After Colony: Revelation
Verse XIII
Wufei looked up and down the balcony for the woman in the steel colored dress, but he could not find her. He took a moment to lean over, just to see if she could have somehow managed to jump down to the ground below. It was simply too high though, and he did not think it would be the most likely route for someone who was on a mission.
That being said, he did happen to spy some movement in the distance. Out in the direction where the cars were parked, he could see some bodies weaving around the cars. It was too far and too dark to see who it could be, though he supposed it could've been some of the chauffeurs intermingling while they waited for their employers.
The party goers still on the balcony allowed him to pass through with ease, especially since any of them were curious as to why the music has stopped inside of the ballroom. He moved down the length of the stone walkway and found that on eht every far end, one of the doors was unlocked. The guest did not have free roam of the palace, and the door should have been secured.
"Hmm…" Wufei carefully pushed it open and slipped inside
It was very still in the far section of the Palace. Wufei did not see any sign that someone had gone down the hallway, but he was sure that someone had a reason for breaking open the door. He glided down the corridors silently, stopping near each door until he deemed they were empty.
After going down some fifty yards or so, he thought the heard whispering coming from one of the rooms. The door was shut, but against the silence of the rest of the wing, the hushed voice still caught his attention. It was a woman's voice.
Exhaling deeply, Wufei placed his hand on the carved handle and twisted, pushing the door open slowly. He had been expecting gun shots, or shouting at the very least, but there was nothing. Finally, when he risked a peek inside, his mouth tightened into a frown.
Duo was slumped forward in a white chair at the far side of the room. The shadow he cast on the pearly white marble floor looked severely distorted because of his awkward position.
Wufei glanced over the room to see if the woman was inside of it. As far as he could tell, she was not. One of the windows was open however, causing the long, sheer curtains to billow outwards, as was one of the side doors. It appeared he was in a music room, and since he had never been in it before, he did not know if that door led to a closet or a hallway.
Creeping forward, Wufei reached Duo and checked for a pulse. Though his eyes were open and he looked much like a corpse, he was alive and breathing steadily.
A shadowy silhouette appeared on the window sill, immediately firing a shot at Wufei. He had lurched backwards as soon as he sensed movement, and it was just enough to avoid the shot. The woman in the steel colored dress stood casually on the ledge, gun pointed and ready to let loose another round. She smiled at him.
"It was amusing, watching her try so hard to warn you," the woman said coolly, "but that's the problem with some of the Gen-Ones. Not all there in the head. I was so looking forward to meeting the infamous War and Plague. I was disappointed. Famine though, him I like. He at least put up a fight."
Bright lights shined in from behind and above her—lights that belonged to mobile suits.
"I will be rewarded for keeping him alive. We can still use him. I will also be rewarded for killing one of the annoying gundam pilots." The woman shot again and again at Wufei, but he continued jumping around, never giving her a chance to aim at him. The closest she got was putting a hole through one of his long, silk sleeves.
She hopped down from the ledge and started to walk forward, annoyed that she was not hitting the pilot.
As she started to back him into the wall, he was ready to start fighting back. Once she was closer to him, he would be within range to try to disarm her—assuming she didn't manage to shoot him first.
A shot fired from the open door on the other side of the room, hitting the woman in the head. She went down in an instant. There was just enough time for Zechs to appear, firearm in hand, before a loud explosion went off somewhere near their wing. "Wufei, are you injured?"
The pilot shook his head, "she was a poor shot; she did not hit me. Grab Maxwell, I believe there are mobile suits above us." He walked forward and checked for a pulse. The woman was dead. "CSO spy. I found another a little bit ago."
"Dumped in a closet?" Zechs asked as he hoisted the unconscious Duo onto his back.
"Yes, I left him there. He should have been out for a while." Wufei hurried to the open window and twisted around to look above the palace. There were a few dolls humming by, flooding the building with fluorescent lights. It looked as if there were flames coming from the side of the building, towards where all of the limos and luxury cars were parked.
"Rashid has him. We couldn't tell if he was an enemy or not, so he is tied up with the Maganac. We can question him later." Zechs went towards the door he had entered in, but had to brace himself against the door frame as another explosion went off shortly after. This one caused a shudder through the building. "Hurry to the hangar. We need to get to our suits. The others will surely be stuck trying to evacuate everyone. If at least we can get out there, we can hold off CSO."
