There was no way that I alone was going get through the entirety of A Bao Qu a second time, this with fewer numbers. So going in after Amuro and Sayla was a no-go right off the bat. I could've gone back in the way I did the last time, but these two had gone into the area from a separate side entirely. I went in through S-Field, they went somewhere around E-Field or W-Field.

So returning to the White Base with Lila was the best option I had available to me. I just had to trust that Amuro and Sayla were good enough to get out of the situation themselves.

I managed to get through all the chaos of the battlefield with far less trouble than one would've expected. I guess our earlier rampages through them were enough to get the word to Zeon Forces not to mess with the White and Blue GM and whoever followed them.

Still, I kept my guard up. There was no telling when I would run into another Zeon Ace pilot, something A Bao Qu had in abundance right now. I'm sure if I went far enough I would run into Johnny Ridden battling the Full Armored Gundam. Not someone that I looked forward to getting into a scuffle with when I was escorting a damaged wingman.

In spite of the heavy losses to both sides here, the fighting hadn't calmed down here one lick. I suspected that the entire combat theater here was starting to compress and surround the Zeon Forces into this area. This would explain why they appeared to still be fighting with as much strength here as they had at the beginning of this operation.

Of course, the lack of trouble any of them was giving me didn't mean I let the Zeon Forces get too close to me. My Beam Rifle fired out whenever a group started to approach my flight vector, winging them or even blasting off their limbs. I had been aiming for cockpit kills, but their movements and distance meant that even aimed perfectly they would attempt to dodge out of the way.

Now, given the situation. Some would presume a few would still go on to attack me. But as straightforward as our flight path was, we were still heading through areas with a lot of heavy Federation support. Coming at us would've been suicide if they weren't backed equally by their own Forces. And we were moving through places too fast for them to turn around get those and then organize themselves for an attack.

So instead we moved through without incident toward the White Base. Overall the trip was far shorter than before, as the White Base had moved closer to A Bao Qu with the raging battle. It was still decently far from the center of the conflict, but it remained defended fiercely. If anything Admiral Wakkein's Magellan had come much closer to the action.

For too close given how the man ranked in command, but who was I to countermand an Admiral?

"White Base, I've received damage to her unit, too much to continue on fighting," Lila opened the broadcast with the ship before. "Returning for repairs."

They allowed this without much of any problem. But my ear was quickly buzzed with the voice of Bright singing in it.

"Where's Amuro and Sayla?"

I considered briefly just what I was about to say carefully.

"Well, there's a lot of bad news and some good news, so I am just going to fire it all off rapidly. Ensign Mass was shot down first, then captured by Zeon Forces on A Bao Qu, somehow managed to convince them to defect, and is now staging a coup. Meanwhile, I had met Ray. He was still battling that large Zeon Mobile Suit without its legs. We took over as he went for Mass. He is now inside A Bao Qu helping Sayla. Before I could go in and help them, Ensign Rira received heavy damage to her unit and we both wouldn't have made it inside in that state. I ordered our retreat back here."

I said this all to him in the same sort of rush one would hear from a sugar-infused child telling their parents about how they broke one of their vases. To Lieutenant's credit, he took all this without a lick of tension coming from his voice, even with the knowledge that Sayla was leading Coup against Gihren Zabi.:

"And their current position? How are they doing right now?"

I closed my eyes. Concentrating as hard as I could on the little connection we shared without trying to take their attention away from what they were doing. I didn't get anything but the sensation that they were both shooting at things. Not exactly helpful, but it wasn't bad either for someone without Newtype Assisting tech in their Mobile Suit.

"From what I could tell, the two are alive but fighting their way through the base. They seem to be confident in their chances at this play."

There was a little moment where I wasn't sure what he was about to say, but that passed very quickly as Bright seemed to receive orders from someone off far enough to barely hear over the comms. Probably General Revils.

"Very well, we're pushing forward with the battlegroup. We're taking A Bao Qu right now. Prepare yourself for the push through, do you need a resupply?"

I quickly checked over my ammunition counters. My rifle didn't really require a resupply and I'd barely used my Hyper Bazooka. So I decided not to as it would waste the time it took for the battle group to break through the Zeon Forces, as once we did it was more likely they'd all surrender after Gihren and Kycilla got killed or even retreated rather than dealing with the angry blonde Newtype coming their way.

