2011-06-01 - Neo Genesis Remix

EARLIER

In the pilot's lounge on the Vesalius, Jung Freud leans against a stack of ration crates and flicks a pen idly between her fingers. She regards the Man of Destiny who may or may not be picking his nose right now. "Okay, so... This is pretty informal, but as you're aware, Shinji's doing badly -- thank you for visiting him by the way -- and, uh, Dr. Aida was only familiar with maintanence."

An uncomfortable two second silence.

"The control system is partly psionic. That means it's going to harmonize with how you move, and attune to your way of thinking. You're going to get feedback from the neural linkage, through those head clips. It's kind of like a Gundam Fighter, but you don't have to dress up."

"The weapons aren't too weird, but remember, you don't have a Rocket Punch." Hopefully. "The big thing is the AT Field, and..." She taps the pen against her teeth for a moment. "Yeah... it's kind of like a globe except when it's a flat plane, except when it's something else. Don't worry about it too much. The main thing you're going to need to do is harmonize with the enemy's if they deploy Unit Two. I don't know just how it works but they say it's like when you try to sing along with someone, so... you'll figure it out."

A beat passes. "Oh, and the blood smell's normal, don't worry about that."

DEEP IN THE LIBRARY OF WHATEVER THAT CITY IN JAPAN ALL THE MAZINGER GUYS COME FROM, EARLIER THAT DAY, POSSIBLY YESTERDAY, AFTER LUNCH.

Boss, Nuke, and Mucha stand over a book.

"Boss, we shouldn't open it. We've never opened a book before, there is no reason to start now!"

"Yea, you know how books get nerds in trouble! We shouldn't do this!"

Boss boldly puts his hand over the book. "This book is important. We HAVE to open it. No matter what it will do to us. No matter what the consequences!"

Boss uncovers his hand from the book and reads the title, awe from his two mooks.

"Everybody poops."

Autonomous Peace-Keeping Forceship esalius Commodore J. Shardul, Commanding Officer EARLIER

"...."

Koji Kabuto is most definitely not picking his nose.

He is contending with a much worser habit.

He may or may not be doodling a pair of circles on a stick figure that may or may not have a passing semblance to Commander Freud. Still, he is paying attention. It's just that his eyes and his notebook might provide more than a passing betrayal to such an allegation.

"But.." he looks a touch confused. Dark brows knit together, "..they told me I had to wear a plugsuit. And some stupid head thing." A frustrated grunt barely under a whisper escapes his lips as he jots this down into his notebook, just underneath the crude caricature of what may or may not be Commander Freud's breasts. Shimata...

'But remember, you don't have a Rocket Punch.'

Koji Kabuto snaps his head up, his expressive eyes locked in wide-set disbelief. "Eh!? ..Who designs a robot without a Rocket Punch!?!"

And so, over 401 million space kilometers away in the Earth Sphere, an angry individual with more time on their hands than they knew what to do with, began to write a lengthy diatribe on why Rocket Punches were dumb and how they did not belong on a proper robot.

Later..

Koji Kabuto is settling into place, a properly-sanitized copy of Shinji Ikari's 01 Plugsuit adhering tightly to his youthful yet increasingly masculine build. "All computer systems nominal," he speaks into the opened channel. "Central nervous circuit is open."

> "Commencing delivery of Unit-01 Entry Plug.."

The sound of machinery is muffled within the lengthy confines of the cylindrical plug-device. Still, their effect is noticeable. Koji is jerked inside, hard, as a clamp clasps over his capsule. The injection is at least much more smoother -- he barely feels it, aside from a slight reverb that works its way right up against that layer of plug-suit clinging to his skin.

The internal light switches from red to a much more natural hue.

"Initiating linkage.." Koji murmurs as he presses a series of controls at his sides.

> "Flooding Entry Plug with LCL. Just remember to breathe, Ensign."

"El--.. see... el..?" Koji asks slowly, the term foreign to his tongue. Suddenly, vents slide open and a coppery fluid begins flooding into the plug's cylindrical confines. "H-hey.." the boy from Japan starts freaking. "There.. there's some kind of water... coming into -- HEY I'M GETTING FLOODED IN HERE.. S-SOMEONE.. DOCTOR AIDA.. THERE'S WATER AND.. AND IT SMELLS LIKE BLOOD HEY!! HEY!! HEY!!!"

> "/Breathe/, Ensign."

The LCL fills in fast. Before Koji knows it, it's already up to the apple hanging in his throat. His hands are thrashing inside the capsule, trying in vain to break the sealed door open. Bare fists beat against unyielding steel, but even that becomes slowed as his arms are enveloped in the fluid. Koji Kabuto does the only thing he knows how to do.

He curses the name of the person who got him into this mess.

"SHINJIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII, KISAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMAAAAAAAAAA--*glub*"

Oldsmobile-Zeon Newtype Research Facility Copernicus Base M-A-R-S- (Mars, bitches, yey-yeyyyyy!)

"Unit-01 in position," Koji Kabuto calls back to his squad-leader, Commander Freud. While his voice doesn't give it away, his fingers are trembling against the control-grips of the Entry Plug. If the LCL wasn't what freaked him out, the sudden orbital drop did.

The lithe, violet frame of Evangelion Unit-01 in its slightly bulky F-Type armor crouches amid a chunk of Martian rock.

He has his orders. He has the battle-plan. He just needs to suck it up and get to it.

If only everything didn't taste like blood right now.

Koji twists a dial, the panoramic-camera system lights up. A series of technical data surrounding Copernicus Base and Unit-01 flood in. External GN-drive energy source at 97-percent. Synchronization rate at an abysmal twenty-three percent. Mastema Cannon ready.

"Black Hercules," the young Ensign calls out his newfound callsign right ater a brave swallow. "Commencing operation!"

The Monster That Swallowed Up Koji Kabuto lifts its energy weapon into the Martian air. Energy condenses within its barrel and the moment the capacitor is at full charge, depletes. A stream of offensive power rips across the distance in a loud crack, vaporizing a chunk of fence that serves as the initial barrier to Copernicus Base.

A few seconds later, a wall of durasteel is reduced into component atoms. Base integrity breached.

Warning klaxons go off a moment later, the base's meager security contingent scrambled. Another call is placed to Neo-Zeon Command, which in turn, is filtered on to Divine Crusade Command. It's an attack. Federal Forces are everywhere.

Come on out, Gund-- er, Unit-02!

 Samuel Flynn transmits, "What the hell was that?"

 Ascian Luddite grunts. "A-LAWS."

 James Heller transmits, "No Ascian. What that is? Target practice."

A LITTLE WHILE AGO THE PROJECT TERRESTRIAL DREAM BATCAVE SPACE SOMEWHERE

A very worried looking operator clad in the verdant green of the A-LAWS unfirom raises a hand to the gigantic-ass pair of headphones on his head, raising one hand away from the controls of his highly complex and sexy computer console, which is certainly covered in blinking lights and sine-wave readouts.

"No contact from Lt. Douglas, ma'am, but I'm picking up signs of activity from a listening post near her last known transmission location. Sounds like trouble." a pause. "Gunshots and alarms, ma'am. No friendly ships in the area."

Standing behind the worried looking operator is a brunette with entirely too much hair, gentle features twisted into a knot of stress washed with anxiety. She is definitely not dressed in an A-LAWS uniform, because she is /above/ such things. As such, she elects instead to wear this abominable yellow dress-shorts combination that nobody sane would ever squeeze into, but I guess space travel research is full of nutjobs.

Tsugumi Takakura, Chief Headkicker for Project Terrestrial Dream, places her face in both hands and remains silent for a period of time. They were /this/ close, and now that idiot girl is going to go and get herself killed...?

There is a brief instant where Tsugumi remembers, briefly, an even bigger idiot. And a plan so crazy it just...

...might...

... work.

"Get me Aki Saitani, prepare the prototype to launch in thirty minutes. It's time." the diminuiative girl lifts her face from her hands and glowers at the camera. "If only it didn't have to be like this..."

RIGHT FREAKING NOW A FILTHY ZEKE BASE ON MARS SOMEWHERE

An armoured transport explodes through a nearby concrete barricade in a low-gravity shower of ceramic chips and dust, the roar of the engine sounding not entirely unlike a throaty V12 given free reign to stick that needle into the red as far as it'll go without exploding. It catches no less than a full ten seconds of airtime before slamming into the ground, throwing the driver /just about/ out of their seat.

Still fastening the seals around her helmet, heavily-undercover A-LAWS Lieutenant Ibis 'MIA' Douglas continues to press the pedal to the floor as her sweet ride explodes through a checkpoint which features a giant map with a Zeon emblem on it and an arrow indicating that 'YOU ARE HERE'.

A pistol is on her lap and a radio in her free hand, which means she is steering with one knee, as God intended. A radio somewhere in the transport is currently just about jumping free of the clip that holds it to the wall, emitting tiny cartoon lightning bolts as the person on the other end yells themselves into a coma.

"Eyes on the prize, Douglas." she mutters to herself as she Tokyo Drifts the heavy, six-wheeled vehicle onto a particularly long stretch of road that probably leads to whatever kind of escape vehicle she had prepared. That's about when terrifying, familiar Orbital Frame comes out from inbetween the nearby buildings with an ominous, sudden kind of grace and puts a damper on her escape plans.

And that is exactly when the top hatch pops open and America's Favourite Redhead also pops out, pilot suit on, and shoots a god damned bazooka at it. Get out the way.

It's been a while since Ilyse actually deployed on a combat mission. Being head of R&D for A-LAWS also means she is too valuable to risk a lot of the time... and to be honest, she does not like fighting other humans all that much. She signed up with the Crusaders to defend the Earth Sphere from aliens. Beating up on people seems like a huge waste.

But here she is. They asked her to come in case there was something useful at this Mars research facility, so she could identify and retrieve it, and Ilyse accepted. The rather oddly-shaped plane-style unit flies through the thin atmosphere, leaving a pair of contrails behind it. Ilyse has both eyes on the extremely complicated readout from the systems in the center of the craft. Everything seems to be checking out okay... for now, anyway.

SOME TIME AGO

Aki Saitani - brand spanking new A-LAWS pilot, eternal optimist, and all-round cool person to be, at least if you listen to her speak it - is having to grapple with a bit of culture shock here. Getting to be in space, that's a pretty cool thing. Being able to fly her bright shiny mech around after two years of research and development, that's a /really/ cool thing. Being stuck on high orbit patrol duty for a week, though, that's just soul-sappingly dull; there's only so much you can look at the marvelous vistas of space before you realise said vistas are largely full of absolutely nothing except the SAME STUFF. OVER AND OVER, GOD.

By the time Tsugumi's call comes through Aki has totally given up on trying to stay focused and instead has her feet up on the console, her mp3 player hooked directly into her mech's power source, and her cockpit filled with reverb and bass, DOOF DOOF DOOFing its way through space at speed. "--yes, ma'am!" she says over the top of it after the request is made, having to yell but looking absolutely thrilled at the chance to be able to help out the Project or indeed do anything /whatsoever/ other than float around space. Immediately she hits throttle, banking down into the atmosphere. "I'm on my way!"

RIGHT ABOUT NOW

The Brynhildr slices its way through Martian space at a somewhat lower speed than normal, and if it were possible for a faceless machine to look mildly disgruntled, then this would be the number 1 contender right now. The heavy reactor output whines and complains as the engines repeatedly redistribute power to handle the mech's cargo. Trailing from the back of the Tesla craft on a multitude of tethers and swinging wildly is a suspicious present, in the very literal sense - a brightly festooned, shiny-orange-papered blob offset by a huge pink ribbon that all in all absolutely does not look like any kind of delivery of a clandestine experimental mech, no sir.

Her smile is kind of strained at this point, but like the trooper she is she patches herself into the A-LAWS comm circuit, dreading having to explain her situation to the gruff man with aviator sunglasses that she's already sure doesn't much like her. "Aki Saitani, arrivin' on scene for A-LAWS!... with friend. Ahaha, is this really gonna work...?"

Jung Freud has packed herself into the RX-212 "San" unit today. Partly because it's successfully fought Evangelions before (you know, JUST IN CASE), and partly because its inertial canceller will be useful against Super-class targets in a way that the NRX's rugged all-use style wouldn't be.

The red-and-white melee unit is near the vanguard, waving its giant spear violently forwards as Koji Kabuto's big dumb Evangelion Laser blows up the fences. "Englobe them before they can deploy! Come on!" she declares.

A keystroke lets her tell Ilyse, even as the Buster Machine vaults into the base perimeter, "Tell us if there's anything you need us to save intact, we might get a little over-enthusiastic otherwise~"

YESTERDAY, AFTER LUNCH AND READING THE MYSTICAL BOOK.

The Boss Borot stands, tied to several hundred balloons, holding a fan behind it, drifting steadily towards Mars. Boss holds a coupon for 'Free Mars Pizza With Squid' in his ham like hands, staring at it.

NOW The Boss Borot crashes down next to the Unit-01, balloons deflating around it, and flying away.

Boss' face suddenly take up all of Koji's radio viewer. "HEY KOJI!" He points at the coupon. "I have a coupon for squid pizza, you should totally come!"

The Boss Borot stands up, turning its head around.

"What, what's going on?"

EARLIER

"Kabuto? HIM!?"

RIGHT SO MOVING ALONG...

Kabuto it is, then. Joshua may not be pleased with this, but it is not his to question orders, merely to follow them and make sure others follow them through. The Vesalius is moving into the area, here to back up Unit-01 and provide heavy firepower. Joshua Shardul is aboard the bridge, hands clasped behind his back, surveying the battlefield. Which, in this case, is a giant chunk of toxic ice, but one can't choose these things.

"Kabuto. Keep in contact with the Vesalius at all times," he orderes the new EVA pilot. "Be prepared, you'll likely have some difficulty adjusting to a different kind of machine. Federation-allied forces, our target is the Zeon base! You know what to do!"

Asuka is not the only one present at the Zeon Base on Mars. On behalf of BAHRAM, working on the Divine Crusader relations between the smaller factions. Running diagnostics within the cockpit, Ascian is quite busily at work. Unlike most machinery here though, this machine isn't within the hangar. There aren't really any docking clamps for this machine present within, so instead the female Phoenix Orbital Frame is settles quite comfortably on her knees.

"How is this." Ascian rubs his finger against the controlorb of the machine, changing some of the options of the Artificial Intelligence, which replies in a female British accent; "That does appear to be a more appropiate energy setting." It had stopped sounding as metalic as it used to, and was very quickly becoming almost indistinguishable from a real voice. The young man then taps on the screen, letting a database come up, visualizing the Unit 02. "Hrrm." Yes, he was here for that reason too. Asuka had only recently joined the Divine Crusaders, and for god-knows what reason, Ascian kind of has been trying to make sure she'd get taken good care of. Not that he really had to try.

"So they finished the repairs?" Ascian asks.

"Correct." Duat replies, displaying the current state of his EVA G1 unit, missing quite a bit of metal down at the Earth Cradle. "Good, good. I'm sure Dr. Hell will come through with better ways to replace parts on that thing. Unt~" He's suddenly cut off. Something has been caught by the Amenthes' expanded sensors - linked up with the Zeon Base's radar installation. "What is going~..." Again, the BAHRAM Lieutenant is cut off, as loud sirens begin to roar. "What the!?" The cockpit's canopy quickly closes, and immediately a vid-window opens, as Duat assists the framerunner in finding the target in question.

The wings of the machine quickly snap open, and a burst of displaced air rushes away from the unit, knocking over nearby technicians as the machine lifts up off of its knees and into the air. Metatron crystals purse out from between the wings' folds, back legs, and elbows. Little red embers quickly flood the area, falling down like feathers to the ground - slower than on earth, thanks to Mars' lowered gravity. And within moments, the Orbital Frame kicks off, and the right arm of the machine shifts into a rifle arm.

"This is Ascian Luddite, I am persueing and disabling the fleeing unit." He calls out, the weapon charging, and then releasing a volley of energy as the frame flies just above and behind the transport vehicle. Pockmarks quickly are formed within the ground around the van as it swirves left and right. Then suddenly! "The hell... is that... miss Douglas!? ENHANCE!" The vid-window halts for a moment, and it then quickly zooms in on her. Pixels begin to reform, and finally, the girl's hair - a mess thanks to the wind rushing through it - is still recognizable as that crazy pilot. "Damnit... why did it have to be her?"

The bazooka-shot goes straight for the Amenthes, and awesomely propells a grenade square against its left arm - forcing the unit to swirve off-target for a moment, after which finally... "Target locked." Duat claims, and another bolt fires before Ascian can correct it to just hit the pavement before it.

 Ascian Luddite transmits, "E... enemy infiltrator... destroyed."

 James Heller transmits, "Confirm the kill."

 Puru Two transmits, "Don't tell me it's over already, leave some for the rest of us!"

 Ascian Luddite transmits, "R..Roger that..."

 Ascian Luddite mutters. "Why did that fool drive in a car.."

 James Heller transmits, "That's what I'm wondering."

Aki's hands blur across her console, dividing her power neatly between keeping up her speed and managing her cargo - which is pretty much the same size as the craft she herself is flying. Fortunately, Tesla Leicht enjoy making their power supplies frankly obnoxious these days and the mech can more than handle the pressure, and is even picking up in velocity as she races onto scene - not that it's fast enough, as she's only in time to see Ibis' ride get reduced into so much space dust by a familiar mech.

"Ibis!" she yells at top volume over loudspeakers, scene moving into slow motion as she grits her teeth because that's /just how these things work/. With a burst of effort before it's too late, the mech swings the gift-wrapped and very early Christmas present up and forwards, one hand grabbing the ribbon around it and the other pointing the Gungnir spear at the side. "Hang on, ma'am, this'll be a bit bumpy!"

The spear ignites with a sudden blast of plasma, the close proximity blasting the gift forwards as the red machine. It also burns away half of the wrapping, and the tug on the ribbon seals the deal for the final reveal - that Aki Saitani has in full control of her mental faculties just decided to use the brand new Project TD mech as a projectile, sending it winging towards Ibis and her opponent. It turns majestically as the light hits it just so, a lens flare appearing behind it probably timed to coincide with the swelling of violins or the start of the heavy metal power chords shortly before time restores and it threatens to slam into the Amenthes.

