shield. The mobile suits parted again, and the Freedom dove through an opening in the DRAGOON volleys.
"You know as well as I do that if you go back you'll be just a weapon!" Rau cried.
"You don't understand thing!" Kira shouted, as the Freedom stormed forward with its saber. The mobile suits met again in a shower of sparks.
"Of course!" Rau cackled. "Humans can only understand what they've experienced!"
The Providence shoulder-rammed the Freedom and knocked it away, forcing it back on the defensive. Kira grunted in frustration, charging back into the Providence's face.
"'One day,." Rau laughed, as the beam sabers clashed again. "One day they'll understand!" He pushed the Freedom away and bombarded it with beam shots again. "That's what you said! Well they don't understand! And they never will!"
Kira grunted in pain as the Freedom rattled. "You're wrong!" He shouted.
"Am I?" Rau laughed again, as the DRAGOON units went on the attack again. "Eyes that see only blood, hearts that feel only hatred, hands that know only how to pull a trigger, and you say I'm wrong?" The Providence came down with a slash, and the Freedom repelled the saber stroke with its shield. With a pair of shells from the Freedom's rail guns, the two mobile suits separated again. Rau fired his beam rifle back at the Freedom, nearly clipping its left leg as the mobile suits clashed again in a beam saber lock. "Look at that thing, GENESIS! Does it look like something made by creatures that won't destroy themselves?"
"Actually, yes, it does look like something made by creatures that won't destroy themselves." A third voice, one which sounded like a more mature, older Kira Yamato, suddenly cut in over the communications line. Rau and Kira both blinked in surprise as the Providence's DRAGOON units suddenly went silent, their Phase Shift deactivating. "Now, dance!" The third voice laughed as the void around the Freedom and the Providence suddenly exploded with hundreds of beam blasts, some neon green, some blue-red, and others a brilliant white. Rau and Kira both began to wildly dodge the sudden hailstorm of energy beams.
"What's that?" Kira's younger-self asked aloud as the Freedom pointed towards a mobile suit bearing an appearance and color scheme similar to the Freedom. Unlike the Freedom, however, the new arrival possessed a pair of brightly glowing, pure white wings and shining amethyst eyes. Rau and Kira also noticed that the angelic machine was also very, very heavily armed, more so than even the Freedom and Providence combined. From what they could see, this mysterious, angel-winged mobile suit possessed what appeared to be a sniper rifle in its right hand, and a huge crystalline sword in its left hand, the machine's other weapons appeared to consist of a pair of rail guns on its hips, a pair of beam sabers stored just above the rail guns, a trio of beam cannons in its chest, a large aerodynamic shield on its left forearm which currently mounted a pair of massive rifles, there was also a smaller aerodynamic shield on its right forearm which appeared to possess a pair of CIWS guns, and finally, the machine's weapons were rounded out by a pair of CIWS guns in the chest and another a pair of CIWS guns in the head.
Suddenly, without any warning, nearly two dozen green energy beams lanced out from the blackness and slammed into the Providence Gundam's shield, and Rau grunted as the glowing hyphens flashed around him. Up ahead loomed a dozen ZGMF-1000/AAL Noctiluca ZAKU Warriors, all equipped so that they could operate in any enviorment, and with the other mobile suits engaged by other enemies, it would be up to him alone to defeat them.
At the Providence's side, the Freedom pulled back behind its shield. "Have fun." Kira's younger-self smirked, interrupted by a bazooka shell from one of the ZAKUs. "Genocidal maniac."
Rau looked up ahead, at the dozen ZAKUs, all armed to the teeth. "This isn't very fair."
The Freedom's eyes flashed with a golden light as it turned and sped away, leaving the Providence to fend off the strange mobile suits on its own; Rau jammed the controls to the left as one of the ZAKUs let loose a blazing shot from a heavy cannon. A second ZAKU rushed in close, diving under its comrades' fire, and then whirled towards the Providence with a beam axe ignited.
Instead of connecting, it met resistance as Rau activated the beam saber on the end of the Providence's shield. He batted away the ZAKU's axe and brought the beam rifle to bear, only for the other nine ZAKUs to focus their firepower on him, once again forcing him to take cover behind his shield.
Afterimages rippled across the blackness as the Eclipse Gundam charged towards its prey, anti-ship sword drawn. The formation of mobile suits broke their ranks, but a GINN was not so lucky as Shinn drove his sword through and slashed the mobile suit in half. Up above, a ZGMF-601R GuAIZ-R leveled off its rifle and rail guns, only for a volley of plasma blasts to come streaking out of the void and blow the mobile suit to pieces. A pair of AMF-101 DINNs, which like the Noctiluca ZAKU Warriors, had been modified for use in space, backed away from the group, missile launchers opening; the Eclipse darted forward and slashed them both half from the shoulder to the waist.
"These guys are nothing." Shinn growled, as the Eclipse turned towards its next target and the ZAFT mobile suits scrambled for cover. Up above him, an AMA-953 BABI, which like the DINNs and Noctiluca ZAKU Warriors, had also been modified for use in space, leveled off its guns, and was answered an instant later with a beam cannon barrage from the Twilight Gundam, which roared by overhead as the wounded mobile suit staggered back and exploded, and the remaining ZAFT mobile suits clawed for distance and threw up a wall of firepower.
Machine gun bullets pelted the Eclipse's Mirror Coated Phase Shift armor, and Shinn glanced up in time to see a single ZGMF-515 CGUE wheel around and unleash a storm of missiles on the Eclipse, even as, a ZGMF-600 GuAIZ rushed up from below, with its beam rifle ready.
The CGUE charged in, sword raised, only for the Eclipse to whip around and slam it hard in the torso with its knee. As the silver mobile suit reeled from the blow, Shinn slammed his left-hand palm cannon into its chest, fired a blast through the mobile suit's torso, and then flung it down towards the GuAIZ. The green mobile suit backed away behind its shield as the CGUE exploded, and Shinn seized his chance to fire a blast from the long-range beam cannon, the blast drilling straight through the GuAIZ's cockpit, and blowing the mobile suit apart.