Wufei stared at the body of the woman for a moment. He had a bad feeling in his gut while he looked at her. He could not put his finger on why he felt such a disturbance. He looked to Zechs and nodded.
000
"Please, just follow us in an orderly fashion," Quatre tried shouting over the frantic voices, to no avail. "Everyone will be able to reach safety. The smoother this runs, the faster we can proceed." The hallway to the emergency lift was packed with over one hundred party goers, and they were fighting to get to the elevator that would take them to the reinforced hangar below.
"I should wait for everyone else to go first," Relena stated as she helped count twenty people into the lift, Trowa and the unconscious Isabella counting for two of those twenty.
Quatre shook his head and jumped in front of the closing metal doors to block anyone fighting to get over to it. "Get on the next one. You can help get people loaded onto the emergency vehicles. Noin and Une can help get everything sorted here. Heero will down as soon as he can get over here to get to a gundam."
It was only a few moments after that they could hear Heero shouting from the other end of the mass of people. "Everybody move," he boomed, which was very uncharacteristic for the man. When people caught sight of his slightly mangled face, and his bloody tuxedo shirt, they cleared the way for him. He forced his way through.
"Why does he get to go next?!" A hysterical woman from somewhere in the middle cried out, causing a chorus of agreement.
"Someone has to get out there and fend off any mobile dolls, don't they?" He replied evenly, turning around and locking eyes with the girl. He was in no mood to fight with the entitled party guests. Her voice caught in her throat and she hiccupped, nodding. The crowd moved away from him, if ever so slightly.
It took about five minutes for the lift to descent and clear out before it was on its way back up. In that time, there was another blast that caused the building to shake. Suddenly, the crowd wasn't so eager to get onto the lift.
Relena was the first one to enter the industrial lift, just to show everyone that she did feel it was safe. The guests looked at one another briefly before once again trying to storm the elevator. Quatre counted in eighteen more people and then shut the doors behind him, his arms sprawled to keep people from trying to pull the doors back open.
"We will be fine," pilot 04 assured again, this time a little aggravation in his voice, "if everyone can get themselves organized, we will be on our way to safety."
Une and Noin managed to get up from and help Quatre form a barrier. With two more people there, the fighting died down just a bit. The five minute wait seemed to last forever before the next load of people could rush in and head back down.
000
"I am not familiar with this part of the palace," Wufei said as he turned the hallway with Zechs. He had stopped by the Sanc kingdom a few times with Sally and Noin during his run as a preventer, but he couldn't say he was too interested in exploring the white, Western architecture.
"We're going in the direction of the emergency lift. There are a few relatively unused back hallways that will get us over there without having to get back out to the balcony. I wouldn't want the dolls to target us because they see us running." Zechs stopped at a door and stepped aside, waiting for Wufei to open it. They could hear a group of voices on the other side of the closed off corridor.
The gundam pilot ran up and tried the door. "It's locked, I'll break it open," he said and stepped back. He raised his leg and kicked it. It did some damage, but not enough. As he prepared to try again, there was gunfire yet again.
Zechs was shot in the side, just barely missing Duo's thigh. Wufei whipped around as his friend cried and crumpled against the wall. The woman in the steely dress, bleeding heavily and standing awkwardly with wide eyes, stood to shoot at Wufei. Before he could react, a mass of red tackled her to the ground, grappling for the gun.
Edan and the CSO spy rolled around, trying to land blows while holding onto the gun. The gun went off again, using the last of its bullets, and then Edan released her. With one well placed, strong hit, the spy's wounded skull was crushed. There was a jolt through her body, but she was definitely dead.
Wufei looked at her cautiously, trying to judge if she was back to "herself." She blinked back in response. "Your arm," he said and leaned down to diagnose Zechs.
Edan raised a brow and looked at Wufei in confusion.
"Your arm," he repeated, nodding to her left side, "it's bleeding." She looked down and almost visibly jumped in surprise. She hadn't noticed that the stray bullet had clipped her arm. There was too much blood to tell just how deep it actually went.