The novelty oversize tag floats down in front of the camera long enough to be read: "TO HERO OF THE FEDERATION LOVE AND KISSES PROJECT TD AND FILIO PRIESTLY <3 <3 <3 PS VAGUE SINISTER LAUGHTER."

Behind it, finally free of its load, the Brynhildr rockets around the perimeter of the battlefield.

Duke Brazen was once on Mars, defending the Divine Crusader's newest strong hold from the A-Laws. It was a fierce battle that showed off the power of the Warrior Beast Eva.

However, Kamina is too stupid to remember this, having had Brazen'a intelligence punched out of his skull. Right now, the pilot of the Basannigan stands on the bridge of the Dai Gurren, glaring at the red planet. How come the jerks got the red planet! Kamina wanted to be on the red planet! Damnit to hell.

Kamina finishes putting on his flight suit, feeling the tight rubber grip to his butt. It was a feeling that disturbed him to no end. How come this thing had to be so tight?

"Uh sir..." one of the random speaks up.

"Tch! I'm going!"

"But Kamina..."

"NO TIME! BASANNIGAN! LETS BURN THEM ALL ALIVE!...Man this thing is not giving me a lot of room down there. NO MATTER TIME TO GO!"

Kamina yells as he runs toward the flight deck, pumping his arms as he goes.

"That's Simon's flight suit....." the crew member sighs.

"It will be alright. I think he looks good in it." Leeron tilts his head, watching Kamina run down the hall, taking it all in.

MOMENTS Later.

The Crimson Chicken explodes from the Dai Gurren, moving to meet up with the allied forces. "So what the hell we doing out here?! AND Can someone tell me why this flight suit has to be so damn tight?!" The Gunmen undocks it's Chainswords, awaiting for any of the DC that wanted to rumble.

A customized - which is to say 'hastily painted in green and white' - Gunman--no, wait, Warrior Beast--no--wait--Eva--crashes feet first into the red soil. directly after the first shots crash into Copernicus. It lands crouched and stays that way, as if suggestive of injury; in truth, though...

"... arm actuators, thrust turbines, drill vision... uh... uh... oh God..."

... its pilot - Dr. Hell's Marchionessa Idunn - is too busy flipping through an instruction manual to actually move the machine. The combination Gunman/Warrior Beast/Eva is a far cry from her normal fare of remote controlled Machine Beasts; in fact, this is her first time in the cockpit of a weapon of war. Simply put, she doesn't belong here; however...

EARLIER

o/~ ASS! TITTIES! ASS 'N' TITTIES! ASS, ASS, TITTIES, TITTIES, ASS 'N' TITTIES! o/~

Oblivious to everything around her, Baron Ashura gyrates all throughout Aerial Fortress Gool's Animus Machine Beast pen to a pounding techno beat while Darcy Weyland looks on in a bizarre mixture of shock, horror and morbid curiosity.

"BIG BOOTY BITCHES, THAT'S WHERE IT GETS!" he shouts/sings in time with the music. "COME ON, HO, LET'S GO TO THE EASY REST!"

NOW

... every single one of her Machine Beasts was being serviced, or at least that's what she'll tell herself every time she thinks of this day.

"Okay," Idunn quietly exhales, mostly to try and convince herself she's ready. The Gunman's middle mouth moves in time with Idunn's, transmitting her voice. "Okay!"

The abomination slowly rises to its feet; with each foot added to its stature, another of the lime-green pips on the gauge dominating most of its console monitor illuminates and the hellish green light leaking from the eyes and mouth of its abdominal face brightens. Darcy clears her throat and prepares to drop her voice an octave; it's /entirely unnecessary/ because her commsys is already tuned to do so.

"Submit!" she transmits to the Federation forces as she tosses the manual behind her seat; technology alters her voice so that instead of the slightly frightened seventeen year old girl she truly is, she sounds older, more resolute, and somewhat plainly digitally touched up. While her demand is addressed to the forces as a whole, one machine in particular - the sleek Brynhildr, flying freely around the edges of the base - seems to be the primary subject of its ire; when the machine actually reaches its full height, it even breaks into a sprint towards the Armored Module. The emerald energy leaking from its abdominal face creates shimmering trails that will linger for a full minute, and the eyes of its actual head briefly, predatorily glow. Half a dozen small drills break slide out from between its fingers and begin to spin in anticipation of drawing blood.

Ten feet later, the Warrior Beast hits a rock and goes flying in a high arc that only terminates when it crashes into a barracks; before landing, its arms flail comically. "Oh--oh God..." Idunn mumbles, mercifully muffled by her machine's face being mashed into the ground.

The drills, at least, snap off from its fists and streak haphazardly through the skies in search of the Brynhildr.

LIKE FIVE MINUTES AGO

"All level-three pre-flight-checks, all-green." "T-LINK system initialized, linkup to pilot psyche 100." "All ammunition loaded and ready." "Uranus system linked up and ready."

This is always the worst part. Just a pedal press away from being airborne, and you have to wait... and wait... poor guys are just doing their job, and if they didn't the robot would probably just explode in mid-air or something like that, but he can't help but feel frustrated about it.

LIKE FOUR MINUTES AGO

"All clear! Go, go, go!" The guy in the bright yellow high-visibility suit and headphones hasn't even started waving his chemical light stick yet that a giant robot all white and blue and red roars past it at the speed of fast, rocketing through the launch tunnel of the Hiryu Kai and finally blasting into space!

Space! The final frontier! Or not. It wasn't that far, actually: the red ball that is Mars was hanging in the background.

"I kind of missed you, R-1". The pilot says, while lovingly stoking the instrument panel. Orbital angle, attitude, engine output... This is what it feels to be a small particle launched at neckbreaking speeds through the cosmos.

Love.

Maybe a bit of obsession too.

"Let's do this, R-1! CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANGEEEEEE R-WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING!!!"

LIKE THREE MINUTES AGO

Mars is a bit bigger now.

OKAY SKIPPING RIGHT TO THE POINT NOW

The R-Wing roars at extremely low altitudes (as in, skimming just aboveground) over the red martian plains. After a long stretch of continuous acceleration by virtue of the pilot getting overexcited and slamming his foot so far down the throttle pedal as to almost jam it in place, it rockets above (some would call it "buzzing") the Eva still posed with the big-ass rifle in hand, waving its wings cheerfully.

Ryusei Date has arrived!

Mars.

It was supposed to be an educational experience for her, for the most part-- understanding what gravity is like on another planet entirely. While she theoretical concepts are sound, while she's used to the scientific facts that surround the alternate gravity, Lethe Rusina is forced to wonder if Echidna was just trying to get her out of her hair for a few days.

With the new, incoming raid picked up on scanners and the rather explosive actions of one Ibis Douglas, Lethe makes the short run toward the cockpit of the large, heavily customized Ashsaber and settles inside. As the Tesla Drive spins up and the engines go online, warnings and alerts scatter across her monitors to warn her about adjusting for Martian gravity-- which she chooses to ignore, at least until she can get into the sky.

The ASK-UC90 Flickerist erupts into the air a few minutes later, the hulking black machine-- that which has given Koji Kabuto a few nightmares-- takes to the skies, making the adjustments to the flight software on the fly. This, at least, would make a bit of a story to share with her 'elder sister,' at least for as long as it takes for the data to transfer.

EARLIER

"I think that went well, my lord," one of the soldiers declares as he follows the purple-caped man through the halls of the sweepingly huge Zamouth Garr. The other man says nothing as they coast along the halls, and the soldier's face suddenly takes on a look of great worry. He swallows, tugging at his collar as they round the corner towards the bridge of the Zamouth Garr; had he said something wrong? Had he somehow insulted his master? The solldier coughs nervously, his imagination running wild with him-

"Yes," the deep voice of the man in the iron mask replies with unearthly calm. The door of the bridge opens as they land, and the two walk inside with an even, clipped pace - the soldier scrabbling to keep up. He falls into step beside his inscrutable lord, the panorama of stars opening up on the screens as they enter. The soldiers stand and salute in perfect harmony; there was no dissent in Crossbone Vanguard, and certainly not where its lord and master could see.

Carozzo Ronah - Iron Mask - sits down in the wide chair, the anonymous soldier scurrying off to make himself useful. Iron Mask gazes forward at the screens of the Zamouth Garr as the captain rattles off the usual information - Federation forces spotted, motion on Mars...a Divine Crusaders alert?

Carozzo frowns behind the silvery mask that carried his shame. While Cosmo Babylonia had not officially joined the Divine Crusaders as of yet, this would be an excellent time for the Crossbone Vanguard to appear on the grand stage...and show their support of the spacenoids who fought against the oppression of the Federation with all their hearts and souls. Yes, Carozzo decided in the span of an instant, this was the time for the Crossbone Vanguard to appear - and let the Cosmo Babylonian message bring hope to the soldiers of Mars.

"Set our course for Mars," Carozzo orders, "And prepare my Den'an Zon Kai."

Iron Mask stands and returns to the corridors of the Zamouth Garr, striding with purpose towards the hangar bay. Here, now, on the backdrop of Mars, with his own hands - Carozzo Ronah would take the stage of history and forge ahead.

It was time to muster his hatred.

NOW

The Zamouth Garr begins its descent above the Oldsmobile Zeon base, the sweeping curves of the purple ship flanked by the strange-looking mobile suits swarming about it in guard formations, the mysterious machines and their...beam shields?...settling into a guard formation around the massive space cruiser. The wedge-like machine's catapult folds forward, locking into place as a white-and-gold mobile suit takes the launch bay.

"You are cleared for launch, lord Iron Mask," the operator tells him. Iron Mask's fingers close about the controls as he relaxes against the cockpit chair, and he presses the acceleration forward immediately; the magnetic rail sends his Den'an Zon streaking forth, a blaze of white and gold as it streaks towards the base.

The Den'an Zon Kai approaches the battlefield, the beam flag emitter in its hands blazing a bright and beautiful declaration above it as more of the strange Den'an Zons follow behind it. The beam flag's display is a grand shield, a sword down its middle, and a pair of bones crossed atop the blade - displayed in glorious I-Field-and-superheated-plasma, a true beam standard to represent this new and strange force taking the field.

Iron Mask flips up his communication channels. "Begin the attack," he declares.

The mysterious reinforcements to the Oldsmobile Army advance, the unusual units opening fire on the Federation's army. The white-and-gold Den'an Zon Kai takes the front of the field, plowing towards the vanguard of the Federation forces - and targetting the RX-212 "San" as its foe. The unusual, blocky mobile suit draws a strange lance-like object, firing forth at Jung's machine in a hailstorm of bullets as its beamshield flares to life.

DC RECEIVES REINFORCEMENTS: ????????????

 James Heller transmits, "Incomming contacts! It's the Oldsmobile army! We got backup."

 Ascian Luddite transmits, "Ah, of Erika's sort?"

 Ascian Luddite transmits, "Fantastic!"

 Ascian Luddite transmits, "I can't remember the last time since I saw them in action."

"Who do they think they are, anyway?" Asuka Langley Sohryu sits inside of Unit-02 -- though for once, she's not happy about this in the least. Angel or humans -- both found it in them to attack at the most inconvenient times. Asuka had been in the shower when the Alpha Numbers launched their assault on the DC base; it was all she could do to rinse her hair out as quickly as possible and suit up in her requisite red plugsuit.

Asuka presses her unit's foot forward once, and then again, her eye scanning the battlefield for an opponent. It's then that she sees it. "Unit-02?!" There's surprise -- perhaps even disbelief -- in her voice, and for a moment it registers on her face.

But then a moment later, it passes, replaced with something more sinister. The redhead hasn't forgotten what the pilot of Unit-01 did to her the last time she met on the battlefield.

And she's eager to pay him back for what he did.

Unit-02 flexes its arm, and with one smooth gesture, its progressive knife slips from its hidden cache on its arm. Asuka's eye narrows on the purple-and-orange chasis of Shinji's Evangelion.

"It's been a long time, /Shinji/."

And Unit-02 races towards the other Evangelion, progressive knife taking aim at Unit-01's chest.

 DC S Asuka Langley Sohryu transmits, "Let me handle Unit-01!"

 Ascian Luddite transmits, "Roger that, Asuka. Go kick his ass!"

 Glemy Toto transmits, "I'll be flying support in the Bawoo. Glemy Toto, launching."

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Lethe Rusina transmits, "On-site and prepared to intercept."

EARLIER, ON THE SANDRA

The alert to assume battle readiness sounded out, the universal signal for all able-bodied pilots to get their behinds in a mobile suit, pronto. Puru Two was naturally among these. With Glemy having made his power play, it's more crucial than ever for her to do whatever she can to reinforce the image of a strong Zeon.

Rushing through the hallways, she quickly reached the hangar, making a beeline for her Qubeley, but just before touching it, suddenly freezing in mid-stride, hand still stretched out towards the machine. She quickly spins around, scanning her surroundings in a mild panic. But there's nothing there. Slowly, her right hand is brought to her forehead. "There it was again...", she mutters to herself, commenting on something unseen to all but her. Even though it was just for a moment, she could swear she saw the face of Haman Karn reflected in the metal of the Qubeley Mk. II. "Some kind of feedback from the psycommu...?"

She shakes her head. No use talking to herself. But... maybe she'd better avoid using psycommu, for now. No big deal, she's got a backup that's more than adequate.

NOW

Puru Two's Ashsaber, identifiable as such due to being partly red, appears on the battlefield, Beam Machine Gun in one hand, Halberd Shooter in the other. A quick survey reveals that Stuff Has Already Been Blown Up. "Ugh, they started without me, so inconsiderate," she remarks, and then reminds herself again to stop talking to herself. The enemy sure came out in force, plenty of targets to choose from... but the clone soldier is in no mood for messing around. She's headed straight for the command ship.

Any faceless grunts that get in the way are swiftly dealt with using the light machine gun, but when it comes to tackling the actual battleship, she switches over to the more appropriate long-range rifle. The Halberd Shooter is levelled at the Vesalius's bow, the weapon's two halves seperating before unleashing a sizable energy blast. "Take THAT!"

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Ascian Luddite transmits, "But know, Asuka. You're not alone out there. If you need a little nudge in the back, don't hesitate to ask."

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> DC S Asuka Langley Sohryu transmits, "It won't be a problem for an ace Evangelion pilot like myself!"

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> James Heller transmits, "Roger"

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Ascian Luddite transmits, "Of course."

The Boss Borot run right in the middle of the battle field towards the base while Boss pulls out a Numbers Handbook. He thumbs through slowly.

"Eee Vee Shit... What the heck does an Eee Vee Shit look like."

COPERNICUS BASE PRIMARY RESEARCH LABS MOMENTS AGO

"...and I'm not sure how much it's helping. I mean--" Samuel Flynn, speaking to one of the head researchers at the base, brushes a lock of hair out of his face. It's getting a little long, he thinks. "--the pharmaceutical treatment is hastening the results, but it's also pretty clearly contributing to a lack of stability in your test subjects. Now, if we--huh?" The building shakes from a minor tremor. From a video screen that replaces a window, he sees a flash in the distance.

"What the hell was that?"

COPERNICUS BASE MOBILE WEAPON HANGARS NOW

Insolent, the brass-colored Armored Core NEXT sitting in the hangar, is in pieces. The core block has had all the limbs removed for AMS recalibration; they all hang nearby, suspended from the ceiling on heavy cabling and hooks. The actual calibration is just finishing when Flynn gets there, but the robot is still nowhere near flyable.

It's times like these that make Sam glad his robot is plug-and-play.

Moving over to an engineering console, Sam punches in a few commands and starts things up. Heavy machinery moves the arms to either side of the machine, affixing them to their respective sockets. The legs, strangely bent for optimal aerial maneuverability, are slid underneath and attached. Weapons are dropped onto it at the same time, everything falling into place.

It takes all of moments. Sam finds himself a little bit awed by it, like he always is. "Thank God for ACs," he mutters. He grabs the lift cord and climbs into the cockpit...

...and again, moments later, he's in the air and outside. Insolent blazes up from the hangar, the DC IFF signaling another friendly. He whistles at the sheer number of contacts and the impressive variety. "AI, once we're at a safe distance, activate Primal Armor, full power. We're not going into this one naked." A feminine voice gives him an acknowledgement. A second later, a flicker surrounds the NEXT, green-white motes dancing briefly in the air.

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Puru Two transmits, "Heh heh... been a while since I've fought a battleship. Watch me Glemy, it's going down!"

"The hell!?" - "INCOMING!"

The Amenthes quickly swings about as Aki's unit throws the gigantic package forwards, and is forced to push towards the side in order to ensure that it would not clip its wings. "That unit!" He recognized that unit! It was the Brynhildr, and that piloting style meant that it was the exact same pilot in it. The young man quickly turns his head, to look at the package which had just landed. "What did that just read?" He demands to know of Duat.

"TO HERO OF THE FEDERATION LOVE AND KISSES PROJECT TD AND FILIO PRIESTLY GREATER THAN THREE GREATHER THAN THREE GREATHER THAN THREE PS VAGUE SINISTER LAUGHTER." Duat replies, in a droning voice. She could hold a conversation in which she would be impossible to discern from a human being. But her Text-To-Speak really was a technology that needed some working!

"Why you..." But he couldn't really blame Aki for doing what she did. After all, he'd just taken out one of her comerades. Still, he couldn't risk her assisting in the assault on the base. The Amenthes quickly blasts off, straight for the girl's mech, "Hey Aki!" Ascian opens an audio-visual commlink. "TIME FOR ROUND TWO!" And a gulf of laserbeams flow from behind the red Phoenix Orbital Frame, straight for her unit - hoping to penetrate the entire machine.

Puru Two's Ashsaber isn't the only thing that's left the Sandra; flying right along next to it is none other than Glemy Toto's custom Bawoo, in its bright vermillion-and-gold hues. The agile machine bobs and weaves toward its destination, using the mobility of that impressive lineage to the greatest extent possible; Glemy Toto knows that there's a very small margin between 'quick' and 'dead' in a mobile suit battle.

For now, he focuses exclusively on defense and on getting closer to the battlefield; now that he has more responsibilities, he has to be all the more conservative in how he operates.