Especially backed by a Coup led by Zeon's daughter herself.

"I don't need a resupply," I eventually responded. "Just a new shield should do it."

"Then get into formation with the Guncannons and CoreBooster," With that my direct line to Bright was cut off.

I didn't have any reason to ignore his commands, nor did I even feel the need to. So I lined up in formation with them. As this was the first time I ever done so with these pilots, I felt some unease about being accepted into the center of the formation. The Guncannons were lined up on either side of me, Kai on my left, Hayato on my right with the CoreBooster following on my rear.

A fresh shield floated on by soon enough as it was launched out by the White Base, I caught it easily enough. This thing alone made me feel much safer than anything else I carried.

A good shield is like a good wingman, probably will save your life at least once.

We weren't moving as fast as we could, as we were to follow ahead of the White Base. Taking out Mobile Suits that would attack it. But not only that but the White Base was slowed down by needing to stay in formation with the rest of our Battlegroup, we were soon even joined with GMs that were being launched fresh from their restock.

Well, I say joined but they were still primarily in formation around or a head of their own Vessels rather than congealed together into a deadly mess. Something more likely to get our ships gutted by enemy Mobile Suits.

The White Base's main Megaparticle Cannons leaped out past us, joined not a second afterward by the rest of the warships' main guns. The Rick Doms, Gelgoogs, and the few Zakus, danced around those beams with no trouble but the Zeon Vessels behind them were already trying to dodge the attacks from the Federation forces there already. This left them with very few options for getting out of the way of these blasts since they were in mid-motion.

Instead of trying to form a strong defensive wall against the Federation Forces, the Zeon ships moved back. Breaking out of formation and the ones further back even turning their preverbal tail and running off from their comrades.

I blasted forward, meeting a group of Rick Doms led by a single green Gelgoog. The Machine Gun fire from the Rick Doms was naked on my shield, while the beam fire from the Gelgoog I spun around before laying it out with a straight cockpit shot from my own rifle.

The Core Booster burst past me, accelerating towards a RickDom and blasting it apart with a single barrage of beams and machine gun fire. The Guncannons introduced their targets too to the pleasures of M-Particles as their rifles penetrated the remaining Rick Doms easily.

I quickly swapped my Rifle for the Bazooka on my back, once more tanking the shots from enemy machines. I fired against a Mussai that was widely firing its Mega Particle Cannons, with only two rounds I managed to disable the weapons before I did the silly thing of landing directly on the surface of the warship.

The lack of anti-Mobile Suit or even anti-Fighter weapons near the bridge came back to hurt the Mussai design. As I landed into it with my CIWs firing right into the bridge, that was till a duo of Gelgoogs attempted to shoot me down with their beam weapons. I was already moving by the time the beams left their rifles, causing them to cut through the Mussai instead. There was some sort of explosion but if that took out the entire ship I would be surprised.

I didn't get time to deal with those two as Kai came in with his Guncannon, taking out the first of the two with a duel blast of the 180mm cannons on his machine's shoulders. Hayato for some reason came in screaming at the top of his lungs as he unleashed every weapon he had at once into the side of the Mussai.
We moved on quickly after that, either taking out Zeon Mobile Suits or taking out ships together. Clearing the pathway towards A Bao Qu as best we could. We were on our fourth group of five Mobile Suits when we finally ran into some trouble. First, the M-Particle density increased dramatically.

Then a large Mega Particle Beam burst from the odd triangle wedge thing flying towards us, it was largely green but with sliver arms with large silver claws at each end. This was the MA-05 Bigro.

So we dodged the beam it attacked with but the Salamis not too far behind us wasn't so quick. It was caught by the Mega Particle Beam right in the center of its bow. The resulting explosion totaled the warship as if its armor was cardboard rather than metal.

My first response was to unleash a rocket from the Hyper Bazooka right into the face of the machine. But clearly, it was more maneuverable than I thought possible as it angled downward and the rocket whizzed over its head before exploding harmlessly.

Quickly I boosted out of the way of the counter strike as numerous missiles barely missed me. My wingman scattered much faster than I had, no doubt using knowledge from a previous run-in with one of those to know attacking direct like I had tried to was a tough go.