The gundam pilot stood again and managed to kick the door in, shocking some of the party goers who were at the back of the line to the lift. They, at first, thought that Wufei and his group were CSO soldiers.
Taking Duo upon his own back, Wufei headed straight into the mass of people. "We have injured," he called out, making people clear their way. Edan was using her good arm to help Zechs move. He had one arm draped around her, and another squeezing his side tightly.
"Oh god, Zechs!" Noin cried out and fought forward to help Edan with his weight. She was careful around the wound, putting her hand on his to add pressure. "What happened?"
Zechs groaned and limped forward with the two women. "Shot. CSO spy. I thought I had already taken her out…"
"It's not like you to miss a target," Noin said seriously, earning her a disheartened laught.
"I didn't think I did…"
They managed to reach the elevator just as the doors were opening up once more form one of the trips. It was not empty when it opened, however. A few of the Maganac soldiers had ridded up, artillery in hand.
"What are you doing here?" Quatre asked in surprise, "are soldiers entering the building?" One of the red capped men nodded.
"Yes, Master Quatre, our security grid shows that there are surrounding the exits and sending teams inside. It appears that they are looking for something." The soldier exited the lift with his fellow Maganac and went as quickly as they could to the end of the long hallway. They were prepared to hold off any CSO insurgents that thought to attack the escaping governors.
Wufei, Noin, Zechs, Edan, and the body of Duo went into the industrial lift and Quatre rushed to count in another fifteen people. There was an eerie calm amongst the remaining sixty or seventy guests as they worked to get people loaded in. While it had not be designated, the gundam pilot noticed that many of the older men, and some of the women, had subtly moved to the back of the line.
They were preparing for the worst.
Quatre's jaw clenched as he shut the doors again and nodded to Wufei and Edan.
000
Once they were down below, Rashid rushed forward to scoop Duo away from the other pilot. "Yuy has already gone out, he's fending off the CSO dolls on his own. Barton is ready to take off now. We have to send out short interference waves so that the dolls don't sense the departure point. If they discover the entrance, there is no hope of escape."
Wufei nodded, "I understand. I will load up. Get medical attention for Edan and Zechs. They've both been shot."
With Duo off of his back, Wufei straightened up and took off running towards his Nataku. It did not take long before there was a Maganac soldier following after him, ready to drive the loading vehicle to the underground aqueduct entrance.
While the hangar was enough to fit nine gundams and a few dozen Maganac Taurus suits, maneuvering around was difficult. Each suit had to be carted to the front, since there was not enough space for them to move around on their own until more suits were cleared out.
The red capped soldier started up the vehicle while Wufei grabbed onto the wire to zip up to his cockpit.
"Brother!" Relena spied Noin and Edan helping to get Zechs onto a gurney. She wasted no time leaving behind the conversation she was having with Dorothy to run to his side. "Did you do this? Did you hurt him?" To Noin's surprise, the princess directed her anger at Edan.
The brunette looked at Relena in bewilderment and shook her head, pointing to her own arm.
"She's trying to say she defended us," Zechs said through gritted teeth, "a CSO spy snuck up on Chang and I while I was carrying Maxwell and shot at us. May have got another in if Edan hadn't got her first."
One of the medics ran up with a young woman from the party. "I spent time in Africa, working as a nurse," the woman said, "I was near the rebel camps during CSO's take over. I attended to many gunshot wounds—more than I care to count. I can help."
"Thank you," Noin replied, "get him loaded into one of the transport trucks and get set to start stitching him up." The medic and the newfound nurse nodded and took control of the gurney, rushing it to the closest empty truck.
Noin turned away to start for her Spartan, but Edan stood in her way.
"I don't… I don't know you want," the older woman said with a tired sigh and tried to move around. Edan continued to block her path, reaching out to push Noin. "I have to help them! They need back up!"
Edan nodded and then tapped her hand to herself. She tapped Noin and pointed to the truck with Zechs.
Noin looked back at the man, then at Edan. "But… you're injured too." Edan rolled her eyes, waving the other woman off. "You really are a gundam pilot… Okay, let me grab a bandage and at least tie you off. It might help stop the bleeding."