James Heller is concverned about the report from Ascian. A spy in a car? He's not sure on that but more and more feds are comming out of the wood work. Damn there's an EVA there too. There's no time to get to one of his other units. He'll have to take the one he's been working on today. He takes a moment to suit up into the silver powered armor.

He had just been putting in at the Zeon labs, because they had some of the machinery he needed for producing ammo. He'd been lucky in that case. The power armor seals abot him and the OS Boots up. This time in french. He grumbles, punches in reboot again. this time it comes up properly. The small machine comes to life stalking out.

It's a machine that should not be in this world, a relic of another world's past yet here it is. The martian sun reflects off the silver armor of the mech as it exits the hanger, the thing is? It's only 12 feet tall and it's got a gun on it's back big as it's as starts up James gets a tatical feed and passes it to the incomming back up.

<Welcome to the party, things got hot pretty fast. Watch out for the command ship and the EVA. Those are pretty nasty so watch your selves. That unit's prone to going rabid so I'd suggest pack tatics.>

Unlike Glemy, there is nothing conservative about Kamina or his machine. The mighty red chicken (yes, it looks like a skull Gunmen with a chicken helm) flies toward the shiny Bawoo, starting up the engine on the chainsword. The gunmen readies the sword as it flies in at full speed, attempting cleave Glemy's machine in half with a diagonal cut.

Kamina growls under his breath as he screams his attack name. "DON'T GET IN MY WAY, BLING BLING BOY AWESOME CUT!" He grins, expecting Glemy Toto to be some kind of random mook rather than the current leader of Zeon. "Damnit Koji! STOP GETTING STABBED! IF YOU'RE GONNA PILOT THAT THING, PUT YOUR SOUL INTO IT!"

Time slows way the hell down for Ibis as she notices a giant Orbital Frame rifle being levelled at her sweet ride. This is fortunate, because she needs to move with Action Movie Hero logic and precision in order to not actually die.

The redhead throws her bazooka to one side and begins to clamber out of the transport with a great sense of urgency, and puts her hands out for balance as she actually makes it to the roof, but then just about slips off the entire thing as neon blasts of energy rip into the ground next to her many-wheeled Armoured Moron Carrier. Ibis catches herself as she slides onto the hood of the car, jumping back up to her feet. This means that, in fact, she is dancin' in the hood while the car still rollin'.

What's Ghost Ridin'?

That's Ghost Ridin'

Unfortunately she is still standing on top of an armoured vehicle which has just been, breaking news, hit in the engine block by a high-energy blast from the Amenthes, and that means that she's standing on top of the vehicle when it decides that enough is enough and explodes in a tremendous movie-pyrotechnics fireball, hurling her high into the Martian skies.

/Fortunately/, the person in the copilot seat of the sizable silvery-green blur that comes flying out of the brilliantly coloured wrapping paper was basically ready for something retarded like this to happen, and it is with perhaps entirely too much ease that Tsugumi Takakura's hands dance across the override controls, and the end-over-end tumbling of the YAM-008-02 Altairlion comes to an abrupt halt as it erupts in a burst of emerald green maneuvering jet fire, suddenly righted and suddenly on a collision course with a certain red-haired A-LAWS vigilante.

There is a tiny smirk on Tsugumi's face as she presses the giant, red, 'DO NOT PRESS FOR FEAR OF BLOWING OPEN YOUR COCKPIT' button and the super duper double-secret prototype breaks open for exactly long enough for 1 (one) Ibis Douglas to land in the front seat, face-first.

"aaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA--*mpffff*"

The R-Wing doesn't give up momentum or speed, climbing up at an alarming rate just as the two Evangelion units begin to duke it out in the middle of the rocky, sandy martian plains.

In the cockpit, the altitude counter ticks furiously. Well, it doesn't actually *tick* per se, but you get the idea.

At 1500 meters, the incredibly maneuvrable craft twists and bends and levels with the horizon, all of its momentum now propelling it at 90 degrees bearing from the DC base.

From a tactical standpoint, a very stupid maneuver that exposes the R-Wing to any sort of interception fire. Unless, of course, that's the point: drawing fire on to him and away from the Evangelion. A brave, selfless and foolish thing to do.

Well, those three adjectives sum up Ryusei's combat style nicely, don't they?

Meanwhile, someone else entirely, Sleigh Presty puts on a pair of sunglasses and hops out of her Vegalion and begins dancing on one of its nacelles.

While it's like 10,000 feet above the ground.

And travelling at Mach 1.

> "Look out, Koji!" > "You see the red Eva??" > "Affirmative! Eva-02 confirmed on the battlefield! It's going straight for Koji!"

Koji Kabuto's eyebrows leap several stories high on this day. His colleagues know what's coming for him before Unit-01's systems do. This pseudo-psychic link between man and machine is foreign to him. All he knows how to do is pilot machines with sheer force of will. There is nothing subtle about it. No balancing act between a man's self-preservation and inhuman mechanics.

The beads of sweat that quickly forms on his head are dissolved in the LCL of the Entry Plug. Unit-01's systems detect Unit-02 several seconds later, intercepting its signal and displaying it plainly across the panoramic monitor-system. "So fast..!" he gasps aloud.

On a bio-rhythm read-out aboard the Vesalius, Ensign Kabuto's heart-rate jumps.

His synchronization rate remains abysmal.

"Hnngh.. hnngh.." Koji's chest heaves against the restrictive confines of his plug-suit. Teeth gritted, adrenaline coursing through his veins. "ROCKE--" Wait. No Rocket Punch. Why is there no Rocket Punch!?

WHO THE HELL BUILDS A ROBOT WITHOUT A ROCKET PUNCH!?!

Unit-02 closes in. Proximity alarms bleat into his ears and warning lights near-blind his eyes. Come on.. come on.. COME ON!

"MASTEMAAAA BRAAAAAADE...!"

The weapon held in Unit-01's hand ejects a length of progressive-edged steel. It swings its ropy arms forward, trying to parry Unit-02's progressive knife. AT Fields clash, an electric light show that casts the Martian landscape in dazzling green and pink colors. It fails, piercing the purple construct in its breast.

Asuka is talking to him.

Armor crumples, delicate subsystems broken. A spurt of LCL -- lifeblood -- splatters Unit-02 in a jet.

Bio-feedback funnels the sensation back into its pilot.

.."NNGH!" Koji bucks forward, his eyes alarmed with the sharp pain in his chest. A mouthful of LCL hits the pit of his stomach. The pain is intense, bringing his eyes to water. Has he just been stabbed!?! His eyes glance down to his chest -- still in one piece.

> "Bio-feedback! You'll feel everything -- just remember, it's not you!"

Asuka..

"Asuka...!" Koji calls out over the shortwave. He sounds nothing like the meek Shinji Ikari. His voice is strong, boisterous. The fighting spirit of the people of Japan.

"I'm not Shinji! Don't do this, I don't want to hurt you!"

The Mastema Cannon is locked up in slashing back at Unit-02. Koji's hurting, his cranial nerves like hot jabbing pokes in his brain. Need to push her back.

Progressive Knife.

Unit-01 reaches for the slender object on its thigh. A short-bladed weapon, capable of treating armor like it were merely butter.

"PROGRESSIVE KNIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIFUUUUUU--!"

> "Kabuto, it doesn't work like that."

"AYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA...!!"

The lithe, violet monster swings in a broad and sloppy slash.

Iron Mask replies to the helpful tactical advice with a brief ping, utterly wordless in his machine. This is because his attention is focused squarely on the incoming Jung Freud and her frighteningly skillful melee abilities, the tether-and-dart a pressing threat to the leg of the Den'an Zon. Iron Mask's hand shifts the control stick to the side, the Den'an Zon Kai dancing to the left and forward to nimbly evade Jung's attack. So a melee combatant...very well.

The Den'an Zon wastes absolutely no time as it lands against the red sand of Mars, its forces swarming about it to engage the other mooks in a brutal buzzsaw of motion; the Den'an Zon Kai's feet tap against the clouds of dust for all of an instant as its thrusters fire forward, sending the machine plowing towards Jung's San's head-area with its powerful elbow.

And then the Den'an Zon slides to the right, to deliver a barrage with its right hand as the bema standard flips to the left. The pilot...

Is it a newtype?

Jung might be feeling some pretty serious pressure right now, depending on how sensitive she is to things like that.

Aki slumps back in her seat, wiping her jacket's sleeve against her forehead as she allows herself a moment to relax. Phew. Package delivered safely, Project TD debts slightly repaid, boredom safely assuaged, Ibis-- ... well, probably not dead, maybe! Success on all four counts; now all she has to do is survive the sudden and immense firefight erupting around her. She hauls herself back up to her controles just in time to swing around the first of the wildly arcing missiles sent her way, and grins eagerly.

The previously plodding Brynhildr is suddenly moving, and moving fast; free of the weight of the Altarlion the engines ramp up just in time for the machine to boost itself up and around the second of the drills to bank and neatly squeeze sideways between the third and fourth. She whoops with joy, punching the air as she finally starts to get into the swing of things - only to suddenly take a hit to the side, machine buckling and forced into a sideways roll away from the laser blasts. "--oh what, no way, come on!" she yells out over her loudspeakers - possibly the only person around able to yell a whine. "Two against one ain't fair!"

Balking at the prospect of taking on the Amenthes in the midst of a heavy firefight, the Brynhildr accelerates away suddenly, laterally diving through the battle to land on the surface for cover and immediately pick up speed into a dead run at the stricken Warrior Beast, spear tearing up sparks as it rattles over rocks. At the last moment the Tesla mech leaps, spinning the spear its head to crash down towards her chosen opponent. "--sorry fer takin' a cheap shot!"

James Heller after feeding the intel to the uncimming backup. He gets the ping from the other forces as they come in. Who knows, James own machine spots an incomming mecha. IT kinda looks like garbage. Wait a second Garbage?! IT could be only one thing! It's Boss' mech. He starts swinging the main gun into postion and fire the laser that mounted on top of the larage strange gun.

"Tsssk." Ascian lets out an annoyed sound when Aki complains about two against one. "THIS IS A WAR, AKI!" He calls out, but then turns about as there is suddenly an energyreading he's never seen before. And there, there she is! Ibis! Alive! The young man's shoulders slump as relief courses through his body. He wondered though, should he really be feeling relieved about an /enemy/ pilot being fine. God-damn, what was it with him and getting too easily connected with those he fights and don't come across as total douchebags.

But then those eyes move up, and the young man takes a moment to move a hand off of the control-orb at his right and smacks his forehead. "ANOTHER new unit!?" He whines. What is it with the A-LAWS and getting all these new and fancy machines!? Not that he wanted a new unit or anything, but it was getting a bit rediculous to him.

"Douglas!" Ascian closes the connection with Aki and attempts to start one up with Ibis. "Hey... ehh... good to see you are still alive. Sorry about the car." Pause. "Wait, what am I saying. You're the enemy." Hands go back onto the control orbs, and the Amenthes blasts straight for the unit. "Sorry, but I'll have to try and disable you!" He calls out and sends a massive volley of red bolts along the ground towards her unit - whilst sending lasers upon lasers in her direction. SCHMUP time!

Rather than try to evade a missile barrage from a battleship, like someone more sane might do, Puru Two's Ashsaber instead faces off with it, downright defying it. If their mental facilities are indeed intact, this pilot is certainly confident to the extreme. And a firm believer in that there can be only one response to missiles. And that is /more missiles/.

The Ashsaber's chest compartment opens up, unleashing a large swarm of Burning Dagger missiles of its own. Some intercept incoming missiles, others go on to strike the hull of the Vesalius in several different locations. Additional missiles are intercept by the rapidly firing Beam Machine Gun, the net result being tons of explosions, obscuring the Shadow-Mirror PT from view. But when it emerges from the fireworks, it miraculously yet remains completely untouched.

"Ha! Don't think I'm just some rookie! I don't care how big you are or how many guns you have, I'm not afraid of you!" She's talking to herself again. It's starting to become a habit. But the words are appropriately followed up on, because in spite of common sense, the Ashsaber isn't keeping its distance. Instead, in a sudden burst of movement, it rapidly approaches, flanking the battleship with seemingly little effect. It never stops moving, unleashing a volley from its Beam Machine Gun across the ship's port side.

It's dangerous, it's reckless, and many would call it seriously stupid. but this is what Puru Two does for fun.

The fact that someone has made head vulcans that are not complete horseshit does not escape Sam--which is why he moves to escape the vulcans. The NEXT's vertical thrusters brighten, the quick boost shooting it higher into the air just as the vulcan barrage starts. The rounds clip the Primal Armor, the Kojima barrier brightening to white around the comparative pinpricks that strike it and halting the momentum of the shots. As if to acknowledge the attack, the machine gun in the right hand of the Armored Core spits a short burst, a cluster of rapid-fire shots tracking the mobile suit.

"Looks like a Gundam," Sam says to himself, "but--what model? I've never seen one like that..." He cues up a zoom window, getting a capture of the Phoenix and looking it over with a quick glance. It doesn't ring any bells, but it seems... familiar. It isn't his familiarity, though; he can practically hear it already. Maybe...

"--no. Just my imagination." The Armored Core advances on the Gundam, closing the gap swiftly to medium range and then banking to the left. It's machine gun chatters again, a longer, still-rapid burst testing the Gundam's speed and maneuverability. He needs more data before he can come to a conclusion that isn't... that.

Whipping the Bawoo out of the way of the quick chainsaw strike, Glemy decides to keep his maneuvers tight; he's by no means a perfect pilot, but he knows how to retain focus and he knows how to counter in close quarters. Really, he knows how to work at every distance -- he's not stellar at any of them, but he's got a solid grasp of the fundamentals of piloting.

Not one to be outdone, Glemy mounts his own close quartersattack; drawing one of the Bawoo's beam sabers, he comes in for two quick slashes at Kamina's machine, then a quick kick a second later.

Jung Freud is not exceptional as a Newtype, but the pressure building around her is becoming hard to deny - exceeding the usual enthusiastic chaos of a battlefield. Her adrenal glands quiver for a moment, half joyous and half mortified, as the thrown dart is avoided. The cable's cut, so it can't be used against her, automatically.

He's coming towards her. The San is unable to move out of the way immediately, and so Jung does the one thing she really can -- turn the Inertial canceller up to full.

Lacking the quality of inertia completely for a fleeting second, San is struck and hits the ground with speed so fast it can hardly be said to have happened. As Jung's hand relents on the control, it regains, invisibly, that quality of physics, straightening up without damage as she says, more tensely, "So you're a leader, huh?"

That javelin-throwing hand whips something out suddenly - a short but bright beam saber set into the San's hip, even as she takes one swift step forwards, aiming to slash that banner's physical-material staff asunder. "Well, I hope they're not too dependent on your orders!!"

The Boss Borot continues to run right towards the Zeon Base, paying little mind to anything around it. You can tell because it has a very stern look of concentration on its face, pumping its arms.

Inside, Boss twists the wheel back and forth slightly, like you do when you want the car to go faster but you don't really need to do it at all. He drives his foot on the gas pedal, making the Boss Borot's legs look like a circle loop from Scooby Doo. You can almost HEAR the bongos.

"NUKE, STOP PLAYING THE BONGOS, I AM CONCENTRATING!"

Boss sees something small. A power armor? What the hell. The Boss Borot rears up one arm and Boss slams the control forward, punching the laser turret so it spins around. Then the Boss Borot simply runs right over the Power Armor, and towards a wall in the base.

Joshua is /impressed,/ as his crew repeat combat data to him on his opponent and as he observes the Ashsaber literally wipe out his missiles with its own. That's a daring move, one some might say is stupid-but it's only stupid if one isn't sure it'll work.

The machine gun fire is deflected by the heavy ship's shields, and is answered with another missile barrage. Josh is hardly one to try the same thing over and over, however. "It's fast. Keep it in our sights and hit it with high-speed weaponry. Pilot's very skilled-possibly a Coordinator or Newtype, but we've no way to tell for sure." He's talking to his crew; Puru Two is unlikely to get much of a response from her opponent, because Joshua is kind of a snob about that sort of thing.

This time, the railguns turn to follow Ashsaber, moving as she does and, as the gunners coordinate with one another and the bridge crew, shooting off beam fire at the Ashsaber.

Koji attempts to parry her attack with the progressive knife, but fails, nicking her Unit-02 in the arm, scratching in deep across the length of Unit-02's arm. The unit flinches back by reflex; years of piloting Eva may have made it easier for Asuka to brush off the pain that came with it, but it wasn't always so easy to ignore.

"You're not /Shinji/!" It took only a few words from Koji Kabuto for her to ascertain that; the two pilots couldn't be any more different, with Koji's confidence compensating twiceover for that which Shinji lacked.

It's then that he issues her his warning -- a warning Asuka has no intention of heeding, regardless of who Unit-01's pilot is. He was the one that attacked /then/, not the other way around! If he didn't want to fight, then why was he here in the first place?!

Koji makes his attack, his unit's progressive knife slashing out to catch her Unit-02 in the chest. Rage flames up inside of Asuka. "If you're here, then where's Shinji?!" Not that she cared! "A person like you doesn't have the /right/ to pilot Eva!"

And then as if to show him, Unit-02 lashes out again, progressive knife seeking Unit-01's chest once more.

The Phoenix has a lot of weird stuff going for it.

For starters, it's fast - though not fast to evade the hail of bullets from the machine gun. Instead Ilyse transforms it, returning it to a more humanoid configuration, one arm brought up to cover the central section of the machine.

It also doesn't look all that much like a regular Gundam. Oh, it has the V-helmet (and some people would say that's all it needs) but its shape is subtly wrong; its legs are much too long, its feet too large, its torso vented and with an almost Orbital Frame-like projection forward.

Perhaps the scariest part of it, though, is that its 'skin' is rippling. The outer layer is moving around where the bullets pierced it, refitting itself along the frame, the holes contracting inward. "Hot damn," Ilyse says to herself. "It actually /works/."

Bringing up the double-barreled rifle held in the left arm - one barrel above the hand, one below - Ilyse fires a pair of shots, hoping for a lucky hit on the Armoured Core while she circles it. It can fly even in its humanoid configuration, and quite quickly at that - and Ilyse is using that to her advantage.

