Chapter 5
It happened right when he crossed through the gutted corpses of a small flottila's worth of bioships. He hadn't been the one to destroy them, that honor belonged to the batteries of the Super Galaxy Dai-Gurren Lagann, the world ship 's guns still bathing the entire star system in a seemingly never ending inferno. Every salvo fired killed hundreds of the smaller ships - though smaller here still referred to vessels that were multiple kilometers long - as well as dozens of the biggest ones, large ships that eclipsed Lordgenome's old mech when it came to scale.
It was three of these ships - or perhaps creatures? They seemed awfully alive in their behavior - he passed by when the ambush happened.
From the torn open guts of what was a beetle with a beak and a stream of tentacles behind it, burst out a beam of plasma, crashing into Gurren Lagann's side before he even had the time to react, throwing him to the side and causing alarms to blare all over his screens. Simon grunted, trying to right himself even as he checked for damage. The view of space he had turned fast, upsetting his sense of balance.
With a crank of its limbs the Gurren Lagann suddenly lurched, a second before the thrusters blazed with such power that he was sucked into his seat. Another grunt left his voice as he brought his gunman to a hard stop, afterburners firing out of the proud mech's feet, Simon's eyes narrowing as he beheld the three massive shapes rushing towards him.
"Viral!" He called out as he sent out a wave of spiral power, mending back together metal and steel alike. The aliens had gotten a fairly good hit in, a glob of super concentrated plasma the size of a house catching them right in the side, the core of the blast burning a multimeter diameter wide hole that cut multiple powerlines to the Gurren's left arm, though the gunman had already began to regenerate, courtesy of the power he was pumping into it, leaving the piloting largely to Viral.
Still he couldn't help but muster a smile when Viral ripped off the Gurren's glasses, flicking the weapon up. The scream of "GURREN BOOMERANG!" was over the top and unnecessary, but appreciated nonetheless. He would usually have joined in... if it wasn't for a rather troubling realization he made.
Spiral energy. The power of life, to create and power things with nothing but a will. What had allowed a young boy to face a tyrant who had ruled over all of humanity, who had piloted a gunman the size of a mountain range against them and win.
The power that allowed him to fuel a planet sized ship and engage its universe wide FTL drive.
It was slower to appear than usual. Way slower, like trying to swim through mud instead of water, at least in part. It was like... someone or something was actively pressing against his attempts to summon it, making it an incredibly more strenuous affair.
He snarled and flexed his arms, forcing a pulse of spiral energy out and against that weight, ignoring the pounding pain that began to form just behind his forehead, the stress only incentivizing him to invest more power... a gamble that was rewarded when just a couple moments later the weight against his spiral power crumbled. In an instant, the damage on the Gurren Lagann reverted fully, the scanners at least proving good enough to fully picture the three - now two - monsters that were about to reach them.
Viral had thrown the gurren boomerang half blind, but he had still hit square on target, a beetle-like creature with pincers on its face and roughly thrice their size getting sliced down its gut, spraying gore into space, forcing its comrades to veer away. They had dive bombed towards them with impressive speed, spitting plasma that had missed them purely on the basis of their erratic back and forth movement thanks to the Gurren's afterburners. Had being the key word... for some reason the two before him - less than a kilometer away according to the computer - had flopped over and were wriggling and squirming in space, like fish on land.
Hmm... could it be because he had interrupted whatever had been attempting to suppress Spiral Power?
With a grunt he slapped the hands of Gurren Lagann together, projecting hundreds of compressed drill lances from all over his gunman, watching how they slammed into the two creatures, turning them from agile monsters into hole studded hunks of meat that leaked gore into vacuum.
Still... he could already feel that that pressure returning to them, its force dramatically stronger than it was before. Did the others feel that too?
"Simon to the spiral warriors." Instantly half of the screens before him switched from showing space around him to his various comrades, both outside and within their respective gunmen.
Jorgun and Balinbow had landed on a large creature, digging in spikes so they had a brace for their big guns, firing blast after blast into the writhing behemoth. Kidd was speeding through a flock of smaller creatures, racing Iraak and blasting away as they left Sorthy behind with the small fry. Makken was in his own area, racing along with a sword to carve up mid-sized enemies. Even Gimmy and Darry were getting in on it, their Grapearls going back to back as they unloaded into a vast swarm of smaller creatures, keeping them from simply drowning their machines with their bodies.
Yoko in particular was going all out, unloading hundreds of missiles near point blank into a multi kilometer long worm who had attempted - and failed - to gulp down the Yoko W Tank, thousands of tiny stars blooming all over it's chitinous form in mere moments.