Soon after Zechs was loaded up, Trowa was lifting off to join the fight. The dolls were distracted by Wing Zero, but that didn't stop some of them from turning their attention to him as well. "Better me than the Palace," he muttered and immediately opened fire, attempting to push the dolls back. Two dolls burst into bits almost immediately opened fire, but some continued after him.
"We'll lure them North East, to keep the aqueduct exit clear," Heero said over the com line, "if they focus on us and on the palace itself, it should provide enough cover for the governors to escape. Swift Trillion has its cloaking up, so the dolls shouldn't have noticed it. Howard reports no problems on his end."
Trowa raised Heavyarm's right fist, bringing his blade down on the head of the doll. He pulled back and thrust forward, into the center. The enemy blew up moments later. "Good. Hopefully Quatre can join us after he gets everyone to the hangar. We're out Isabella for the time being, I haven't seen Zechs, Duo, or Wufei, and Noin and Une were helping inside, last time I checked. Edan disappeared, which does slightly worry me."
"We can't worry about her now," Heero replied. He was using his beam sword to cut through enemy after enemy. The dolls were, thankfully, targeting the gundams over the palace. That was likely because CSO soldiers were still inside.
As they continued battling, Wufei was able to take off from the underground hangar and join the fight. "There are still about fifty people left to move. There are Maganac inside, waiting to fend off CSO. Zechs has been shot. He's going through a make shift surgery as we speak." He cleared out so that the next suit could get into the air. The Sanc kingdom was not designed to hold troops or defend in battle. "Duo is unconscious, I don't know why or how."
His dragons shot out, fighting against two mobile dolls who turned their attention on him. It seemed that more dolls were coming from somewhere out on the ocean. Surely Howard had already detecting whatever warship CSO had been using to transport their weapons.
The next mobile suit to join the fight was Red Horse. She withdrew her two thermal weapons and planted herself near the palace. Her close range methods would be more helpful against the dolls that had already landed. It provided Trowa with the opportunity to make his way to the shore line and shoot down incoming dolls.
"You shouldn't be using your injured arm," Wufei said as he opened a com link with Red Horse, "you're only going to make the wound worse."
"If we all die, my injured arm won't matter," said a voice through his speaker. It sounded like a robotic Isabella. He hardly managed to hide his sudden confusion. "Isabella loaded a voice program while on Swift Trillion. Reading text in battle is counterproductive."
"When did she touch my Nataku…" Wufei jumped back as he was swarmed by enemies, and struggled to get his trident out. When he activated it, he furiously dove forward once more, slashing apart pieces of the dolls. "Well regardless, you know that CSO will come for you if we are defeated. They won't destroy years of their own work in one battle."
Edan's eyes narrowed and her jaw clenched—giving the other gundam pilot a look of almost certain anger. "I would sooner die than allow them to take me again."
The com link disconnected and she stood her ground, defending the Sanc kingdom with the weapon designed to lead CSO to victory.
As they fought on, there was a high pitched, rapid beeping throughout the rebel suits. They turned as they could to catch sight of whatever incoming target their systems had detected. There was metallic green and black suit leading the next wave of mobile dolls.
"It looks like CSO has finally decided to send Death to greet us," Heero said and jumped into the air. He would meet the powerful gundam before he had a chance to get too close to the kingdom.
000
Quatre rushed the second to last group into the lift. They had about fifteen people left, including himself and Lady Une. He slammed the door shut and sent the lift down. "Five more minutes," he breathed, trying to keep his cool, "just five more minutes."
Bullets were already flying, and one of the Maganac soldiers was down. Une was standing nearby, using a handgun to take down any soldiers who thought to try to come through the door that Wufei had broken open. It seemed that they would be overwhelmed when two of three red capped soldiers were on the ground.
Quatre turned to the nearest calm guest. "When the lift gets here, get everyone on, and just pull the gate down tightly. It will click into place. Press the yellow button on the panel to go down. Once you're down there, press the red button, and flip the red switch. It will keep the lift down below. Do not send it back up." He couldn't risk having any of the soldiers trying to get down to the hangar. If the group below knew what was best, they would blow the entire shaft, just in case.
He started to go down the hallway to grab one of the fallen soldier's high powered weapons, but two of the governors stopped him.