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Ascian Luddite transmits, "How're you holding up in there, Asuka?"

In flight, tags and markers scatter across the primary HUD-- IFFs, including tags for her newer allies and enemies, as well as whatever data is in the Shadow Mirror database. One such machine that catches her attention is the R-1. Her head tilts forward a little as her grip on the controls slacken. One hand is used to jab at the keypads and consoles scattered around the Flickerist's interior; throttle and flight speeds adjust accordingly.

The Flickerist drops down out of the sky, trying to line itself up behind Ryusei and the custom Trooper, shortly before the similarly-customized Sword Breakers detach from the shoulders and scatter, accelerating, and spiraling off in four different directions.

"This battleground will be your graveyard."

The Sword Breakers-- those Shadow Bits-- cut and sway on narrow paths in pursuit of the R-1, the armored tips splitting open to expose their emitter arrays... and to fire shots at the Federation unit from behind!

As the pain hits Koji, the sound of a distant heartbeat is heard. It is followed by the distant rumbling of a train, followed by a whistle. No matter what, the smell of blood is stronger now, mixing with any other scent Koji Kabuto can make out.

Kamina growls as his chainsword misses its mark, slicing through empty space instead of machine. The beamsabers strike into the Gunmen, cutting through the first layer of armor and leaving a nice scar across the eye of the lower part of the machine. "Tch. Stop denting up my machine, mook!" Kamina yells, just before the second strike comes in just before the kick. The Basannigan flies backwards, turning on thrusters to stabilize itself automatically since the pilot isn't qualified to make such brainy decisions. Kamina charges in another, attempting to stab the Chainsword into any vital part of the Bawoo it can touch.

"Think you're pretty damn smart, eh?!" Kamina draws his second Chainsword, starting it up so he can dual wield next attack. For now, he waits for Glemy's next move, growling under his breath.

James Heller machine is small, the Borot is much bigger and has a lot more mass. But still? It's comming at him and for a second he thinks he hears bongos. What the hell? Wait it's Boss, don't ask questions. You stay sane longer that way. The machine comes in and it's punching at him it going to run him over, he leaps, thankfully not having deployed the boom gun. He's catch by the other machine. The impact does some damag,e but the silver machine punches anc actually starts ripping into the other machine. IT holds there pulling back the other arm. A blade slides out and he opens a channel to Boss.

"You think you can win boy? Don't make me laugh!"

Then he stabs attenping to drive the vibroblade into the other machine.

She's good. She's very, very good. Iron Mask cannot deny this simple, basic fact, as Jung's Inertial Canceller is used in a most ingenious way to avoid the brunt of the Den'an Zon Kai's impact. That was something more skilled than he'd expected the average Federation pilot to be capable of, especially on this battlefield so far from Earth with its bizarre gravities and its strange forms. And the pressure building about him...was he facing one of the Newtypes? Was he facing a true Newtype, and not a Cyber-Newtype like himself...?

How very interesting...

As the beam saber suddenly explodes towards the beam flag, Iron Mask's eyes flash. His hands fly across the controls with speed that can only be described as superhuman...as though he had seen the future itself...could this be a

////////NEWTYPE FLASH///////

?!?! Yes, that feeling of premonition, as his own beam saber lights from its shoulder-holster, as the blazing green beam is drawn forth in a single sweeping instant and brought into the path of Jung's own attack. Before the massive beam flag, the two sabers meet and spark with power; it's a battle of Iron Mask's will against Jung Freud's own, two tightly-directed ace pilots in combat atop the red planet. The beam saber presses against Jung's own as the contest of wills is brought into the physical-

-and then it is slid to the side, an expert parry from an expert fencer, and brought stabbing around for Jung's San's face. Iron Mask clearly intends to give her no quarter in this duel, especially if she thinks to cut him off from his soldiers!

The R-Wing bobs and waves through the flurry of enemy fire being launched at it from the DC base's long-range AAA and SAM stations, taking advantage of its speed and maneuvrability.

"Come on, R-Wing, come on..."

It breaks in a Split-S maneuver as three long-range missiles follow it through the maneuver - one crashing in the ground just as Ryusei recalls his machine from the dive, the second thrown off its trajectory by the explosion, leaving a second crater in the martian wastes while stray bullets and tracers and beams from antiaircraft fire whistle dangerously close by.

"DAMN!" Ryusei grits his teeth slamming the R-Wing's metakinetic brake, launching it in a 180 degree spin at the end of which it instantly enters a tight downward spiral. The crazy maneuver is just enough to send the missile flying over the craft, barely beyond its proximity detonator's range, until it becomes the third of many craters on the red sand of mars.

"Yeah!" Triumphantly, Ryusei brings the machine back on the straight and level. And that's a mistake.

So intent he was in dodging those missiles, that only now he notices the Flickerist hanging behind and above him like an ominous giant robot cloud of doom.

"Oh, shit." He immediately breaks to the left, hard, in a maneuver that on a conventional airplane would have Gs in the double-digits and probably turn the pilot into fine paste held togehter by a pilot-suit-shaped envelope. "Shitshitshit! I'VE BEEN CARELESS! STUPID RYUSEI! STUPIIID!"

"Don't kill me--!" Marchionessa Idunn blurts after Aki shouts at her; the apology gave her /just/ enough time to turn over and see the valkyrie-robot fall upon her with its spear, and despite her usual zeal and fearlessness while in the mask and mien of one of Dr. Hell's trusted follower, being faced with her imminent demise while in an unfamiliar cockpit and on an unfamiliar world makes for some vulnerability. The Gunman-Warrior Beast-Eva crosses its arms protectively over its upper face just before the spear hits--

--the--emerald sheath that springs into existence mere feet from the abomination's chassis. Inside the cockpit, the green pips cyclically swirl back and forth across the console as they briskly swap between lighting up and going dim. Outside, the spear - slowed, but unhalted by the barrier - begins to change: with each inch travelled, more of the shaft warps and twists into a corkscrew-like shape until finally, the head of the transfigured weapon manages to tap one of the abomination's forearms.

As soon as contact is made, the barrier vanishes, the spear returns to its normal linear shape, and the spear/head/ buries itself several feet into the Eva-Gunman Beast's armour before the Marchionessa manages to forcibly dislodge it by engaging the machine's jets to lift off.

"The manual di--" she begins to murmur to herself before remembering that she is basically always transmitting in this thing; after clearing her throat, she lowly states, "I'm /fine/, as you can see." The Eva-Gunman even crosses its arms over its chest to cut a more imposing figure in the sky, complete with emerald flickers licking off from its torso to form something like a cloak around it.

"If you were /really/ sorry, you would /leave/, anyway; there's nothing here for you, nothing that /belongs/ to you. You've already condemned yourself by setting foot here; turn around before you're fully damned."

Being that she is(making her best go at being) a cruel villainous and not a person interested in reasonable discourse, Idunn pulls the Eva-Gunman into its own dive, accelerating feet first towards Brynhildr. The object is clear: crushing the Armored Module into scrap beneath its heels through sheer kinetic force.

The result, however, won't quite match up because like five feet in, the Gunman loses its balance, tumbles through the sky and ends up falling towards the Brynhildr in what could best be described as 'a really awful belly flop'.

At least its belly has teeth; it might manage to get a bite in or something.

Quick on the uptake, Ibis Douglas, crash test dummy extraordinaire, realizes that she is not yet dead and immediately pulls her head up from the seat, her world now one filled with the steady hum of engines and the taste of new seat-covers and also that /new car smell/. "Guh, fu--" she sputters, about-facing in the seat and grabbing the controls. Sheer reflex. "What the hell is this?"

Seated approximately four or five feet behind Ibis, Tsugumi Takakura breathes a sudden and huge sigh of relief as Project Terrestrial Dream's most wayward child indicates signs of life, one hand going to her forehead as she sinks down in her seat. The Altairlion falls into a holding pattern while the fight rages outside, as if the cockpit were in another time. A time where... /cutscenes/ dictate how long people have to talk. Could it be?

No, we don't play that shit, so the awkward pause as the two ladies in the highly advanced space weapon is cut drastically short as a series of alarms suddenly ring out, which is kind of like the computer waving it's arms around and yelling at Ibis to get out of the way because if she wrecks this new ride, holy fuck, the paint hasn't even dried yet and you will be /screwed/.

"Tsugumi, I... I have no idea how to fly this thing!" a pause. Ibis rolls her neck from side to side.

"Fuckit. It's good to be back. Let's get out of here."

Chief Takakura's finger heavily presses the most important button in the entire machine, and a small equalizer pops up on the main screen as pulse-pounding uplifting trance starts blasting through the cockpit, and Ibis throws the elegant silver machine into a tight roll as a hailstorm of glimmering red blasts bear down on her.

The Altairlion leaps as though kicked straight in the robotic ass, hurled groundwards at Mach 2 because Fuck Sleigh Presty, and unfurls into humanoid Doll Configuration as it zig-zags in and out of the buildings dotting the Zeon base, because the only thing better than dodging someone's attack is using it to wreck their own home.

Another tiny window pops open on Ibis' viewscreen, linking her with the Amenthes by magical video-radio.

"Heh! Long time no see, runner. Feeling's mutual." she greets Ascian with an entirely too-casual manner, a grin spreading across her face as fire burns in her eyes. Is this /really/ Ibis freaking Douglas? The meek, depressed, defeatist wuss he faced at the Pillar of Heaven?

The Altairlion's hand suddenly grabs hold of a nearby squat concrete bunker and the maneuvering jets flare, throwing it into the air with a flourishing spin that leaves it facing the Amenthes. Weapons systems light up, energy travels through circuits, accelerator coils are primed...

Ibis quickly discovers that the Altairlion features such magical things like 'six railguns tied together' as her finger sinks into the firing stud on her big obvious pilot joystick, and her machine erupts with a hailstorm of hypervelocity slugs that track towards the Amenthes with more collateral damage than your body has room for.

Ryusei Date grins as the R-Wing is shaken from end to end by a series of massive explosions. The instrument panel's Master Damage Control monitor goes all red as an endless list of systems gets reported as damaged in varous ways or shapes.

Ryusei, of course, ignores all that and slams his fist on the panel.

"YOU'RE GOOD!" The smoking R-Wing flips and turns, and bends and twilsts and splits open, plates sliding on each other, wings retracting into a shield, cockpit morphing into a head, the whole frame turning into that of a humanoid machine. "R-OOONEEEEEE CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANGE!"

The robot turns to its pursuer while darting away, still following its previous momentum, as a beam rifle is pointed against it.

"WELL THEN! TAKE THIS! MEEGAAA BEEEEEEAAAAAAAAM RIIIIIIIIIIFLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! SHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!"

"He's got a light saber!"

"No, it's one of those future swords that cuts through metals really easily!"

"He's got a light saber!"

The Boss Borot's stomach opens up and a Boxing Glove springs out, punching the Light Vibro Plasma Energy Beam Saber away from making open heart surgery on the Boss Borot. Boss' face appears on James' radio screen, huge chin thrust out in anger.

"HEY YOU... you..." Boss turns away from the screen. "Who is this guy again?" Nuke and Mucha shrug from over Boss' shoulder. Boss turns back. "You aren't getting any of my Squid Pizza!"

"As they say in America!" The Boss Borot rears one big slab foot back. "SAYONARA!" And KICKS the power armor, aiming for a field goal into the base.

You're not Shinji!

Koji Kabuto bites his lip. Is this girl even for real? His broad shoulders are rising and falling rapidly with each panting breath. Despite the lighting, the Entry Plug feels incredibly claustrophobic. No clear curve of neo-glass to seperate him between the rest of the world.

No way out.

The rubber between Koji's fingers squeak as they re-settle around the control grips. Come on, you piece of nightmare shit. Show me what you've got--

"YOU PUT HIM IN THE MENTAL WARD, YOU CRAZY BITCH!" the Strongest Knight roars so loudly that it vibrates the LCL within the Plug. Bio-rhythm read-outs spike on the Vesalius spike. Synchronization seems to drop. Twenty-five percent.. twenty-four.. nineteen..

Asuka is angry. Koji is getting angrier.

"HE GAVE YOU HIS HEART AND YOU STOMPED ALL OVER IT!"

Unit-01's eyes smoulder like dying coals.

"HE DIDN'T DESERVE THAT.. YOU.. YOU..!!"

His nose flares. It reeks inside the Entry Plug. So much blood. Coppery and sweet on the tongue. Stinging his lips, yet exchanging oxygen inside his lungs. He can barely hear the distant heartbeat over his own. But then the rumbling of a train. A whistle--

"..YOU CALLOUS CUNT..!"

Asuka's Progressive Knife slams into Unit-01's chest.

Koji Kabuto feels like he's just been hit by that train.

"NYAGH!" he cries out in pain, bucking back in the Entry Plug's cushioned chair. Unit-01 is pushed right off its feet by the force of the blow. Its monstrous jaw drops, a pained sound coming from the depths of its throat.

Mastema Cannon and Progressive Dagger fall from the armor-plated hands of Unit-01. Another shot of LCL jets out from its rapidly-disintegrating chest-surface. Its F-Type Armor Option is failing.

> "Koji, concentrate! Your synchronization rate is failing--!"

"KISAMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-- !!"

Koji Kabuto screams ineffectively. He jerks hard on the controls, treating Shinji's mother roughly. It isn't intentional. He just only knows how to cope with anger.

Unit-01 reaches out with its empty hands, trying to fasten itself onto Unit-02's biceps. It snarls back at its rival, jaw gasping in the air. "Hyghhhhh.."

It bucks forward on Koji's rapidly-diminishing command, slamming its helmeted head onto Unit-02's forehead. The movements are jerky. The synchronization rate continues to plummet..

"Ngh!" Ryusei grinds his teeth as the Flickerist's quick counterattack slams into R-1's shield, but he's mostly grinning from satisfaction: his shot found the target." Well, now to bring it down.

"DAMN YOU!" This time, he remembers to push his radio button, on a clear channel for his opponent to hear. "GET OUT OF THE WAY! GIVE US BACK THE EVA AND ASUKA! SHE GOT SOME 'SPLAININ TO DOO!"

The Gunmen just can't buy a hit on the Bawoo -- certainly not yet, at least; Glemy Toto has a solid handle on the way it moves, and frankly, he just has something of a speed and reaction advantage. Nevertheless, he needs to keep the pressure on -- if he doesn't, he knows that a machine like that can get a one-up on him in short order.

Snapping both arms up toward the Gunmen, the Bawoo begins to fire on it in earnest with the twin mounted grenade launchers; the pressure isn't /stellar/, but it's consistent and happens at all ranges. Glemy keeps it up as he starts to buy some distance, even, realizing that he can control the fight a little more if he keeps himself away and maintains zones of control on Kamina's machine.

Crazy or not, the pilot of the Ashsaber manages to give the guns of the Vesalius quite the runaround. When even railguns can't keep up with the pilot's reaction speed at this distance, and they still find time for a pot shot whenever there's even the slightest chance for one, it wouldn't be a stretch to assume that they're indeed a Newtype - able to predict the attacks before they happen.

Naturally this only causes Puru Two's confidence to grow, and take greater risks. The PT zooms right over the battleship in an arc, switching the side it's attacking from, persisting with the Beam Machine Gun for all the little good it does. But once it arrives at the opposite side, it looks different. Less bulky, as if some of its armor broke off. That's because while above the ship, the Ashsaber released its Sword Breakers. This becomes evident a moment later when the remote weapons let loose with their purple death beams across the surface of the Vesalius before returning to the mech they came from.

At this point, there's just no way that Puru Two can't inform her opponents exactly who is giving them a beating, a visual feed soon confirming to Joshua and his crew that they're dealing with one of Glemy's personal army of child soldiers. Since it's important to specify, she does so, smirking the whole time: "This is Puru Two. Sorry you came yet? Don't worry, I'll make you a lot more sorry still."

Jung's weapon is short lived, meant as a holdout device for short proximity or if she'd been disarmed; the strain of San's musculature, so to speak, is enough to match the Zeonic machine, before the expert parry comes around and the blade whips towards the machine's face! If it had a face as such instead of a single eye.

Jung looks astonished.

The San's head explodes backwards. There is a series of actinic sparks and crackles of electricity as the Machine Weapon staggers back, catching itself on its spear as it momentarily ignites before canisters of fire-suppressant foam explode. It stands there, trembling slightly like a disgusting parody of giant sculpture, as if waiting for Iron Mask to finish it. Then...

Two small ports near the shoulders iris open as Jung remembers to exhale and inhale. The radio tells her that things are going south. "I don't have time to screw around with you," she mutters, even as her own psyche, perhaps previously englobed by Iron Mask's own menacing force, bulls forwards. San rears up in an inertialess flash, adjusting its spear almost casually -- and then the far end of it erupts with a violet lance of light, even as Jung swings it in two tight sweeps and a single punishing thrust as she advances.

"This mission is too important!!"

When Ibis pokes up on Ascian's viewscreen with that /grin/ of hers, with that spirited... no... /fiery/ look in her eyes, the young man can't help but do a doubletake... before he grins. "It's been a while since we've met - and even longer since I've seen that smile. The shields of the Orbital Frame flare up in response to her sudden approach, and the Amenthes swirves left and right, trying to get away from the enemy's attacks - only a few of them lashing across the shielding and creating dips in the unit's energy-output. "I had to pull out all my skills last time. I guess I better go over and beyond that this time."

He pauses the vid-window for a moment and concentrates on the target before him. The Phoenix continues to rise, right arm aimed still at the Altairlion. Duat starts recording as much data as it can get in the meantime, whilst Ascian tries to get a lock on it. But the Tesla driven unit is just /too fast/. So all Ascian can do is rely on his abilities with the targetting system - whilst synchronizing with Amenthes... and lets loose another set of red bolts - this time however, aimed quite accuractely at his opponent's railgun systems as it dives underneath!

Phoenix ripples; the bulletholes he just made in it start to close. Flynn stares at it with his mouth open, having no reason to hide his flabberghasted expression. He's so stunned that he barely remembers he needs to /dodge/, his Armored Core taking fire from the odd beam rifle. The beams diffuse against the Primal Armor somewhat, but they still make it through, searing the bronze-and-grey mech's armor as it dives and rolls to get out of the way. Glowing cuts are left in it, and the pilot is none too pleased.