But I didn't let that stop me.

I accelerated as fast as my Custom GM could push without redlining it. There was little chance of me trying to hang back and wait for it to make an opening. The Mobile Armor was a ship killer, a looming threat to the course of this battle. I didn't recall seeing it at this battle during the series itself but it was possible with how big this operation was that it had been stuck at the other side of A Bao Qu than the White Base was supposed to be at.

But regardless, this unit wasn't as tough as the Big Zam had been. While containing deadly arms, a killer beam cannon, and missile tubes that annoy my shit. This Bigro lacked the sheer defensive power of the Big Zam's I-Field generator, so a few beams or rockets should be enough to take it out.

But I found myself struggling to keep up with the thing thanks to the number of missiles it kept launching at me. That and the beam cannon it kept firing did not help matters. Such fire power made having a shield a useless position to be in, but I might need one later. So I focused on dodging and blasting back with my Hyper Bazooka.

My rocket finally managed to wing the thing when it managed to intercept the missiles the Bigro was launching as soon as they came out of the tube. The resulting explosion caused far more fire, far more smoke than I could've ever expected it to have. Obscuring the Bigro from view.

"Stay on guard!" I roared over the open comm, hoping that the others could hear me even with the dense M-Particle interference the Bigro could cause. "It's-"

My New Type senses were all that caused me to dodge out of the way, but only just. The large spray area of the Bigro's Mega Particle Beam caused me to lose my left arm, and with the damn shield too.

But nothing else so I abandoned the Hyper Bazooka and forgot all about maintaining my machine's stamina. I redlined the thrusters, causing me to shift back further into my seat as I drew the Gyan Beam Saber and aimed directly at the Mega Particle Beam Cannon. Thankfully for me, the missile bays had been damaged by the earlier explosion, leaving them jammed and me free from their terror. So it attempted to move out of the way, but my unit had far greater acceleration.

Instead of stabbing it in myself, I threw the Gyan Beam saber right at it. As if it was a throwing dagger it and I, the Circus Performer, the thing hit Bullseye. Right in the Beam Cannon. I followed it up by grabbing at my Beam Rifle with my remaining arm and firing off into the eyes of the thing. The resulting explosion was as satisfying as it was beautiful.

To me anyway.

After that, I returned to my Wingmen from the White Base. They weren't long in voicing their opinions on what I'd just done:

"You're insane," Kai said, sorta half-giggling. "Amuro wouldn't have done something so risky so fast. But you, you seem to think certain death is a challenge here."

I didn't take that as a personal insult. I suppose that I'd developed a reckless abandon that took people off guard, which probably explained why I could take out a squad killer like a Bigro so quickly.

"Well, I didn't become a Mobile Suit pilot because I liked the health insurance."

"Oh, the adrenaline junkie pilot. That's good, after Sleggar I found myself missing loons that charged into battle."

"I was going to say it was to kill Zekes," I replied, trying to sound as light as possible. Making sure he knew it was a joke. "But yeah, let's go with the one that makes me sound less like a future serial killer."

Whatever he was about to say in reply to that was scuttled as we were once more in the middle of the action. This time a familiar voice decided to scream into my face.

"Once more, this time I shall deal with you. As I should've at Solomon."

I buckled the control sticks to the side, spinning toward Gato's Red Rick Dom whole at the same time dodging the rounds from his machine gun. I kept moving, never stopping for a moment, mostly side to side but during the moment he needed to reload the weapon I finally took my shot at him.

In a burst of three, I shot to the left of him first, then to the right, and finally directly at him as he preemptively dodged my intentionally off shots. But he fell right into the path of my final beam. It was just that Gato was a superb pilot that saved his life next, as he kept his upward momentum going but tilted his unit back so my attack harmlessly passed above him.

I continued to fire with my CIWs instead, so I could conserve some of the Beam Rifle's energy. More and more the two of us circled around closer and closer to each other while firing off bullets at each other.

On the open comms channel, Gato started talking once more.

"Your accomplishment in killing the Red Comet was unexpected," he said, starting what would no doubt be a rather long monologue. "I should've known. You might have shown ignorance the first time we fought. But there was the passion of a true soldier as well."