"You're too important to this cause," the older of the two gentlemen said. He was tall, balding, and wearing a dated military dress jacket. "You should go with the next lift. We can hold them off long enough."
Quatre looked at the two men with his big blue eyes, "but… you're governors! We need your support to join the nations again CSO!"
"And you will have it," the other man quickly replied, putting his hand on the blonde's shoulder, "we've already spoken with some of our closest allies. You will have our support. We're two, old soldiers who have been saved by the gundams in the past. It's our turn to save you." The governors looked at one another and nodded, immediately leaving Quatre before he could try to convince them to stay.
They picked up the machine guns dropped by the Maganacs and joining the last one as he fought off a team of CSO soldiers, fighting to get through the hallway. For men who had been retired for many a year, they seemed to get into place very naturally.
Lady Une pulled the wrecked doors closed and used her shawl to tie the handles shut. It wouldn't hold for long, but it was enough time for the elevator to start back up to the door. "We are leaving them?"
Quatre nodded and forced the gate open, practically throwing the remaining guests in as fast as he could. He and Lady Une were the last two to enter. Before he shut the gate, he pulled the tapestry used to cover the emergency lift, letting it conceal their exit completely.
Quatre shut the doors and pressed the button about four times. He knew it would not make the lift move any faster, but his rush of adrenaline made him do it anyhow. Down they went, through about three stories of dirt, stone, and concrete, before they entered the hangar, which was another few stories high. They could see people rushing around as they descended—the metal grid wall giving them a full view of the chaos.
The first thing that the gundam pilot noticed was that Wing Zero, Heavyarms, Altron, and Red Horse were not towering over the rest of the mobile suits. "Good," he muttered to himself, relieved that some of the suits had already managed to get out to the battlefield. He could hear a fight going on around them while he was loading guests, but he did not know who was doing the fighting, exactly.
Whenever they touched the bottom, Quatre was the first one to go running out, looking for Noin or Rashid. Dorothy, instead, was the one to run up to him.
"Winner!" She shouted as she jogged over to him, a feat in her high heels, "the first transport has already left to go to the Swift Trillion. Zechs is in one of the empty trucks, they're transporting him with Noin, Relena, Duo, Isabella, and a small crew working to remove the bullet fragments from his side."
Quatre nodded, brows furrowed as he thought through the plans. "How many transport trucks do we have available? Can we get White Horse and Deathscythe loaded, or will they get in the way of moving the guests to safety?"
"I have one transport working on loading Deathscythe now. If it manages to get to the gundam back to Swift Trillion and back in time, then we can try to get White Horse loaded. Another transport is set to start moving Tallgeese, but only after it returns from one governor run. We should have enough transports to get everyone over there, since the transports can carry about forty people."
"Right," Quatre winced, "of course. I forgot that Zechs obviously won't be able to pilot. I can't blame Noin for going with him, especially since…" He shook his head and sighed. "I will get loaded up."
As Quatre rushed around to make arrangements to have the lift sealed, the Maganac soldiers stationed themselves near the lift, carefully placing a timed explosive into the machine. Good, the pilot thought, they were planning on blowing it.
After starting the countdown, the soldiers sent the elevator back up towards the palace, moving their line back so that people would stay out of the blast range. The metal grates would protect them from most falling debris, but they did not want people close if they could avoid it.
It only took about forty give seconds for the rumbling to be heard, a sudden wave of dirt, concrete, and other rubble falling to fill the lower levels of the shaft. The soldiers would not get them through that route.
If all went well, the guests and unused gundams would be safely aboard the Swift Trillion within a half hour. The large ship would be able to launch into the sea, using its interception abilities to fake out any radars looking for them. When it was safe, the governors could rally together and make a public announcement condemning CSO for their attempted murder and their awful acts against human kind. It wasn't idea, but CSO's rash move to try to slaughter all of their opposition in one swoop was just the catalyst the rebel forces needed to gain the support of the world.
000
The green gundam called Pale Horse was eerily like Epyon. While Red Horse may have had a similar appearance, it was its brethren that held the whip and the beam sword. Pale Horse was seemingly designed for a little bit of everything—while he was not using them, Heero could tell that there were covers that would open if shots were to be fired. The gundam's electrified whip supplied him with mid-range coverage, and his beam saber with short.