Not that he could voice that. He's still kind of stuck on the 'nanoskin' bit. "Okay," states Sam, "that is kind of completely unfair." Insolent flips upside-down, it's Overbooster charged and blazing, hurtling it on a pillar of white light beneath and past the not-quite-a-Gundam. He gets another look at it and delivers another quick burst from the machine gun, coming up behind it and flicking the switch to cut the Overboost before his Primal Armor is completely downed because of it.

The Kojima particle density, dropped now, begins to recover with a whorl of green and white will-o'-wisps dancing all around the machine. The light show is only briefly interrupted by a second one starting, a bright blue cutting laser lashing out of a black remote that the NEXT had dropped during it's boost. The remote moves in graceful arcs until it gets too far from Insolent, then reverting to mechanical straight lines and hard angles, each time using the laser on joints whenever it sights one. Let's see if it can regenerate a limb.

Inside the cockpit, the Allegorical Manipulation System has powered on. Sam feels the customized OS connect the man-machine interface to him. He tries to blot out the noise, focusing on the hum of the machine and the constant feed of high-order mathematics he rapidly feeds the remote rather than the whispers in the back of his mind.

James Heller would be making vader breathing noises if he heard them arguing about light sabers. Btu that's not to be however there's a freaking boxing glove? The heck the blade is forced off and he says.

"Me? That's Japan! For heaven's sake you are Japanese!"

The Glitterboy nows falls off the other machine thankfully not getting hit just barely avoiding being like Chuck Brown.

He hits the ground, and the machine's looking up at the larger machine. The big gun locks into plac,e and makes a noise that is totally just like a Seige Tank deploying. James arms the Boom Gun and fires. There's a massive boom, windows on a near by building shatter. Glass rains down as smoke curls from the gun and heller says.

"Bang."

Under the translucent lenses of her sunglasses and the glare of her monitors, Lethe's eyes narrow as Ryusei makes a very sudden, very dynamic, and very skillful series of dodges and rolls. Evading the suppression fire from the base is a skillful trick, but the gynoid's head tilts back just slightly, setting her jaw while the targeting systems continue-- and the purple-hued beams from the Sword Breakers continue their assault. And then there's her scanners, trying to pull more data out.

There, finally, he takes a hit from the beams-- but now he's making a sudden turn like that? The reason for such a maneuver becomes apparent when the R-1 shifts back to it's humanoid form. Lethe digs in her heels on the control pedals and whips the control sticks back along their respective tracks, feeling the whole weight of the black Ashsaber variant roll back, shift so the legs and feet can swing forward and provide an air buffer before thrusters flare with blue. The *BANG* is considerable, and the gynoid is forced to adjust her weight in the seat as momentum and G-force try to throw her /out/ of the chair.

"... tch..." Lethe doesn't even notice the tic of emotion on her face.

Her lips purse, and the Flickerist's right arm swings around a few moments later-- creating a sizable shield, of sorts, with the forearm and limb itself-- and allows the blast to collide with the armor with enough force that the Assault Dragoon shudders. In the process, the left hand swings up gunslinger-style underneath that right arm, the cylinder of her plasma revolver spinning up and firing a double-tap back at the R-1 in return.

Continuing to hover in the air, gliding on momentum alone, the Flickerist's weight rolls forward and allows the thrusters to fire again. The nozzles fill with a brilliant blue, and the machine charges the R-1 with a little extra speed and force behind it--

"Boost Knuckle," the gynoid intones.

And the right arm swings, the massive fist aiming to throw a punch. The shielding on the right arm likewise splits open mid-swing, revealing a whole /other/ vernier-- and it accelerates the punch at the R-1 to something a whole lot faster and angrier!

"Hey, don't get me wrong or anythin'!" Aki's voice sounds out from her mech's speakers, though she has mercifully cut the volume roughly in half to avoid blasting the entire battle with her platitudes. Behind her, the DOOF DOOF DOOF of her music continues, and it's maybe-just-maybe in time with that music that she acts.

The area under the Brynhildr is suddenly awash with flame as her spear makes a 'chlonk' sound and bucks; under the low gravity of Mars her light machine is harshly buffeted upwards both from the force of the explosion and from the mech itself using the spear to pole vault upwards, engines kicking in along multiple joints of the mech mid-rise to twist it into a rapid lateral spin.

"I was just here t'help out an old friend! Yer the one who attacked me first, so don't give me that! What's wrong with me payin' a visit?" Despite the harsh words, she's audibly grinning eagerly; the faintly childish tone of someone spoiling for a sparring match. "I ain't got any interest in killin' yer, but I sure don't have any interest in dyin' either!"

The spear kicks repeatedly mid-spin, the air around the Brynhildr now filled with spinning ammo capsules; one is ejected at speed, and bounces off the Machine Beast's chestplate with a harmless ping as it swoops past. A moment later Aki herself has risen past the falling Darcy, hovering alongside the lone canister like a basketball player, the end of her spear suddenly extending a long brilliant white blade of light.

With a raw yell, she spikes the ammo pod downwards with the end of the blade, sending it twisting down towards its companions and her opponent, bulging and breaking with sudden energy; it explodes in the midst of its twins, and then they explode and they explode and who knows what's going on in that ball of fire.

As Koji blinks for a second, he is suddenly standing in a train car at dusk. The reddish orange light of the setting sun lights the car just barely. On the row of seats to the right, you get the feeling that someone is absent. Beside those seats is a duffle bag with a familiar walkman on top. There is a feeling of crippling loneliness that lingers here, fading as if just a residual memory implanted somewhere into the core of where ever this is.

Suddenly there is the feeling of being watched from a far off source. As time goes on, it becomes more and more prominent.

If Koji blinks gain, a second passes and Koji is back in the real world where only a second passed.

Kamina growls louder as his second attack hits empty space again. Why can't he hit this machine?! It wasn't that much faster! This jerk was laughing at him. Smart know it all asshole! Kamina feels his blood begin to boil as he is about to go in for another attack---but he is instead treated to grenades exploding against the outer armor of his gunmen. The machine is damaged but still going, losing yet more armor and turning it's red hull to a blackish color. The Gunmen turns on it's helm, blasting empty space...again...with fire that defies logic. I mean---how the hell does fire work in space?

Breathing heavily, Kamina glares at Glemy's Bawoo, checking the damage to his Gunmen. Still working but this guy is going to take him down quick if Kamina doesn't keep up the pressure. He has to slip up sooner or later.

Kamina comes at the Bawoo again, swinging both Chainswords. One from the left and one from the right.

"CHOKE ON THIS, SMARTASS! TWO IS BETTER THAN ONE DUAL SLASH!"

All of sudden, a fist! And it gets bigger and bigger in R-1's viewscreen! "DAMN!" Is all the wit Ryusen can muster as he just grabs the throttle and pulls it down below idle, letting the R-1 drop like a sack of bricks in the considerably-lower martian gravity. Will it be enough?

Ashsaber's Sword Breakers tear holes in the hull of the ship, creating a few hull breaches in several places and resulting in fires below deck, as the alarms and equipment inform the crew. Joshua stares for a moment, and then, in a suspiciously Bright-like gesture, pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs.

This attack is proving to be quite the disaster. Kabuto is going out of synch, people are losing their cool, Boss is advocating /picking on nerds/ and they simply cannot hit this Ashsaber. Which, it turns out, is being piloted by a Puru. Grand.

Well, he at least owes her an answer. "One of Glemmy Toto's, then? Congratulations on your leader's recent ascendance. Let me assure you, it will not last very long." As stressed as he might sound, the young commodore's voice is cool and level, in a practiced manner. Never show weakness to the enemy or around your subordinates.

Another missile ls launched, but this one does not work quite the same way. It releases a signal-jamming pulse, which may well mess with the Ashaber's onboard computer.

To continue to fight without a head...very impressive, especially for what was almost assuredly a commoner. Iron Mask had to admit some grudging respect for the pilot of the San, even as his beam shield comes up to defend him against his foe's surprise beam poleaxe; the shield just springs to life as the poleaxe swings downwards, the other arm pressing against the back of it from the enormous strength of Jung's strike. Sparks fly, a terrible sound from the clash echoing across the battlefield as the other Den'an Zons swarm forward once again, their morale reinvigorated by their master.

Iron Mask frowns. To find a commoner who fought so hard, as though she were a noble (not that he knew it was a she, but somewhere the Cyber-Newtype /knew/)...

She deserved a nobleman's death, at the very least.

Iron Mask draws the beam flag, raising it into the sky. The mysterious banner flashes in the Martian Sky as the beam flag's point becomes very clear - the bottom is a sharpened tip, meant for breaking ground and establishing a rallying point. A very, very sharpened tip -

Oh.

Iron Mask's Cyber-Newtype Pressure reaches its peak as he rams the spear downwards - ready to jam the flag straight through Jung's machine, to rip her to shreds and give her some honor...as well as baptising the flag of Cosmo Babylonia in the blood of a Federation Pilot.

Or, at the least, the oil of her machine.

Apparently, yes! The R-1 drops just below the blazing fist as it rockets past, just where R-1's cockpit was a minute earlier.

Giving some throttle back, Ryusei recovers the robot just before it uncerimoniously crashes in the martian sand. The landing is still loud and messy, half-digging a crater from the impact and the green-colored psychokinetic wave it unleashes.

As he stands back up from its three-point landing, R-1's eyes and hands glow green, in fact. It strikes a pose, with a hand outstretched and pointed at Lethe's Flickerist and the other drawn back, as if it were about to fire an imaginary bow.

Instead, where the arrow should be, a giant, glowing green sword of pure energy forms in a flash of light.

"The Eva... We'll be taking that back! But, more importantly... My promise to Shinji... I'LL KEEP IT!"

"TAKE THIIIIS! HEAVEN AND EARTH UNITE TO HONOR A PROMISE BETWEEN TWO REAL MEN, AND TO LIGHT A PATH OUT OF SADNESS! T-LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINK SWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORD!"

And the blade flies away!

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Lethe Rusina sounds briefly... irritated. "This..."

Phoenix Gundam /does/ cheat. Ilyse is the first to admit it. But she /built/ it to cheat, so that's okay. That makes it cheating with her mind.

"Heh," Ilyse says. Her eyes are looking a little wild, but they do that sometimes; she has to keep up with a truly ludicrous amount of data from the black box system, scanning the Kojima particle cloud around the enemy Armoured Core while simultaneously flying Phoenix. It rolls sideways, flying upside down until Ilyse is uncomfortable enough doing that in gravity to flip back upright; shots fly to its side, but never manage to quite connect.

Ilyse considers her options. She removes one of the beam sabers from its docking point and affixes something small to the hilt; then she winds up and throws it, overhand, at Sam. It flies right past him, a cutting circle of energy.

Then the thruster she attached activates, and the saber comes /back/, boomeranging for Phoenix Gundam and trying to slice through Insolent's back while it does. Ilyse herself has started to back up, slightly, toward the Vesalius; her boss might need support.

Glemy Toto is in fact a smart know-it-all asshole. This is why he is Supreme Commander of Zeon and why Kamina has trouble with fractions. Unfortunately, being a smart know-it-all asshole has its perks over being the guy who has trouble with fractions. One of them, of course, is the fact that Glemy can pull off the split-second calculations needed in battle rather than relying on heart -- and that means that when the incoming fire and chainswords are no problem.

This time, though, he does a trick that might make Kamina proud -- the machine, for just a moment, splits into two separate planes, the chain swords catching empty air; they then come back together /behind/ Kamina, with Glemy instantaneously taking his beam saber and readying it yet again.

He doesn't attack with it, though -- the resultant angle is just not good for that kind of assault, right now; instead, he slams the Bawoo's shield directly into the back of the Gunmen, then pushes back away again with his new momentum.

The Boss Borot flops onto his back with a wide mouthed ARRRRRRGH face. But there's still time. There's time while the Big Boom Gun is charging up.

The Boss Borot reaches down, plugging the barrel with a finger. There's a dull 'pop' and when the Boss Borot removes the finger, smoke comes from the barrel. The Boss Borot flounders back up to its feet. "Hah! You think that is an ultimate weapon! THIS IS AN ULTIMATE WEAPON! I have figured out the power of the EEE VEE SHIT! It runs on Eldritch Horror knowledge from unspeakable books!"

Boss stands in his cockpit and pulls out... EVERYBODY POOPS

Suddenly, horrible vacuum tube limbs fly out from the Boss Borot. There's a flash to hide the fact that the Boss Borot pulls a shoddy cthulhu paper bag over its face.

"ISN'T SCARY! SUPER DELUXE IA IA FATGHN EAT YOUR FACE BECAUSE MY DAD DIDN'T LOVE ME ENOUGH EVEN THOSE ALL THESE GIRLS LOVE ME AND EVERYONE THINKS I'M REALLY COOL EVEN THOUGH ALL I DO IS WRITE ON MY LIVEJOURNAL ABOUT HOW I AM SUCH A SAD SACK PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWNCH!"

The Boss Borot wheels its arm, uppercuting the Glitterboy!

"DX!"

The tip sinks deep into San's armor, where bullets had failed. The Machine Weapon lurches once.

Jung's lips, behind the armored faceplate of a normal suit, worn largely 'just in case', curl backwards. She thinks she can see that faint clouding of blue again...

She speaks, more to herself than to anyone present (or indeed to Bruno Global, who had just piped up, doubtless, Jung thinks, hoping to catch them with their pants down).

"Think you can back me in a corner in front of my unit... I ought to teach you a thing or two..."

Her head snaps up, a distinct ripple of psychic force coming from her renewed resolution: "Eat it!"

The lance twists around, arcing to slam into Iron Mask. He's still held to her momentarily by her banner, and this is what Jung is hoping for - a single stunning strike to knock him back. "Jacobiniiiiii --"

The next lunge turns rapidly into two, eight, sixty-four flurrying stabs. Perhaps. "METEOOOOR --" A final downward slash with both hands: "ATTACK!!" Desperate, perhaps.

Perhaps. But also _very slightly legendary_, and certainly containing more force than her previous feints. Desperation can move people to legendary heights.

In a blaze of glory, the punch-- fails to meet it's target. Lethe's eyes widen under her sunglasses, and immediately the gynoid is whipping one control stick back and flooring the opposite pedal, fingertips dancing across the buttons on the control sticks. That machine couldn't possibly be /that/ agile, could it? The design looked just like...

"You..."

The blade strikes-- and comes into contact with a physical blade! The curved blade mounted on the back of the elbow is there in an attempt to /stop/ the R-1's blade along it's edge, but the resistance lasts only a few seconds before it shatters the blade-- and then /rips/ into the modified Ashsaber's torso in an upward swing. Lethe fires /everything/ in reverse, trying to get some clearance as fast as she can.

"This is the pilot's will, regardless of Federation opinion. Disappear."

And then those four Shadow Bits appear again, aiming to assault the R-1 from all sides-- making tight-angle, narrow strafing runs, trying to cross up the Personal Trooper on all sides with a single barrage of purple beam fire!

In the back seat, Tsugumi is blabbing on and on with some kind of technobabble readout that Ibis can't really be bothered to really comprehend because her blood is up, and she has a new toy, and she's just riding the rollercoaster of emotions and excitement and hoping it doesn't launch her off halfway through. Ascian, perhaps unluckily, can hear the /sick bass/ of the Altairlion's stereo system through the communications link.

"Gosh, you're too kind..." muses Ibis, still grinning. She doesn't know what half of these buttons do. She doesn't need to. It'll all work out somehow. "I nearly got spaced last time, except I dressed for the occasion. Don't talk me up too much."

The silver Armored Module's ludicrously overtorqued twin-tesla drive continues to send it in wide arcs around the Amenthes as though the battle were but a dance, buoyed on plumes of neon green fire that probably ate half of the animation budget. It drops from the sky, leading Ascian on a wild shooting spree as Ibis makes for a supremely annoying target to actually hit as she continuously swaps from ground, to air, to ground again, deflecting a volley of the Orbital Frame's finest high-energy projectiles with a well-timed block and also maybe someone's car.

"Still, I owe you one. So I'll try to make this quick...!"

Tsugumi throws both hands in the air in the Altairlion's back seat because Ibis is pretty clearly not listening to a word she says, and settles for just putting a giant targetting recticle over the Amenthes in the hopes that her sometimes-stupid ace pilot will get the hint.

Project TD's Hyper EX Neo-Experimental Armored Module transitions to a ground-fighting role. Which means that the gigantic nacelles on either side of its torso containing giant-ass railguns flip up into a ready position, the targetting software really doing most of the work here. Either way, it's Ibis who presses the firing stud, and her eyes go hella wide with surprise as the Altairlion's cannons loose what look like /giant laser beams/ at the Amenthes.

Sadly, for her, they're just sweet Eraser-style railgun trails.

James Heller is starting to be at a loss for words agianst the Boss Borot. What the heck was the thing, the rounds from the gun just don't do anything. As another ultiamte weapon. Wait is that punch? That punch with the power to end Amuro Ray himself?! It couldn't be he's force to try and duck. The pylons are still into the ground, and he can't really move. At this point the shockwave from the sonic boom would be hitting the enemy robot. Somehow he surived and he's pulled his machine free.

"Okay no more games!"

R-1 barely tries to dodge the bits, instead blasting at full speed against the Flickerist. The R-1 is wrecked again by the concentrated fire, lamost ripped to shreds, but for some bizarre reason it still holds together, kept intact where any other machine would have already imploded by the telekinetic field of the T-Link system - literally held together by willpower.

"STEEEEEEEEEEL KNIIIIIIIIIIFEEEEEEEEEEE!!!"

The blade stays in R-1's hands for a little more than a second. The two robots crash against each other violently, sending sparks flying all around. The Steel Knife is jammed in the Flickerist's shoulder in the ensuing melee, looking almost more like a rocket-powered wrestling match between two equally hideously beat-up machines.

In the tangled mess of armor and mechanical limbs, another scream breaks out, followed by antoher flash of green light.

"T-LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINK SWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORD!"