Despite the cheers on the comms they were barely managing to keep the horde at bay, without the big guns on the Super Galaxy Dai Gurren they would have been overwhelmed in short order.
For a moment, the face of an innocent beauty without a hint of malice in her expression, pure and untarnished by the world they lived in, flashed through his mind and he grit his teeth.
He understood her anger very, very well.
"S-s-simon! What wrong?" Balinbow stuttered over the line once their current foe was blasted apart. That done they leapt off the creature, spinning around to dive towards another giant elbow first, plunging into its flesh and tearing into its innards.
"Boss, what's da matter?"
"Yeah, Supreme Commander?" Darry joined in the question, the 14 year old girl laying suppressive fire on what looked like organic minds that her brother Gimmy was dodging.
"Do you all also have difficulties with your spiral power?" He had Gurren Lagann scan their surroundings, eyes narrowed.
Despite all the firepower the Super Galaxy Dai-Gurren laid on the enemy, there still were thousands of enemy ships. At this distance, they looked almost like a nebula, a cloud that spawned across a significant amount of the star system. One with admittedly fairly sizable holes in it but still.
"Lil bit."
"I am struggling a little."
"So its not just me, I didn't wanna say anything."
"Ya." "Ye."
"Mm."
"Alright. Then everyone pull back to the super galaxy Dai-Gurren!" To their credit, for all their usual rowdiness concerning discipline, the spiral warriors immediately relented, falling back and disengaging from their various fights with whatever had survived till then, any hostile pursuits rapidly being vaporized by the world ship refocusing its attention to cover their retreats.
"Chances you think it's coming from the big ship." Displeasure was obvious in Viral's voice. It usually was whenever they discussed spiral power, something that he as an infertile beastman could never wield.
"Probably. The big ones lead." It was almost a law of the universe, after all. Technically as the biggest spiral power user even he counted under it, but Simon didn't know how he felt about that particular fact... even after being Supreme Commander of Humanity for years now - excluding a short lived coup - but that was something that he had to think about after they had saved Nia.
The ship in question was difficult to properly scale. Truly immense numbers of ships were guarding it, not that physical matter could really provide a shield against the Super Galaxy Dai-Gurren's multidimensional guns. Even as he watched, he observed how a full hundred lasers from one of the world ship's batteries tore open a hundred black little holes, crossing into other dimensions and timelines only to enter this universe seconds before the enemy flagship and other core vessels, engulfing them all within explosions that that could, and would, have incinerated entire continents in their lonesome, obliterating more than one vessel... though the big ship was not amongst those…
Hitting the line as well as a smaller bug tried getting them from behind, Simon scoped out the surviving ship while Viral carved open the attacker. "Why is that thing still standing?"
"Sorry Simon, the sensors here say the shots destabilized before they hit. According to Ron they uh, lost coherency? Whatever, they spread out too much into open space." Dayakka groaned over the line.
Was it using that same effect that had been suppressing... or well attempting to suppress his spiral power?
"We could use one of our probability alteration missiles, sir! Rewrite causality that the chance of it defending is rendered 0% and the missile hitting 100%!" Cybella suggested.
"No... wait a moment." Unlike their other weapons, their stockpile of probability alteration missiles were limited and for all that this enemy was somewhat numerous, they weren't worth using these yet... not to mention- "I will take care of this myself. I'm interested in how they are affecting spiral power..."
When Nia had become an Anti-spiral - or had been possessed by it or whatever - she had ceaselessly mumbled something about spiral energy and how too much life was dangerous and a lot of jazz he didn't really get. Maybe... it would be prudent to investigate this new phenomenon.
"Uh... are you sure Supreme Commander sir?" Cybela's voice was almost timid. He had to hold back from rolling his eyes, he had already forgiven her for the coup... but they were still a bit jumpy. "The way to the enemy lead ship is barred by over five thousand enemy capital vessels, tens of thousands of smaller escort ships and what we suspect to be hundreds of millions of mines... Gurren Lagann is tough, but together with the spiral energy suppressing effect we can't assess..."
"What the Darling is saying, Simon dear, is that you'd have a better chance making fist fighting Lordgenome piloting Teppelin with nothing but your bare hands." Simon instinctively flinched upon hearing Leeron's flirty voice, the exact tone calling up the many times he had been hit on by the feminine man. Especially with his projection blowing him a kiss while plapping his lips together.
"So, you want me to turn back to the super galaxy Dai-Gurren?" That didn't sit right with him, at all. Kamina would've screamed about the unmanliness of the suggestion... but he knew well enough how things ended for his brother when he charged head first into an unwinnable fight.