Heero couldn't help but wonder why they had not yet encountered CSO's strongest weapon.
He fought to remove the whip coiled around his left arm. He struggled and struggled—his left arm rendered immobile while within the electric field. Wufei finally joined the battle, swinging his trident to scrape across the Pale Horse's back. It created a blemish on the green and black casing, but hardly more than that. It would take a few more well placed strikes to do any serious damage.
The distraction provided enough time for Wing Zero to twist itself out of the coil. Putting just a bit of distance between himself and his enemy, Heero tested out his mecha's arm. It was slow to respond, almost unusable in battle.
Pale Horse submitted a communication line for Wing Zero's approval, which Heero chose to accept. While Wufei would probably prefer a good battle with a strong enemy, Heero was willing to try a diplomatic approach with his opponent, if it meant saving Relena's kingdom.
"Heero Yuy," the pilot said with a smirk, as if he found he name funny, "so glad to finally meet you."
"You must be Vince deBordaris, I've heard a lot about you." Heero replied. He surveyed the other man—Vince was likely a few years older than himself, and he certainly did not look like a soldier. In fact, as far as he could tell, Edan was the only one of Dorian Adelphie's inner circle who was expected to be professional. The man before him had short, spiky black hair and a tight black tee shirt. He had tattoos up his arm, some of which were Japanese.
"None of it good?"
"None of it good," Heero confirmed.
Vince shrugged. To most, he would appear to have a severe lack of concern for his situation. However, Heero could tell that the other pilot was stiff and tense. He was waiting for something to happen. "Well, Isabella and I have never exactly been the best of friends. I'm not all that different from you."
Heero gave a small snort in response.
"You kill people, I kill people; you do whatever it takes to accomplish your mission, I can respect that. But you should know, you've really chosen the wrong side."
Wing Zero received another communication link, this time from Wufei. Heero temporarily muted Pale Horse's link, so that Vince would not hear their conversation. "What is it?"
"The CSO soldiers are leaving the palace, and in a hurry. Thought you should know," Wufei answered before closing out the line. He still had dolls to fight off, after all. Heero narrowed his eyes as he took a moment to observe his surroundings.
The soldiers were, indeed, fleeing the palace. Perhaps they had set explosives? The dolls seemed to be only attacking from certain sides of the gundams, forcing them to move towards one another. And of course, there was Pale Horse, hovering by idly, even though he should be attacking Heero.
They only had a few moments to react after Pale Horse shot off, straight into the air, and Isabella's robotic voice shouted "beam canon!" throughout their suits.
The powerful light filled the air, not only obliterating some of the CSO Dolls, wiping out almost an entire wing of the Sanc Academy—the wing the gundam pilots and their guests had slept in for the past few days. Edan's warning had been enough to save the suits as most of them took to the air.
It seemed that CSO was preparing to charge and unleash another beam of energy since the Dolls started to clear out of the immediate area. Only a few remained behind to continue to swarm the gundams.
"We won't all be able to fit on Swift Trillion, especially not with the extra guests and a transporter." Quatre took off into the air, trying to draw some of the dolls away from the mess on the ground. A few followed him, but of course his suit wasn't meant for areal combat, and he had to go back to ground along the shoreline anyhow.
"I will finish out the fight and take cover on one of the nearby islands," replied Red Horse, "anyone else who can get back to the ship should do so."
"Do not tell us what to do, woman," Wufei snapped and opted to follow Quatre's motions. He did not have to touch down again, however, since his trident and dragons were more fitted for air. "We have done far too much running lately, I refuse to leave this one as well!" As if to make his point, he dramatically lunged forward, his weapon's thermal tips going straight into the heart of a doll, causing it to explode.
Minutes passed, and the threat of another canon beam was looming heavy in the air. They were running out of precious time.
"Quatre, you should go back to the ship. You are going to have to get the remaining governors organized and ready for an official announcement to combat CSO's inevitable cover up. You can line up our retrieval as well" Trowa made a point to put some distance between himself and the others. If CSO was going to unleash another devastating blast, then they would have a harder time aiming if they were spread out.