R-1's hand is, however, pressed against Flickerist's chest and- wait. Wait, wait, wait. Is he seriously trying to form the T-Link Sword DIRECTLY INSIDE the Flickerist?

Kamina lifts brown while his face contorts in fury. How the hell was this guy doing this?! Was it fractions?! Damnit! Why the hell did any pilot need those fractions?! Who cares about halts and thirds! IT WAS ONES THAT MATTERED. All or nothing. No halves about it.

The leader of the Gurren Brigade blinks when the machine splits into two. How---He doesn't get a chance to finish think before the shield ams into the Gunmen's back. The gunmen is knocked forward with a shield shaped dent in it's ass. The force knocks the chainswords out of the Basannigan's hands, forcing it to draw it's stolen beam saber.

Meanwhile.

Camille returns to his Gundam after going out to get some beer for the Argama's crew. He drops the beer as he looks up at his Gundam, staring in disbelief as he notices the missing beam saber on the machine's back.

"WHAT?! DAMNIT! WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING TO ME?! I SWEAR TO GOD! WHEN I FIND THIS GUY---!!!"

Back In Space

Kamina ignites his Beam Saber and spins around, attempting to slice into the Bawoo as it turns around. "You can't keep dodging forever, bastard!!"

The reply Puru Two receives causes her expression to quickly devolve into a frown. Threats towards Glemy's rule are evidently very poorly received. "Oh yeah? Says who?" After the kneejerk reaction, she shakes her head. "It's always the same with you people. All you care about is breaking Zeon, no matter who's in charge." Not that this matters much to her. Eternal conflict is fine. It's good to have plenty of reason to keep fighting, guaranteeing that she'll always remain useful. But it's still annoying all the same!

And then, another missile. Puru Two can't help but roll her eyes, of course she's going to dodge that as easily as all the others. And she does, too. Except the explosion is different, and the effect reaches her machine from further away than she thought. Her transmission cuts off immediately, and her instruments go haywire. "Wuh... what's this? Come on, you stupid machine!" All she can think of to possibly fix it is bash on the console, which is about as effective as you'd think. Now she wishes she did have the psycommu-equipped machine, mental signals aren't so easily jammed.

Puru Two's structured attack is effectively halted for the time being, but that doesn't stop an unstructured one from happening. As a side effect of the equipment malfunction, the Sword Breakers fly off again, moving in random directions while firing constantly. It may not be as effective as a direct attack, but it's still capable of doing some damage, if they happen to aim in the right spot.

Boss Borot flings his fist towards the sonic boom! "FALCO-" The Sonic Boom crashes against the Boss Borot, shattering all the glasses that the three pilots are suddenly holding. The Boss borot staggers backwards, waving its arms.

Then Boss notices that the Glitterboy is actually stuck there and just starting to pull up. And a devilish grin comes over Boss' face.

The Boss Borot backs right up towards Glitterboy, sticking its butt right up against the power armor.

"Mucha, pull my finger."

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Lethe Rusina transmits, "Tch--"

To avoid his attack was impressive...but to yell like some sort of lunatic on the field of battle...what an unfortunately commoner mistake!

Still, it's a commoner mistake that's quite effective. The bubble of psychic force smashes across the incredible presence that is Iron Mask's mind, crashing like a wave into the beach of his mindscape; it is the first warning of the attack, and he hurries to bring his shield up in time. But he does not succeed.

He does not succeed at all, as the lance stabs downwards into his shoulder and knocks the Den'an Zon Kai's shoulderpad clean off, exposing its sparking shoulder. He does not succeed, as one slash turns into two and sheers off the face of the Den'an Zon Kai, cutting through its domeish helmet and sending half its skull spiralling away from it. He does not succeed, as two becomes eight, pelting his machine with holes from the beam-pole, piercing through the shoulders, the torso, narrowly evading the cockpit only because that is where his defense is situated.

And as all sixty-four strikes hit at once, he is propelled away, falling to the ground with a thud and landing flat on his back. Was the mysterious reinforcement leader defeated? Did Jung Freud just finish the new soldiers as soon as they've arrived?

The Den'an Zon Kai's fingers twitch. It rises slowly, purposefully into the air, sparking but still moving, its white paint dirtied red and black with dust and oil, as though it were covered in the blood of Jung's machine and the will of Mars itself. Iron Mask's mind flashes strong once again, resuming his dominant pressure across the battlefield. So, that was the strength of a Newtype...a true Newtype...

Impressive. Most impressive.

But not enough. Iron Mask, deprived of his standard, does not hesitate for an instant; the shot lancer - a long, thin, and very pointed lance - is drawn forth, hurled towards Jung in an instant. It spirals towards her machine, looking to stagger her with the initial blow - and hot on its heels is the Den'an Zon Kai and its beam saber, rising high into the sky. As he closes for melee, the other hand snaps forward, reaching to rip the beam flag violently from Jung's body...and then swing both the sword and the flag down in an I-Field-filled X-Strike right across the machine, to cut her into four even pieces in a single blow. It would take true skill to avoid this...

Iron Mask looked forward to seeing if she had the strength.

Despite the field of green hexagons that springs into existence around the falling abomination, point blank ammo explosions are /extremely/ nasty busy; to say that the Eva-Gunman-Beast is in dire straits would be an understatement on par with suggesting that Michael Jackson was 'a little strange' or that R. Kelly 'likes fourteen year old girls'. First, the machine crashes belly first into the Martian soil, giving it and its pilot a blissful, terrible moment of peace before--

KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

Great plumes of smoke slowly swirl upwards from the crater, seemingly loathe to stray too far from what the hell at its bottom. Gouts of fire periodically cut through the blackness, but the smoke is so thick that they're actually somewhat difficult to see clearly; the occasional green flash is also visible amidst the smoke and the fire, but they're faint at best.

"A--aghh--can't--" Marchionessa Idunn burbles, too shocked by being in the center of a goddamn ammo explosion to even try working her controls--or, really, to pay much attention to her monitor.

Her monitor whose spiralling emerald pips are practically vibrating against the boundaries of their gauge as they rapidly fill and empty, swirl and recede.

"--lose--" Idunn exhales. "I can't--disappoint--I /won't/--!"

A hand - cracked and broken to reveal glowing amber nothingness - thrusts from the Brynhildr's fiery holocaust and grips the edge of the crater; as soon as its fingers dig into the earth, the smoke and fire clinging to its body all swirls together, forming a great cyclone of oppressive heat that will only last for seconds before exploding away from the Eva-Gunman-Beast's body and dissipating into nothingness.

Supported by that one hand, the machine /vaults/ from its crater, flipping adroitly through the air before landing fully upright beneath the Brynhildr. An explosion rocks its frame as soon as it hits the ground--perhaps a sign that the damage it's sustained - and judging from the myraid of cracks and missing pieces of armour marring its entire form, it has indeed suffered intense amounts of damage - have left it incapable of functioning.

When the smoke clears from the latest explosion, that possibility will be put to rest, however; almost all of the abomination's armour is gone in favour of what seems to be a forty meter tall man made entirely of green-flecked fire. A face still leers from its belly, but its features shift and flicker just like the rest of its form; in fact, the only /solid/ segments of its body are still-intact rings of armour around its shoulders, waist, hips and wrists, seeming to almost cage what must otherwise be an unstable form.

The Eva-Gunman-Beast-Fire Elemental raises its right hand all the way above its head; a ball of fire leaps from its palm and spirals off into the sky with clear designs on sharing the explosive wealth by clinging to the Brynhildr's body.

All the while, Marchionessa Idunn sits in the cockpit with her mouth agape and her eyes open as wide as they'll go beneath her flowery domino mask.

The mental ward? Asuka's lips twinge into a frown at Koji's revelation, though it's short-lived, replaced with a string of insults and curses that have been directed at her a thousand times before. She's angrier now than she was even before -- but it's not the insults that have her fuming.

It's the fact that he's taking the side of Shinji Ikari!

"/I'm/ the crazy bitch?" she demands, with all the biting rage of a teenage girl. "Did you already forget what your beloved Shinji did to me?! Or do you think I should have responded to his confession of love differently /after/ he finished strangling me?!"

He lunges at her, head-first; his motions are almost feral, and for a second, the redheaded pilot is certain the unit has reverted to its beast mode. But its movements are clumsy -- not as fast as it would be if the Evangelion were truly self-propelled, and Asuka sidesteps it easily, then moves to attack with her progessive knife again as he passes.

"I don't care if it's you, /or/ if it's Shinji; the two of you tried to take my Unit-02 away from me!" And that -- more than their assault on the DC base -- made them the enemy.

And while the Unit is still turned, she makes for an attack, slashing viciously at Unit-01's back.

When the vid-window is unpaused, Ascian catches those last words whilst also noticing the gigantic railgun aimed at him. "Don't underestimate the Amenthes!" Ascian calls back and pours more energy into the shields. The frame raises its legs and crosses its arms - and the impossibly high-velocity and high-energy projectile ends up ramming straight into the center! The shield ripples, then is crushed, causing the remaining Kinetic force to crash against the Amenthes and shatter, tearing into her armor and flensing off pieces of the underlying skeleton. Red lights go burning all across the cockpit, but Ascian doesn't care about those.

"Duat, take care of those!" He calls out, whilst he Amenthes brings both of its arms together... forward... as he once again recalls the memory of that battle against the Wing Zero. Those beams. Space begins to warp and bend, then contract between himself and Ibis' position. She might suddenly find it harder to ignite those thrusters, as space contrinues to compress - pressuring down on the metal of her unit.

And all the while, he gets to listen to that sweet-ass rock music, and he's nudging his head at it. Ibis sure had some good taste, he conciders, whilst the energy from the Amenthes' core flows straight into its twin arms pressed together, and form a single large rifleweapon. The claws that hold... what are obviously the /boobs/ of the Amenthes, turn and clamp onto the base of this weapon, allowing the weaponized Metatron energy to charge up the plasma-stream of energy that follows seconds later. It just spreads straight down for her position, and if she'd fly off, it'd just follow her. The only problem is... defenses?

Suddenly, there's a hand pressed up to her machine's chest. Suddenly, warnings and meters spike. Suddenly, the left-hand side of her cockpit starts to spark and stutter. Lethe's eyes widen as a glow starts to appear in front of her, and her head /lurches/ to one side as a flow of T-Link energy appears /inside/ the cockpit. The twist is fairly sudden and violent, enough so that her sunglasses slip off her face and are engulfed in the momentary burst of light, heat, and flame--

-- and the Flickerist's fist swings a second time, the thruster firing that much more violently. It misses, much like a boxing counter gone horribly wrong, and the Flickerist's thrusters fire to push it off to the right; the R-1's left. In the cockpit, Lethe is sporting a rather nasty gash across her forehead, but she doesn't seem to be fazed by it. More... irritated by it.

Taking advantage of the close range, the Flickerist's left arm lifts with a scream and whine of twisted and damaged metals, the revolver aiming at the body while Ryusei's machine is so near. Two more of the modified Sword Breakers slide out of the knee guards, swirling in tight formation around the left hand and--

"You will not escape this time, Ryusei Date!"

All six bits /fire/, the output increased-- and creating a massive beam of purple energy that threatens to punch into the R-1 instead!

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> DC S Asuka Langley Sohryu transmits, "Why would they send out a novice pilot like that in Unit-02? He knows nothing about Eva!"

The scattershot isn't enough to break through the Vesalius's shields this time. Nonetheless, as more missiles miss the Ashsaber, Joshua is already planning just which drinks he'll order tonight after he's off-duty. There will be drinks, oh there will be many drinks. Every battle that goes poorly is a stain on his record and bodies being sent home under his command, and he can't stand for that.

"We don't want to eliminate Zeon," he nonetheless counters Puru Two in a disingenuously polite voice. "If you were willing to negotiate with us on reasonable terms, it'd be different. As it is, you're an enemy nation. What do you expect? Still, you're very skilled-you do your leader proud." He switches that frequency off for a moment, turning to his crew. "We can't pinpoint it, so we should try to attack a broad range around it! Pin it and limit its movement. I'd rather spend more money on missiles than send more crewmembers home, so fire away!"

On those orders, Ashsaber will find itself facing far more missiles than usual in a broader spread, something that will be trickier to out-maneuver.

Ryusei Date needs to act faster than ever. He lifts his R-1's legs up, then straight up -KICKS- away the Flickerist in the hope of messing up its aim just barely enough, sommersaulting away...

"You don't know who you're dealing with," Glemy Toto says over the radio as Kamina comes in for that vicious attack with a stolen beam saber -- and meets only high-quality laminate shield for his troubles. The shield does lose a chunk --but it's not even the chunk with the cannon on it, meaning Glemy's losses are pretty marginal.

The use of a beam saber on a Gunman, however, /does/ manage to at least make Glemy serious up a little bit. It's a unique design, he thinks -- incorporating strengths from a few different models. It's no Gundam, but it's intriguing -- perhaps he'll have to ask around about the machine later.

Deciding his current advantage means he can afford to play a little riskier for the sake of getting this over quickly, Glemy comes in for a beam saber assault of his own -- using both sabers to the fullest, coming in for strike after strike to the body of the Gunmen. It's not exactly super complicated... but it's aggressive, and he /does/ need to prove that even being Supreme Commander hasn't taken away his aggressive edge.

...And it doesn't work. The crossfire smashes traight in the R-1's shield, blasting it into oblivion together with the R-1's left arm. As its main left engine bloc explodes, the robot's attitude and flight controls shot to hell and back, Ryusei screams in anger and surprise.

Then, the R-1 slams against the deck, opening another crater in the martian landscape.

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Lethe Rusina gets a little more even. "Target down."

A lance is thrown, spiralling towards Jung.

For some reason, for a fleeting instant, she experiences a memory someone else has. She blinks once during this. It means she doesn't see what she actually does.

Iron Mask may not have the chance to see it. He pulls the flag out of the San, and then suddenly with astonishing speed, to the point of seeming to instantaneously disintegrate. Did the blow come with such force that the Federal machine merely fell into a hole?

"Hah!" comes Jung's reply, floating a half-kilometer above her current position, the ion thruster on the back of "San" keeping the inertialess machine at perfect balance between the friction of Mars's atmosphere and the pull of its gravity. She glances, worriedly, towards the duelling Evangelions for a moment. Can Koji Kabuto succeed...?

Jung throws the Shot Lancer down with casual disdain. "I've got your strategy figured out... That thing isn't some old fashioned battle standard, is it? You've been hoping to disguise your I-field systems with that medieval anachronism!" Jung: over-educated.

She can't fail here, she thinks. The attack's already faltering. If they falter much further - on /Mars/, already hostile territory to begin with...

San dives down with stunning force, aiming to pinion the Den'an Zon to the martian soil with its own included spear, leading with the non-beamy end. "HRAAAH!!"

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Lethe Rusina transmits, "I have suffered damage, but I am able to provide support."

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Ascian Luddite tssk... "Douglas' new model is quite something... and her pilotting skills remain to be fantastic."

As Kamina's next strike misses it's mark, the pilot is silent. He is even silent when Glemy has the nerve to radio him. He growls, holding the saber ready. He is about to go in for another strike but is instead charged by Glemy's assault. Slash after slash come raining down on the Gunmen, forcing Kamina to attempt block each incoming attack. He is only successful in keep Glemy from completely overwhelming him. The attacks that get through, slice into the armor, exposing components as the armor has worn away.

It is no longer about winning for Kamina. It is about hitting this guy so hard that he remembers who the hell he is dealing with. Kamina growls, closing his eyes as he concentrates. His anger pulses through him, forcing his will power to manifest.

The onslaught of slashing continues as Kamina suddenly opens his eyes and yells. "BACK OFF!!!" From literally nowhere, a drill fires from the Gunmen's chest, spinning toward Glemy's cockpit. "BET YOU THINK YOU'RE SO DAMN GOOD, EH?! WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK -YOU- ARE DEALING WITH?!"

Kamina couldn't do things as well as Simon but since his time as Duke Brazen, he could at least tap into that part of him that Dr. Hell unlocked.

Aki spots the readouts on her console as her opponent suddenly hulks up - not that she /believes/ said readouts, of course, machines don't suddenly become hulking huge figures of energy that would be extremely silly - and instinctively cranes her neck back to look behind her and visually confirm.

This turns out to be a spectacularly bad idea given that there's nothing back there except the back of her cockpit, the angle too acute for her to see the incoming ball of flame. Impact sends her lunging forward in her seat with a nasty case of whiplash; she yelps audibly over her speakers as the Brynhildr boosts upwards in an attempt to get away from the worst of the damage, but most of the back of the mech is now scarred and pitted and badly in need of repait.

But she seems to shrug it off as she recovers from the upward tailspin, righting herself as the boosters kick in to send her soaring around the giant of flame. "That's seriously cool!" she adds, unable to stop the enthusiasm; "Check it out, you're /totally/ on fire, how does that even /work/, what the hell!"

The stream of compliments and low-range radio chatter certainly sounds sincere, but it's a bit hard to take it all seriously when at exactly the same time the mech has fallen into a dead-on dive, spear set in a charge, the plasma beam at the top arcing contrails of white all around the machine.

"--even so, I'm totally not going to be beaten!" Aki grins over her radio, and whirls at the very last moment, aiming to cut a mad dance of arcs of brilliant light through the midst of the flame beast.

The R-1 falls. The Flickerist's left arm lowers as the bits break their formation, scattering to fly out and dock back into their respective ports in short order. As it hovers over the machine, all the way until it crashes, Lethe's eyes remain locked on it, lingering even a few seconds longer than before. What was the feeling that she was experiencing?

Heightened aggression, check. Piloting a little more sloppy than usual, check. Breaking her usual silence? Check.

Was she... angry?

Lethe closes her eyes, trying to push the thought aside. Something like that didn't have a place in her programming. Would Mistress Lemon ever make something like that possible inside of someone like her? What would Echidna-- that is, what would /W-16/ say?

Flipping switches on her console, the purple-haired gynoid starts to vent the cockpit's air, getting the smoke out and checking the total damage done... because she doesn't want to have to deal with something like that /again/.