I wasn't sure how to take this eejit complimenting me like this. On one hand, it was a respectful exchange from one of Zeon's Aces in this war, a compliment to my person. From a soldier to a soldier across battlefields. There was something profound about showing your enemy respect. But on the other hand, Gato was wacky enough to join the Animaniacs. A compliment from him was like being told that I had good taste by Charles Manson.

I was conflicted on this element but I didn't let that distract me from blowing the man to bits. I fired off a few more beams as I kept closing the gap between us, but Gato appeared to have entered some sort of metaphorical eye of the storm. He waved and ducked, he thrust the Rick Dom backward and forwards.

"Rumors circulated since Char's death about you," Gato continued speaking as if I wasn't trying to end his life. "Char had been a Newtype, it wasn't well known but the screams of that little girl he had followed around him for the last days of his life were whispered that spread throughout the forces. Your power is much the same. But for the glory of the Zeon-"

I let him ramble, more out of how hot I'd been running my machine so far than out of respect for the man. The GM's temps were running very hot, and the responsiveness of the rear thrusters were getting a bit wonky on me too. The earlier warnings of Vanquishment's Hangar Chief whispered into my ear about the dangers of repeatedly redlining the GM.

When I attempted to burst forward to take him out, I found a very meek response from my suit. From a Biplane this sort of speed would be incredible. For a robot meant to dogfight in the depth of space, this was a bit dogshit.

My remaining shoulder's thruster was running fine, something that helped me shift out of his machine gun fire and even do some unique twirl maneuvering to escape some. But the inconsistent performance out of my back thrusters was such a pure disadvantage that I hadn't managed to catch Gato even three minutes into this fight between us.

I suppose that was the advantage Gato had over me here. Not only had I run my GM as hard as I could the moment I got it, ignoring the mechanic's warnings, but I'd also been damaged just moments earlier. He'd not only swapped machines but from what I can grasp from visual inspection the damn thing was some sort of Prototype, something that had never seen combat before. I wasn't even sure if it had been pushed to the limit in a test flight, or if it even had one.

Gato must have noticed this performance drop because he suddenly holstered his machine gun and drew out his Heat Rod.

Thankfully rather than blitz around my beams before cutting me in half with his Rod, I had a backup that came in handy right now. The Core Booster splattered out with its weapons causing the Rick Dom to burst upwards to escape. As he turned to fire on the Core Booster, I fired at him, but this time I wasn't alone in the action as the Guncannon followed my example with its own beam gun.

"Even together you are all too green for this!" Gato spoke, having kept his comms open for us all to hear. I found it odd that he would continue to do this, but perhaps this was some matter of pride. He needed us to hear him rant or how else would we know how great Zeon was.

His managed to evade both attacks before forcing Kai in the Guncannon to dodge with his own spray of gunfire. It was somewhat incredible to see the speed in which someone could rapidly swap from rifle to melee weapon from the outside, typically this was what I was doing several times in a fight. Most other pilots discarded their rifles when they swapped to their melee weapons.

Still, Gato was very calm despite his mad ravings about Zeon and a soldier's pride. This was not a helpful attitude for him to be in, at least not for me. Gato when calm is the man who succeeds in infiltrating a Federation base and walks off with a Gundam equipped with a Nuke. Gato when enraged is the man who commits suicide runs. The latter was the person I wanted to fight rather than the former.

It wasn't like he was without backup of his own though, as two Gelgoog's tried to take out the Guncannon and chase the Core Booster around respectively. But thankfully, I hit them both with my beam rifle, draining the last of its power but successfully hitting the cockpits of what were no doubt rookie Zeon pilots.

The Guncannon's shoulder cannons erupted out for blasts that just barely missed the Rick Dom.

"Federation ants, no matter the number, will never stand up against an Ace of Zeon!"

"I'm sure that's what Char thought before I killed him!"

I might have been out of a Beam Rifle, but that didn't mean much when I had two Beam Spray guns as a backup. I took one out and I rapid fired it as quickly as my machine could, catching him by surprise amid a reload of his machine gun. The Rick Dom's left shoulder barely got out of the way, the beams burning through the armor but the internals were intact as far as my eye could see.