Wing Zero was still one hundred feet or so above the ground, fending off Pale Horse as much as he could. Unfortunately, Heero had the distinct feeling that his enemy was just toying with him. "He's right, someone is going to have to line up our retrieval. If they use the beam canon again, leave immediately after. The residual particles should interfere with the doll's radar long enough to get to Swift Trillion. Howard likely already has the Empty Space triggered so you will be covered."
"But I can't just—"
"They've stopped sending reinforcements, as long as we can get Pale Horse to retreat, we will be fine," Trowa replied, "we have too much at stake to abandon our original plan."
With a sad frown planted to his face, the blonde pilot reluctantly nodded. "You're right. I will leave as soon as I have the cover."
They watched the movements of Pale Horse as much as they could, amidst their own battles. Even though Red Horse informed them that the recharge time had elapsed, their enemy showed no signs of an impending attack.
However, they certainly were not wrong. The beam canon hit again, this time aiming specifically for Red Horse. She seemed to anticipate the possibility of being the main target, and launched straight upwards the moment their sensors picked up on the powerful blast.
In a strange turn of events, Pale Horse fled the scene, despite the fact that he had been far out of range of the beam canon.
Sandrock stuck to the plan and headed straight for Swift Trillion, leaving just the four gundams and the scattered CSO dolls, whose numbers were almost halved in the last blast.
"Everyone, scatter," Heero ordered, "do not give them the change to regroup. If they send more dolls, all they will find is a partially demolished castle and their own soldiers." He wasted no time flying off towards the ocean, ready to choose his hiding spot for the time being.
Heavyarms followed next, moving in a similar direction as the other pilot before diverging. Altron and Red Horse were left with the dolls. "We should be going after him! He fled from us! That coward!" Wufei was about ready to follow after Pale Horse, but Edan blocked him.
"It is a trap, a chase is what he is hoping for—he wants you to go after him, so that I will follow," said Red Horse's voice. She spun around and used her one sword to slice through the head of a doll, shutting it down.
"I do not understand."
"I can explain, but we cannot stay here. I cannot stay here," Red Horse replied.
Wufei angrily shrugged, "fine then. You leave. I am not. I will go down fighting!"
Red Horse grabbed his trident in midair and pulled, causing the other pilot to reflexively pull back. It became an awkward game of tug-of-war. "You refused to let me stay at the CSO facility. I am refusing to let you stay here."
In an attempt to free himself from her grasp without losing his weapon, Wufei brought his arm other arm down on her suit. At least, he tried to, but she caught it in midair. He knew at that moment that he had made a mistake. They were evenly matched, they always were. They would be at a standstill all day.
Another doll zoomed down to attack Red Horse's back. Despite her sensors going off, Edan made no motion to defend herself. "You are so frustrating," Wufei spat and released his trident. He raised his free arm and unleashed one of his dual dragons, smashing the sensor unit before engulfing the doll's top half in flames. "You had better have a good reason for this…" With his concession, the two suits shot off, leaving the misguided dolls behind.
"We only have a few moments before the dolls radar systems reset," said Red Horse. She took down the last of the dolls in her immediate path before setting a specific course over the ocean, Wufei reluctantly following after her.
Despite his concession he continued muttered his displeasure of fleeing, speaking in his native tongue—something he had not done in some time.
"I can still hear you," said Red Horse, "do your comrades know you call them such names?"
With a scowl firmly planted, Wufei disconnected their communication line. He was too aggravated to be baited into her verbal trap. They flew for some minutes in silence, passing over numerous islands that were in close vicinity of the Sanc Kingdom. It seemed that the woman had some idea of where she was going, so he followed without question.
000
Author's Note: To those of you sticking with me, thank you! I don't think I've had beta's look at these chapters going forward. If they seem a bit choppy… I do apologize. But, I hope you enjoy! I really do enjoy feed back and I always consider it when I edit chapters so that I can continuously revise.
Most of the things keeping me busy have started to pass, so I hope to update a bit more frequently. (Though I am going Ghost Hunting at the Trans Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in two weeks, so I may be wrapped up reviewing evidence!)
Ever your servant,
A.F