"Oh, /jeez/!" crows Ibis over the bone-rattling sound of music in her cockpit, momentarily pausing the future talk-to-your-enemy radio to call back to Tsugumi. "I can't believe you guys actually finished it! It's... Tsugumi, I think I'm gonna cry!"

"Ibis, /pay attention!/"

Comms back on, Ibis' red mop of hair reappears once again instead of the --PLEASE WAIT-- symbol, and her eyes and track from side to side, up and down in rapid succession as she tries to gauge the best way to get out of this situation. The Altairlion's G-Accelerator nacelles swing back into standby position, looking very much like big-ass fancy fins, and the fancy silver mech pauses, facing off with the Amenthes in a wicked Mexican standoff.

"I'm not underestimating anything..." mutters the A-LAWS vigilante, mostly to herself, feathering the boost controls as the enemy Frame spins itself a ginormous rifle and starts pumping it full of juice straight from the reactor. Her eyes narrow. The equalizer for the music is pretty much thumping straight into the red and staying there. Tsugumi is yelling at her to move.

Showtime.

The Altairlion explodes upwards like a racecar off the mark as the Metatron blast comes soaring out of the Amenthes' rifle, and it starts countering the best way it knows how: missile spam. Ibis' feet jam down on the pedals in her cockpit in a complicated-ass dance while she wrestles with the control stick in one hand and starts option-selecting her weapons with the other, and it's all the poor, beleaguered brunette in the backseat to do to keep up.

The ordinance bays fling open and what looks like hundreds of missiles come pouring out of the Altairlion, billowing white clouds of smoke filling the air behind them and settling over the landscape like a forest of... well, a forest of industrial military-complex funding, whatever that looks like. The silver AM pings around the sky at improbable angles, leading the Metatron blast on a lengthy chase through the Zeon base, Ibis dragging it through every building she can!

All the while, red-tipped high explosive comes screaming out in ever-increasing quantities, twisting and spiralling for the homing blast and the mysterious Frame that launched it, and sooner or later the rifle's shot runs out of juice to keep chewing through missiles, but the missiles keep coming. Like fighting against the tide, the awfully fancy pattern of projectiles come sailing back through the rifle blast's path and head straight for the Amenthes. And if they don't hit, well, fuckit, they still explode. They explode bigtime. They explode everywhere, just fill the sky with fire, who even cares, we roll deep.

Very clever...so she noticed the I-Field, even as she dodged the strike. This is the true strength of a Newtype...how satisfying a battle this was! Soaked in blood, riding the tide of the destruction of the Federation, the leader of Crossbone Vanguard was actually finding it difficult to restrain the emotions surging up beneath the iron mask that was his namesake and his container. Joy at the thrill of a challenge! Rage at the defiance of a Newtype! Emotions swirled beneath his helm, and were immediately quashed into nothingness, returning to the quiet tide of monotony that was nevertheless his overwhelming willpower.

Still, she was attacking with a weapon that Iron Mask had personally designed. Carozzo Ronah was many things, but he was not so foolish as to allow himself to wind up impaled upon the end of his own shot lancer.

His beam shield comes upwards, the shot lancer bounding off it as Iron Mask slips the Den'an Zon Kai to the side. His reflexes were as sharp as ever; if they had not been, he would be quite thoroughly dead.

But there was no time for if-thens and what-ifs. There was a battle to win, a fight to finish, and a commoner to bring down. Carozzo slides backwards, holding the beam flag high once more as a rallying cry - Jung was half-correct, for the archaic beam flag was still as much standard as weapon, at least for Carozzo Ronah - and preparation for an attack he had always wanted to try.

The Den'an Zon takes off at a run, its thrusters hurling it forward. The beam flag slams downwards into the ground as it leaps, providing more force, more speed, more strength, a very deadly pole valt...

...leading into a thruster-and-momentum-assisted kick right for Jung's chest, as made famous by Char Aznable - if modified to suit Iron Mask's needs a bit better.

James Heller isn't fast enough this time. HE's now got a huge mech just about sitting on him, sitting on him pretty damn hard. The machine takes damage from it he's not even sure what's going on. He doesn't want to think about it. The damage is bad things are not looking good. So what doe he do he just unloads again. The pylons lock into place, but he doesn't stop firing the Boom Gun, he fires it again, and again.

Even with instruments on the fritz, the only answer to missiles still remains more missiles. Despite the fact that Puru Two wasn't even trying to fire them, they might have fired on their own or because she was banging on the fire button by accident. Either way, things don't come back online in time for her to actually see the missiles coming. She can sense them, though. Well enough to avoid direct hits, but the explosions around her do manage to cause some damage this time, leaving several parts of the Ashsaber's armor blackened.

Finally, the jamming effect wears off, and Puru Two has an opportunity to respond to what she was just told. But with her hand partway moved towards the relevant section of her console, she changes her mind, switching back to pure offense. She isn't really interested in debate, nor in compliments from the enemy, though she'd be lying if she claimed it isn't nice to have your skills acknowledged.

What really matters is driving off the assailants, and the best way to force a retreat is by seriously damaging or destroying the command ship. This becomes that much more of an urgent concern by what she can easily sense even over a great distance: the person who's most important to her just took a bad hit. "Glemy...!" She resists the impulse to immediately fall back to assist him. No, it's still most efficient to press the attack, make them withdraw... she can do this!

She does finally back away from the unhealthy close distance she was at, but not without unleashing her weaponry. Beam Machine Gun, the Sword Breakers, now back under her control, and a single blast from the Halberd Shooter serve to cover her efforts - but despite the massive barrage, it's just a setup for something bigger. She doesn't make much of an effort to cover this up, any seasoned captain should be able to read the signs in her movement pattern.

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Ascian Luddite transmits, "Yes - kick his ass, Asuka!"

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Ascian Luddite transmits, "You're doing great!"

After the beam misses, and missiles go flying, Ascian is finally able to shut off the input of power and splits the two rifles, quickly blazing the skies with two streams of red that cut through her first volley - cutting them off from his position and scarring the ground behind her. An amazing explosion appears behind Ibis' unit, making it only see that much more awesome as missiles just keep on coming.

"We can't take more of that." Ascian mutters to Duat, and pushes against the controls, turning them slightly, and getting the unit to turn around and rush away backwards - towards the Zeon base. Flak cannons assist the Amenthes as it chases between buildings, cutting tightly into corners. But the Altairlion's pilot is insane enough to following him perfectly.

Structures are exploded through by the missiles, and metal poles begin to fall here and there. And all amidst this rush of attacks, pockmarks form on the Amenthes as nearby charges crush its armor - not able to cope with the rapid deployment of kinetic force against them. But all this time, whilst rushing away backwards, Ascian is working on one thing.

The tailfeathers of the Amenthes hold that secret which Ibis had once met up with before. And within these close quarters, things get a lot harder to avoid. At least, that is Ascian's logic, as he suddenly halts the Amenthes, and bursts forwards. The incredible change of velocity pushes hard against his body, just barely able to bear the G-forces. But it survives. Orbs of Metatron form at the spade-ended Phoenix-Tails, rapidly growing in size...

And then when the Amenthes finally comes straight for the Altair, arms crossed so that the core was safe against the onslaught of missiles, it finally launches those explode-on-contact orbs of weaponized Metatron power! Hoping to crash into her unit and take her down!

"A Federal pilot," Glemy retorts. "I really don't need to know more th --" And then things go pear-shaped rapidly. The absolutely vicious drill shot catches /a/ cockpit -- but it's the wrong cockpit. The Nutter's cockpit is empty most of the time, since the machine can be driven automatically instead -- and Glemy Toto so abhors leaving his fate up to another that he usually lets it stay empty. That's not to say that getting drilled there isn't a problem, though -- it leaves the legs of the machine hanging by a thread.

One bad shot isn't the fight, though -- Glemy reminds himself of that as he switches from sabers to rifles, pulling himself back, back, back, trying to buy himself space to work with. His zone control is a lot stronger than his close quarters -- he can certainly fight in close, but it's only for the sake of, well, more zone control against people who /can't/ fight at a distance.

As such, he lets loose with shot after shot from his beam rifle, always pulling backward, increasing the distance, finishing over the radio, "I don't know who you think you are -- but you're nothing to me."

Boss starts laughing.

The Boss Borot is making a >:D face.

Then it turns into a :O face.

The boom gun goes into the missile chute and starts firing. The Boss Borot flops backwards onto the Glitter boy, face X_X, smoke flitering out from it's butt chute before it rolls over and over again.

"This is so wrong!" The Boss Borot gets up, though, not horribly trashed, but some gears, duct tape, and wrapped hams are coming out of the butt chute. Smoke comes out of where the ears should be. The Boss Borot slams into the Zeon Base, reaching in, and pulling out something to smash into the glitterboy!

Everyone is yelling at Koji Kabuto.

He has to close his eyes for a moment, just to clear his head. Shinji complained he wasn't normal. Piloting a mechanical monster on Mars and having to kill a girl who decided to keep what was hers -- that's not normal.

His fingers twitch, wrapped around those control-grips. He cannot hit her -- he knows it. He can feel every ounce of the poorly-coordinated movements he is trying to force Unit-01 into. It just doesn't want to. She doesn't want to.

Unit-02 just sidestepped. Koji's eyes widen. Oh shit--

Everything goes to white.

Koji Kabuto is standing in the middle of a train car at dusk.

He squints, his hand raised up to his eyes. The knife-blade of the sun's dying ray having caught him a little too closely. He makes a thoughtful face, lifting his shoulders in a shrug. Everything is calm. Blissfully distant from the agony on Mars. He's probably in Japan.

A smile slashes across his lips. Koji prefers being home.

But something is wrong.. he can feel it in the pit of his stomach.

Koji turns his head to the empty seat beside him..

Unit-02's Progressive Knife rips massive furrows against Unit-01's back. Composite plating creaks in futive protest. Gallons of fluid cascade out, splattering the Martian landscape in wine-dark red. Damage-readouts flash in Koji's face. He can barely think.

Koji Kabuto is sitting in his room, alone.

"Koji-kun.." a girl's voice can be heard from behind. Like bells. The loneliness is pierced by a delicate hand resting on Koji Kabuto's strong shoulder. It's soft and wonderful. And it comes with the delicate, clean scent of conditioner and powder fresh Secret. "What're you reading?"

"Eh..?" Koji murmurs, his eyes sliding off the folder in his lap. "Oh. Uh, Shinji's Psych Eval from the A-LAWS. I'm, uh.." his cheeks flush with a light pink color. Out of embarassment, he reaches to rub the back of his neck. "..heh heh, I'm not supposed to have this. Don't tell anyone. I could get  court-martialed.."

Unit-01 stumbles forward. Its jaw slack, head tilted back. Its lithe frame shudders with pain. A strangled gasp comes from its throat. LCL gushes past its block-edged maw. Shinji's mother is hurting. Water wells up in Koji's eyes. He does not know why.

Koji Kabuto frowns.

There's just a backpack and a walkman on the seat. A pair of ear-buds trail out and lie on the cushion. Koji feels an intense feeling of loneliness.

He reaches out to the walkman -- his hand suddenly smaller. Tinier. Koji collects the earbuds into his young hand and slips them into his ears. He  smiles. The song is old. But pleasant.

o/~ --and I'm not only among but I invite who I want to come o/~ So I missed a million miles of fun

o/~ I know, it's up, for me

o/~ If you steal my sunshine

An overwhelming feeling of being watched grips him. He suddenly turns his head, the train car seeming to be a lot bigger. Koji Kabuto is six years old. And there is a giant man standing in the other end of the car. Just colossal. Golden. Glorious. Resplendant.

Koji Kabuto smiles a great big six year old smile.

He turns to the other side -- there is a woman. She seems pretty. But distant. Ethereal. Bleeding. Koji tilts his head up. He cannot make out her face in the dying sunlight.

"Hnngh..!" Koji whimpers in pain. His superiors are yelling at him. Synchronization rate falling. Control failure imminent. This machine--!

On the Vesalius, a technician beside Dr. Aida frowns. The bio-rhythms are of the chart. "His heart-rate is off the charts! He's going to give himself a stroke!"

Dr. Aida sighs.

"What does it say?" Sayaka Yumi rests her chin atop Koji Kabuto's unruly hair. He feels electric.

Koji's fingers press down on the paperwork. It's all in a mishmash of kanji, hiragana, and katakana. "The doctor.. says he's like a hedgehog."

Sayaka blinks. "A hedgehog..?"

"Hedgehogs have to huddle together for warm. But they're so spiny.. that if they get too close, they'll hurt each other," Koji explains. "So they keep their distance. To keep from hurting each other. Shinji's afraid of what'll  happen if he lets someone in."

Sayaka frowns. "How awful.."

Koji's eyes dance around the read-outs. Systems are failing. Internal pressure compromised. Structural integrity decreasing. He hates Mars. So small. So dark. So much blood.

The Fraternity Unit technician aboard the Vesalius jerks her head back. "..Synchronization rate.. is.. increasing..??"

Dr. Aida raises a brow.

Koji Kabuto, six years old, stands on a train platform. He is holding a red and black balloon in one hand. In his other, he holds the gauntlet of the giant golden man. The bloody, ethereal woman is standing on the opposite side. Along with six year old Shinji Ikari--

--no. Shinji Ikari is standing on the train tracks. There's a honk. A light in the far distance, becoming bigger and brighter. Shinji Ikari stands on the train tracks, looking resigned.

"Shinji!" Six-year old Koji Kabuto calls out. "Shinji, get out of there!" Shinji does not move. He looks up to the giant golden man, who simply shakes his spiked head and looks stern. The ethereal woman does nothing.

"Shinji!"

"SHINJI!!" Koji Kabuto is seventeen years old.

The train barrels into the station..

"SHINJI!!"

Unit-01 suddenly whirls around. Its green armor-plates suddenly glowing, infused with a strange yellow energy. Its image -- a lithe purple creature -- momentarily flashes into red-eyed demon cast entirely out of black shadow. Sitting on its haunches, head canted to the side. Studying Unit-02..

"SHINJI---!!"

Koji Kabuto's Bio-Rhythm readout corrupts into a scattering of flashing blocks, ones, and zeroes. Synchronization rate climbing. Sixty-six.. sixty-eight..

Sky-rocketing.

Unit-01 reaches for its legs. Mounted by way of the F-Type Armor, two massive chainsaws. The AT-Field condenses in front of it. The maglocks disengage, it grips the weapons.

Koji Kabuto is in a rage. What is this power?

He stares across the distance -- his eyes penetrating Unit-02 -- so he can see the girl that walked all over Shinji Ikari's heart.

What the hell can this bitch not understand?

"DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND!?" Koji cries out, his voice so very angry and masculine.

Unit-01 is moving faster than before. Its movements smooth, almost graceful if it weren't for the predatory manner in which it tries to tower over Unit-02 with. The chainsaws start up, serrated teeth fixed to belts that growl.

"THEY SENT ME TO KILL YOU!"

At that moment, Koji Kabuto realized what this power was.

It is the power to become a demon.

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Ascian Luddite transmits, "Asuka!"

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> DC S Asuka Langley Sohryu transmits, "Nnn!"

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Ascian Luddite transmits, "Hang in there!"

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> DC S Asuka Langley Sohryu transmits, "I'm going to kill him! My Unit-02! My Unit-02!"

Damn!! The Char Kick!!

Jung is however a woman of long experience with kicks. One might be surprised at how many different kicks she's seen, all alike in their fundamentals yet individually delightful and terrifying in their own ways. This one is powerful and San's inertial canceller is unfortunately not something Jung can just leave on willy nilly.

PREVIOUSLY

"Well, Takaya, we've left this thing on for like a day. I think we can power it down."

"Okay de zo!"

"What's this de zo crap you're doing no OH MY GOD!"

The RX-203 had flown through two decks of the Exelion before breaching space through a laser lens, and had to be eventually scrapped. Why? Well, it had its intrinsic velocity... from the previous day, when the Earth and all its attendant satellites, such as the Exelion, had been in a significantly different location...

BACK HERE, RIGHT NOW (watching the world wake up from history):

The battle is going rapidly south. They can stay longer and everyone can die or be captives of Zeon, and Jung has a fairly good idea of what happens to Hers Truly in that case. The "San" takes a step back - and raises its spearpoint to its nonexistent head in salute.

"If you're a man of honor you'll accept your victory," Jung says as the San turns around to show its back to the Crossbone Vanguard unit.

"And if you aren't --" Something rounded on its back falls off.

And then streaks over to try and smack the Den'en Zou right square in the robo-chops.

Unfortunately, the Vesalius and the Ashsaber are now at something of a standstill-the Ashsaber is too fast for the ship to hit, and not all of Ashsaber's attacks can get through Vesalius's armor and shielding. It makes for a tense battle, especially when the Ashsaber zooms in close, and Joshua can tell she's planning...well, something.

"Careful. Be on guard, that Ashsaber is setting up for something.

And Koji's synch rate is going way up, which sounds...dangerous. Really, why didn't they just shut those EVA things down after the whole business with the Angels?!

Alright, that's it. Joshua isn't having the loss of Unit 01 on his shoulders; they can try to retrieve 02 later. "All personnel! We are pulling back before further losses. Those who need assistance, get behind the Vesalius, we will cover a retreat. Retrieval crew, approach Unit 01 /carefully./ I have...no idea if Kabuto will come willingly."

While the Vesalius still defensively fires at Puru Two with its railguns-it isn't going to just leave her ALONE until it's actually retreated-preparations are made, and alerts are sent to Koji calling on him to pull back as retrieval crews are sent. Of course, there's no indication Koji will, well, listen in this state.

Idunn has to fight really, really hard not to exclaim, 'I don't know!' in reply to Aki; in lieu of /that/, she doesn't say anything at all. The only other possible alternative would be a stream of bemusement as she tries to work out for herself what the hell she's allowed circumstance and fate to push her into, anyway.

She focuses instead on controlling the Eva-Gunman-Beast-Fire Elemental-Whatever The Hell Else without falling on her face, and seems to be successful in this endeavour by simply taking things /slow/ and making sure to be very deliberate in placing one foot in front of the other, in front of the other, in front of the other, and onward. She gets a whole ten steps forward before Brynhildr tries to run the abomination through, necessitating a defense of some sort.

A punch constitutes a defense, right?