He couldn't save Nia if he was dead.
"Not exactly, honey! See this ship here, back in Lordgenome's days when it was still called the Cathedral Terra-" Alright now Simon did roll his eyes. What a lame name, it didn't even have a single super in it! "It was the flagship of a coalition of spiral races from multiple galaxies against the Anti-Spiral. Cause that was before Lordgenome killed them all..."
For a moment his usual sweet voice turned venomous and Simon didn't need to have a recording from the insides of the bridge to know that Leeron was glaring at the former tyrant of Earth. Or well, his head they were using a computer.
"Anyway, during that time, it used to be both a battleship and world sized weapons forge. It can produce billions of gunmen and thousands of ships in a short timeframe. Ate whole planets for resources, which by the way would explain its moon form, and a whole bunch of ships are still in storage on it." There was a glint in Leeron's eyes that was visible even on his projection.
"I heard stories…" Viral mumbled as they weaved around more bugs that were closing in.
"What do you say, kiddo, wanna take one for a test stroll right into the center of the enemy fleet?"
"You know it." Simon gripped the controls, mustering a grin. Now this was more like it! He barely had to say the words before his sensors noted how one of the super galaxy Dai-Gurren's hundreds of hangar bays opened, a ship bursting out of it working on nothing but the command inflicted upon it by its creation.
The steel behemoth sped out from the Super Galaxy Dai-Gurren, the twin engined vessel prowled deceptively fast towards them, its vertical towers literally cutting through swathes of bugs along the way. Its engines glowed with light, bringing towards him in a tidy yet fast manner. And the arrays of turrets that blasted apart anything and everything that tried landing on it, its shields brushing off volleys of spikes, bursts of plasma, or even spitten acid, made sure it was going to be in one piece. Maybe not for long with this many enemies, but it didn't have far to go.
Even as raced towards him, moving at close to lightspeed in its acceleration, several dozen heavy laser and plasma cannons on it began to unleash broadsides, incinerating hundreds of the smaller alien ships - one might refer to them as fighters, perhaps, though they had more in common with their looks compared to various insects of his home, though massively upsized of course.
These "fighter-craft" had simply been beneath the Super Galaxy Dai-Gurren´s intention and as such had flown towards the world ship. Futily, of course, the vessels shields could withstand even the destructive force of entire planets launched at it at ftl speeds, something the bits of the enemy main fleet managed to experience as those that actually got close enough to fire at it saw their shots disperse on the barriers without as much as scratching it.
Shortly before being atomised themselves, that part went without saying.
His practice for this maneuver could be counted on one hand with most of his fingers free, but Simon had no trouble with phasing through ist shields, whipping the Gurren Lagann overhead so its legs plunged towards the hull, the limbs transforming into a drill in a flash of green light. The gunman jolted on impact, and whatever trouble with drawing upon his spiral power was weak enough to let him turn this behemoth into something more useful.
Legs sprouted from the underside, the thrusters grew arms in the blink of an eye that ended in bulky red fists. The conn tower cracked apart, a face forming on the armor that tilted from side to side as if he were cracking his neck. Rather than form feet the legs that shot out from the bottom, extending from a chunk of the armor that clanked down to form a waist, sprouted new thrusters around the calves, ending in large spikes that doubled as stabilizers.
Several kilometers tall overall, the Arc Gurren Lagann slammed a fist the size of a city block into a palm that was just as large, the backwash of energy scattering the ever present swarms. The silver and red giant roamed its visage over the vast battlefield, focusing on his target once more. It didn't look so big now.
As a warship, the Arc Gurren type ships easily had enough firepower to take on one of the larger bioships, - making it something of a nuisance that they didn't have even close to enough people to actually man the ships still present in the Super Galaxy Dai Gurren's shipyards - but fused with the Gurren Lagann, piloted by Simon? It was stronger by an order of magnitude, the blazing green shine of spiral energy running across the ship even through the dampening effect of the enemy.
But... there were thousands of ships in his way. Millions of mines. Plus whatever surprises the enemy still held... he half minded to ask for another couple more Arc Gurrens - they really needed a proper name for the ship type, so many different Gurrens flying around kind of diluted the awesomeness of the name - but... he could see a couple of the wrecks of ships from the other Alien race, the one that had requested their help.
Why they built their spaceships to look like battering rams, he didn't know, nor could he explain all the stuff like windows or display pieces decorating them. Maybe if they were intact he could better guess what they did, being smashed into bits, literally crawling with bugs with one being cracked apart by a bioship's tentacles, or turned into drifting debris, made that a little hard.