Still Gato couldn't even afford to counter attack me as he continued to be boxed in by my wingmen. I let go of the breath I'd been holding in due to tension. It wasn't the smartest thing to do in such situations but it was an automatic response that I'd yet to kick. After that I opened the channel as I returned to the assault.

"Gato? This is disappointing. Even in a Mobile Suit as damaged as mine. You can't handle things." I claimed, drawing my beam saber. The action caused him to completely discard his machine gun and retrieve his heatrod from his suit's back. "Let's finish this mano-a-mano. Blade to Blade."

The audio comms were on a open channel, but I'd opened up a second private line between myself and Kai on top of that. I closed the open channel as fast as I could.

"I'm lying to him don't let him in on it," I told Kai, going so fast that I worried that the lad wouldn't be able to make out what I'd said. I switched back to the original channel just as Gato started talking.

"A final battle between me and you. You must think me the fool. Even if I trusted that none of your men would interfere during our duel. What makes me think that they'll let me go afterward? This is an open battlefield."

"Because I've said so," I replied with the confidence of a man that had done nothing but deliver over the past few days. Of course, I was lying but sounding confident when saying the dumbest things was a great skill of mine before I'd been popped into a mobile suit. My prior life's intellectual skills didn't just disappear when I was put into a new body. "It'll just be me and you."

"I accept," Gato replied.

His Rick Dom burst towards me, but neither of my wingmen attacked him as he approached. Lacking the full force of my thrusters, I merely waited for him, my beam saber held in a fencing position known as "On Guard". On a person this would involve placing the feet approximately 18″ apart and at right angles, the heels being in line. The leading foot is pointing towards the opponent, while the rear foot is turned at an angle of 90 degrees from it.

The trunk of the body is turned so that the chest is halfway towards the opponent, head erect. The sword arm is now raised until the hand is at a height level with the right breast, the arm half extended should find the elbow clear of the body, approx. the breadth of a hand from it and over the right thigh. The hand should be over and slightly outside the right knee with the fingers turned in half supination.

The left arm shall now be raised and brought to a position where the upper arm is level with the left shoulder. The whole arm will now form a graceful arc. The feet, body, and arms are now in this position the knees will be bent equally, allowing the body to be balanced on both legs.

Of course, missing one arm and trying this all out in a giant robot made the measurements a bit different. But the differences were little in the face of what was about to happen.

Gato's image as a legendary pilot was hurt when I didn't meet him blade to blade and instead dodged his epic charge. It hurt even more when I presided to throw my beam saber right into the back of his Rick Dom. Followed up by Kai unleashing not just beams from his own rifle but also the 180mm cannons on the shoulder of his Guncannon.

In an amber light, Gato exploded. Which caused a problem I hadn't expected. My throw had only worked so well because we were still right next to each other. If Gato hadn't attempted to stop his own momentum once passing me then the saber would've never caught up to him. This meant that the resulting explosion easily caught me up in it. And a Mobile Suit never exploded meekly.

Instinctively I placed my GM's arms in front of my suit's cockpit. Hopping that the extra material would shield me from the impact of metal debris. This was not as good as a shield, because from the warning alarms alone I knew that my suit was very close to being a floating casket rather than a war machine.

I'd lost from below the knee down on my left leg, the entire forearm of my remaining arm was gone. The camera in my head was gone and the area above my cockpit had a massive laceration along the width. Enough so that I was suddenly worried about the loss of air.

"Kai… I didn't give a signal."

"You never mentioned anything about a Signal."

Oh, he was lucky that he wasn't staying in the military after this.

Author's Note: Once again, I'm sorry for the wait between updates. But in my defence, I suffer from lack of energy and being overworked. I'd need a lot more money to give stories more attention, because it would require not working. So that's just the truth.

Now we go back to the discussion of fanart in the story. I've gotten a few dozen offers for cover artists and such to work on this story and I'm going to be super upfront again about this, some of these are scams. I know they are, the scammers know who they are, but I don't know who they are. And I'm short enough on money that I won't be commissioning anything or exchanging discord or emails with any of these accounts for the reason that they could be scamming me for details.

So know that I'm not ignoring everyone sending me pms out of spite or dislike, but out of genuine concern.