His Sensors didn't pick up on any lifesigns... but the ruined ships might still be useful in other ways.
"Say. Viral... do you think I could assimilate some of these ships?" He had already begun to move in their direction, his thrusters moving the 5 kilometer tall gunman with ease.
"No idea." His co-pilot, rival and friend commented. "Might have difficulty since if I remember correctly -" he pounded a fist against his control board a couple times "- this thing absorbs technology based on the same principles as it, right?" He yawned, leaning back and kicking his legs up, one eye wandering to observe various screens that monitored the biofleets. "Alien ships should not have any technological similarity to ours. But sure, go ahead and try. Worst thing that could happen is the thing exploding in your hands."
True. And if there was one thing the Arc-Gurren Lagann could take, it was explosions.
Reaching out, he grabbed the nearest non-bug - although, he guessed they could be bugs too? - alien ship. It had some fairly big holes in it, but it was overall still in one piece. All in, perhaps a third of the size of an Arc Gurren, if he had to eyeball it.
A single thought transformed the fingertips of the Arc-Gurren Lagann into drills that slammed into the ship's side, sending out a wave of spiral power to pull the vessel's material into his gunman's arms and body. He had brazed himself for an explosion or something of the like only for nothing to occur. Instead the ship - far slower than usual admittedly - was absorbed by the overall Arc-Gurren growing as well.
"Neat." It took longer than he'd have liked, assimilating the dozen or so - 4 of the large 1.6 - 2 kilometer sized ships and a whole bunch of vessels below 1 km - but the end result was impressive.
Protrusions that looked like statues dotted his forearms like hair, tough enough that a light brush of his free hand, now sporting double headed eagles on each knuckle, left them unaffected. On the undersides however there were new protrusions that weren't there a few minutes ago, they could fold out…
On his back and legs the thrusters were the same size, but he could tell the insides were much different. Just feathering the controls let loose a tremendous amount of power, far more than what this already impressive Ark Gunman could put out. It was faster than before by a huge margin, and with greater acceleration too.
And emblazoned on the torso, raised plates formed a double headed eagle on the chest face, resembling glasses like on the Gurren. But rather than being able to slide off, it was a slab of armor dozens of meters thick and heavily reinforced. He could just charge right through an opponent and they would be bashed aside. The gold did clash with the dark and silver steel of the hull, he admitted, but it did go well with the vibrant red of the hull, even with a little tower resembling a winged person on the top forehead.
He punched a couple times through space, testing his limbs. Fast and strong.
"Huh, these folk didn't have too bad firepower." Viral stated over him, something he had to agree with. While not even close to a vortex cannon or a giga drill break, the "lance batteries" his display had sounded nice.
Simon heard a pleased grunt from Viral, sounded like he liked this new toy. He grinned, because so did he.
Now suitably upgraded, the Arc Gurren Lagann shot towards the bioship, Simon created a new drill to bore through an escort that moved in the way, ripping through its guts in a spray of gore. There were still thousands more in the way, enough to make trouble when he got there.
Blasts tore through several of the bioships, peeling away its cover dozens at a time. As he closed in on another massive cruiser thing tried getting in the way, extending kilometer long tentacles to ensnare them, only to have twin lights race along its side, blowing off the limbs at the body. When they cleared that one a bug flew in the way, getting blasted apart without anything nearby to cause it.
There were more bioships, but they were too far away to keep Simon from aiming his drill at its body, spinning at max speed as he bored towards the monster. His screens were blotted out thanks to all the gore, a view that was a little nauseous if he were honest, and based on the growls from below Viral wasn't enthusiastic about it either.
Although part of it was due to the pressure on him rising again, much stronger this time. He grunted, mustering more spiral power to compensate for the loss.
When Simon moved, the entire enemy fleet reacted. Ignoring the positive deluge of inferno that set the very star system itself aflame, as the Super Galaxy Dai-Gurren as well as all of his comrades - having finished their retreat behind the protective umbrella of the world ship's mighty guns - even as it killed hundreds of them, they hurried and pushed forwards, hoping, perhaps desperate, the halt his advance before he ever reached the main force, pushing aside the half molten and blown up remnants of the ships that had been in the way of his vortex cannon.
The strike itself had successfully removed hundreds of thousands of the biological explosives, numerous enough to cloud space itself. All in all, nothing more than a tiny dent in the nebula´s worth of mines, it was still easy enough for him to advance through.
To reach the center of this strange spiral energy suppressing effect.
AN:
This story contained a fatal lack of Simon doing awesome shit.
Hope this is the start to rectifying that!