Unorthodox though the method may be, the machine's fist - wrapped in shimmering green hexagons - clashes with Brynhildr's spear not long into its dance, imposing the same bizarre, twisting transmogrifications upon the weapon as the first time around. Each band of light pulsating at the spear's tip arcs through the space between the hexagonal field and the machine-monster itself, spiralling harmlessly around its body. This time, when the field vanishes to leave the spear embedded in the burning abomination's body, the weapon merely falls slowly through its arm before finally clattering to the ground; the hole it leaves behind doesn't actually fill itself in or anything at least, and while flames do leap from it as if eager to wash over the spearmaiden's frame, they can't quite manage to keep their cohesion.

No matter; Brynhildr practically delivered itself into the Eva-Gunman-Beast-Phlebotnium Mecha's arms.

So it lunges a few steps forward to try enfolding the Tesla Leicht robot in its scintillating embrace.

Providing that it's able to get a hold of the Brynhildr, it'll try to hang on tightly as its body, the ground and eventually the air itself all shudder in the wake of the explosion expanding from within the monster's heart to envelop the Martian environs.

A surrender.

Hmmm. Inside his machine, Carozzo considers exactly what to do in this situation, as the San raises its spearpoint. True, he was out to destroy the Federation - he was out to bring it to the ground - but the soldiers themselves had committed no great sin against him specifically, and it was the right of the common man to flee the battlefield, was it not? It was, according to Meitzer, only the obligation of nobility to remain regardless of blood - the common rabble were free to flee as they liked.

Carozzo allows Jung's unit to smack the face of his own as he plants the beam flag of Cosmo Babylonia down in the sand of Mars. He does not resist, though the smack does no damage; it was symbolic of his acceptance of her surrender. The beam sword is sheathed, sliding back onto the hip of the Den'an Zon Kai; the other Den'an Zons swarm behind their leader, understanding the symbolic cue. They line up, one by one, some of them sporting back-mounted beam flags of their own, the rest a mass of faceless two-eyed helmeted machines, all sporting those bizarre shot lancers.

The Den'an Zon Kai raises its hand above its head in a salute.

The Den'an Zons behind it do the same, a massive salute to the Federation forces, as if congratulating them on a battle well-fought.

Just who *are* these guys?

The Brynhildr dives into the maw of the EVA without slowing down or stopping, punching through its chest in a burst of white plasmoid light that tears at the flames around it - it doesn't help.

Emerging from the other side apparently clean, it's only a moment later that the power level of the machine dips and it sags in the air as a series of explosions rock the joints, shaking loose several of the boosters and leaving trails of sparking grinding machinery and venting coolant in their wake, then a substantial explosion as part of the spear's workings shear from the heat.

"A-again?!" yells Aki in disbelief, gaping at the readout that's turning various shades of warning reds and yellows as she and her machine are flung sideways; she barely has presence of mind to hit what thrusters are left, rerouting power to them in an attempt to clear land and get back into space in the hopes the jolly green giant is earthbound.

"Sorry!" she calls after her as she putt-putts away, working feverishly to try to restore segments of her power. "I'll give you a rematch another day!" One bank of thrusters finally fires properly and she rockets off in a slightly unorthodox manner; rather than using the large wings on its back, the machine's having to propel itself via one outstretched arm.

Aki slumps back in her seat, finally reaching for her radio as she starts to clear the engagement area - and finally taking stock of the battlefield, for that matter.

There is bullet time and then there is Nacho time

James enters the latter, he's unable to run so he's got to dodge, he starts dusk, weave and otherwise evade. He can't move more than that. He surives the terror of the attack and now he's lose. He's got a back up weapon though it's some ort of rifle and it's firing green bolts of energy which might melt their way through Boss' bitchen ride.

"I swear to God you are ALWAYS LIKE THIS BOSS!"

He keeps shooting plasma and keeping on the move for now!

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Lethe Rusina transmits, "Sandra, W-one-eight. Request permission to dock at earliest convinence; I am suffering a major internal breach from a beam weapon partially manifested in my cockpit."

The Ashsaber's efforts are coming to less than its pilot would have liked, but it's good enough. As long as she can keep dodging, doing damage of her own is not really important, not until she gets into position for what she's actually setting up for. And dodge she continues to do - when she's as focused as she is right now, landing a hit on a mobile machine piloted by the clone soldier is extremely difficult.

Puru Two does enjoy the unexpected, but far be it from her to actively disappoint by not doing what she's so clearly been telegraphing. A rapidly building energy spike in the Halberd Shooter further gives away what is about to happen. She is moving away, at least, but that doesn't necessarily have to be a good thing, considering the range of the weapon.

And then... she notices the signs that the Vesalius has already started to prepare for a retreat before she's fired. A wise choice, she thinks, giving herself all the credit for the enemy captain's decision.

Of course, nobody actually thought that this would keep Puru Two from firing, did they? The charge in the Halberd Shooter continues to build, until it finally maxes out with a dreadful sound. It's sort of like 'DING!' Puru Two's face twists into a grin. "Here's something to make you think twice about coming back!"

A massive blast of energy, dozens of times wider than the actual weapon it came from, is sent towards the Vesalius, forceful enough to push the Ashsaber further in the opposite direction. It's hard to be very precise with its aim, but that doesn't matter so much - if something of that magnitude manages to hit /anything/ it should leave a decent enough impression, to put it mildly. It's the only proper way to say 'goodbye'.

Ibis is tap-tap-tappin' her fingers on the controls in time with the music, riding the wave, feeling the rhythm, Million Dollars. Her grin has faded to a cocky smile and the fire in her eyes is now just a warm, self-assured light.

That's about when Tsugumi leans forward, standing up from her copilot's seat and starts shaking her violently by the shoulders, all of this in time while the entire viewport fills with explosions, the Amenthes disappearing from view and pulling a healthy portion of the missile storm into the nearby buildings. Except that's pretty much the next best thing for Ibis--

COLLATERAL VALUE: $5,294,195 COLLATERAL VALUE: $5,999,276 COLLATERAL VALUE: $6,118,148 COLLATERAL VALUE: $19,726,777 COLLATERAL VALUE: $594,765,112

--who was looking to do some dirty to the base anyway.

"Ibis! Ibis, didn't you hear the order? We're supposed to retreat!" yells the now-quite-worried brunette, still shaking Ibis by the shoulders, trying to snap her back to reality. This is helped by the fact that the Amenthes has reappeared somewhere directly nearby and is closing in at a crazy speed. "What the hell are you doing? /Move/!"

The redhead doesn't need to be told twice, jolting back to the /present day/ as the Amenthes ceases the badass Gunbuster folded-arms look just in time to pepper the Altairlion with a barrage of brilliant, glowing spheres of Metatron power. Balls. "Uh--Tsugumi! I--sorry--ohgod--" stutters Ibis, who immediately flips the switch that sends the silver Armoured Module into a tightly executed and rapid transformation sequence, features folding inwards until suddenly it is space jet.

There's a dull roar that fills the cockpit space as weaponized Metatron energy misses by mere inches and goes off, proximity trigger or cinematic appropriateness as the cause, and the Altairlion disappears inside of a billowing explosion for exactly as long as it takes to be even more badass when it rockets on out, shooting straight up into the sky and making a beeline for the retreat zone.

Ibis wistfully glances back at the rampaging EVA-01 and the enemy Orbital Frame which holds a hell of a record for wins/losses over her, and looks troubled. Silence falls over the cockpit, save for the sound of the twin tesla drive's hum, as the trance music on the stereo finally ends and it clicks off.

After the Brynhildr passes /right above its cockpit/, the Evabomination just... stops.

There's no flashy explosion(at least, not /another/ one), no reeling that preceeds its entire body crashing to the ground, nothing; it simply goes dormant. The flames that are its body swiftly die down, leaving its shattered, armour-clad form in their place--never mind the chunks of exploded armour strewn across the Martian surface. No green light leaks from its central face--in fact, no light at /all/ escapes its body and within the cockpit the situation is quite similar: not a single pip is lit on the sprialling gauge, leaving Marchionessa Idunn grateful for managing to survive her first face to face encounter with another giant robot.

And, you know, straight up terrified because what the fuck even happened.

Okay. That's kind of cheating, too.

Sam thinks he's in the clear at first, jinking to the left and letting the blade fly past him with casual ease. He keeps punching in numbers, and the shoulder-mounted launcher drops another remote. He increases the output on the transmitter, putting more power into it and funneling instructions to the Gremlins. The two black spheres chase the Phoenix, criss-crossing blue beams slashing this way and that across the surface of the mobile weapon.

That, however, does not stop the boomerang. The weapon comes at Insolent from behind, and the proximity alerts take Sam by surprise. The weapon hits the Primal Armor while it's attenuating, punching through the Kojima barrier with a scattering of particles like powder in a snowstorm. It enters the left side, the spinning blade shearing through the joints for one arm and one leg at the same time, lopping off both limbs with a shower of molten metal and a flurry of sparks. The thrusters on that side and beneath it die in a shower of sparks, torn apart simultaneously. The aerial Armored Core struggles to stay aloft, banking hard to one side and then spiralling towards the ground.

Inside the cockpit of the Armored Core, warnings scream in Sam's ears. he slams his hand against the console and dims them, gritting his teeth and trying to pull up. The AC dives, red soil coming up to meet it. He can almost see his life flashing before his eyes. There's no way he's going to be able to fix this; it's blatantly obvious to everyone who even /looks/ at the AC.

Unless--

Like a man possessed, Samuel Flynn goes to work. His left hand flies across the control console, operating it one-handed. His right opens a panel beneath his seat, reaching in and manipulating the nest of wiring blindly. Each movement is precise, each motion is practiced despite having never attempted this before, and every single one of them is correct. He bypasses safety protocols before they can flash on the screen and rewrites the Kojima attenuation software as errors appear. The green lights in the cockpit flicker and wink out, red ones signifying emergency power coming on of their own volition.

The Armored Core dives towards a field of jagged stone and red sand. It spews smoke and flame as it curves towards the surface of Mars, pieces of it's armor coming free during it's death dive. It's barely seconds more before it will strike and go up like a stray rocket, like just another Zaku added to the kill board.

And then... something happens.

The Primal Armor nodes studding the remaining armor come online, and the boosters sputter out and die as the Kojima output is transferred completely from them and to the armor. The will-o'-the-wisps swarm, but instead of moving evenly as they're expected, as they're /supposed/ to, they go /downward/. The green-white Kojima particles focus beneath Insolent, creating a bright white barrier beneath it as it descends. It touches the red sand and drags across it, melting it to something like radioactive glass by mere proximity. Insolent skips off one rock and flips towards a cluster of broken terrain--

--and the single shielded point suddenly snaps to the other side, changed in an instant. It disintegrates the rocks and skips a second time, rolling once more. The shield moves like the Macross's pinpoint barriers, ignoring completely the fact that Primal Armor cannot do that, and comes to a stop in the next cluster of stones. The impact and the shield melts them down to a vague quarter-dome of molten rock, the Primal Armor finally giving out and the wreckage of the Armored Core coming to rest. Every single one of the KP emitters on the outside of the machine smolder and smoke.

The cockpit hatch punches out like the eject was half-triggered. Martian cold meets the overwhelming heat; Sam exhales a breath of relief, slumped in the seat. He tiredly reaches up and presses a key, sending a message to the Phoenix above.

"Good shot," Sam says wearily. "Dunno where you got the Gundam, but whoever made it... we should talk." He releases the 'transmit' switch and presses his hand to his forehead. His head pounds. But the whispers are...

Asuka didn't think anything of Koji Kabuto; when it came down to it, the hotheaded pilot was all talk. He was even more pathetic than Shinji in that Eva. Really, if anything, she felt sorry for Shinji; he'd be pretty upset to find out how banged up hit Unit-01 was once they finally let him out that straightjacket of his.

"Is that everything you've got?" she says, voice rich with smarmy confidence.

And then Eva Unit-01 turns around, its armor plates glowing ominous. But Asuka is not particularly worried; even if it is glowing, the unit's not in the hand of anyone capable of doing anything worth worrying about. When he reaches for the chainsaws on its legs, she regards him with a single dismissive eye.

Unit-01 races towards her, its motions fluid, not clumsy as it had been a moment before. But the second she realizes this, it's too late; with one fluid motion, he raises his massive chainsaws and lops off a single Eva arm with ease. The limb is airborne for a moment, spinning skyward as purple blood sprays out of the stub where Unit-02's arm was attached. The arm lands with a thud behind her, purple blood still seeping from the wound in a lake of purple blood.

Unit-02 stumbles backwards, and for a second, it looks as though it is on the verge of falling over; for a long moment, it's motionless, its pilot gritting her teeth. She refuses to cry out -- not for him. Not in front of anybody!

"Shinji didn't ever tell you did he?! What the Evas /really are/!" The voice of the Eva pilot is fierce, though weary with pain. There's a pause there, as though waiting for a response -- but Asuka doesn't wait for a reply. "Shinji's mama! My mama! They took them -- they put their souls inside the Evangelion! They made us orphans! But you'd fight for those people, knowing that?!"

Evangelion Unit-02 straightens; the gushing has slowed now to a trickle, running from the stub of Unit-02's shoulder.

"They took my mama away from me once! I won't let you -- or anybody take her away from me again! Even if you do kill me, I won't let you have her!"

In Boss's head, he totally slaps the glitterboy across the face and the shock makes it run away and cry like a big baby.

In reality, the energy bolts erupt through the Boss Borot. Bolt after bolt go through the rotund middle until it erupts up and out.

Only the Boss Borot head suddenly flies out of the explosion smoke, saving all of Boss' sweet pimped up cockpit, towards Koji! He feels plot coming on!

No, Joshua did not think that would keep Puru Two from firing. Unfortunately, this shot is powerful enough to break through the shielding, landing a major hit on the hull of the Vesalius with that powerful Halberd Shooter. The ship rocks and quakes; Joshua steadies himself on the arm of his mostly unused captain's chair.

That blast leaves a hole in the hull, one that will have to be patched up beyond the emergency rudimentary job the crew can do. The Vesalius begins pulling back at this point, under the captain's orders, while he holds his head again. "We begin a retreat, but be prepared. We're not leaving Kabuto behind..."

Although the retrieval crew hasn't had much luck even getting near Unit 01, they alert that perhaps there is hope! Perhaps there is...

Boss?!

The boomerang whips back to Ilyse's waiting hand, deactivating several yards away from her. Ilyse was impressed. She was not expecting it to be quite that effective, and for a split second, she thinks she's actually killed it...

But then she hasn't. Ilyse's lips purse as the Black Box sprays a whole set of numbers across her screens. Some of that wasn't possible. She thinks. Primal Armour isn't her specialty, it's the wrong kind of reality-twisting for her to know a damn thing about.

"You're talking to her," Ilyse says in her accent, before cutting her own connection. She has work to do. Phoenix does not strike at the downed Armoured Core, even though she might be able to destroy it; instead it lifts off, heading over toward Jung's side to help her heft Koji out. She, after all, has the high-power inertial boosters. She made Jung's!

Message delivered, Puru Two stows away the overheating Halberd Shooter. Okay, time to go. They're retreating, we're retreating, no sense in hanging around any further. And so the Ashsaber turns, and speeds off back where it came from.

Phew, she feels so much better now, just what she needed to take her mind off things. Who says battles are stressful, it's really quite the opposite!

The Amenthes halts in the air when Ibis finally blasts off. "Tssk... fleeing. I can't believe this." The young man turns his attention to the readings of the Amenthes. It /really/ wasn't looking too great. The machine rises from between the buildings, some of them falling to pieces thanks to the force of his previous attack, before being able to get a visual on the battle between Asuka and Koji. Honestly? At this point, he'd /love/ to just shoot the enemy unit in the back. But Asuka would probably eat him alive - she had way too strong of a will on her to allow for such a thing. So... he hangs back, for now.

Jung Freud is puzzled by that sudden outbreak of honor on the part of Zeon. It makes her feel, in a faint and obscure way, guilty.

But she'll worry about it later. For now, she has a man (and a giant slab of potentially immortal government property) to rescue. Her lips thin as Ilyse flies nearby, pushing keys as San's damaged systems link up and an invisible but nonetheless very real inertia-damping field surround the two units. Most of the load is shunted onto Ilyse's systems.

Jung's job is simpler. The auto-javelin emitter produces another dart into San's right hand, which draws it back and throws it, line and all...

... past EVA-01. It embeds itself in martian soil. Jung then says aloud, "One, two, /three/--"

What happens is lightning fast. The linked inertial cancellation fields of the two airborne craft make them move as one, linked by bonds of force more potent than this crude matter. They move at the precise limit of their thrust, which is, in the case of San, capable of making Earth orbit without straining excessively. They loop three times, too fast to even be seen clearly by an oldtype, around EVA-01.

Then the entire unit, with the additional mass of EVA-01, lurches as it pulls up, out, and /away/, towards the Vesalius. From Koji's perspective this may feel like he's being momentarily strangled with nylon cord around his abdomen, but it's probably better than being chopped up by Asuka.

Probably.

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Samuel Flynn remarks, "I'd, uh, love a pick-up when somebody's got a chance. Just sayin'."

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> James Heller transmits, "I'm comming Sam."

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Ascian Luddite transmits, "Let me."

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Ascian Luddite transmits, "I still owe him a few pick-ups."

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Samuel Flynn transmits, "'preciated either way, guys. Take your time, she's not going anywhere."

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Lethe Rusina transmits, "Mister Heller, requesting access to data regarding that pilot and his machine on-file."

"His synchronization rate is incredible!" the Fraternity Unit technician marvels. "He's almost reaching Shinji's best recorded rating!"

Dr. Aida's face tightens. "Get ready to cut synch."

Koji Kabuto is a man possessed. Millions of kilometers away from home, on an inhospitable planet ruled by a violent god who sits strong on his own mountain. The people are the worst. Worse than worse. They're not even Enders. They're the ones the Enders -threw away-. What does that even make you? Sub-Ender? Ender-Trash?

Mars. The red planet. Planet of war.

War is hell.

War is life.

The coppery tang floating in the entry plug doesn't bother Koji Kabuto now. He's passed that, hovering somewhere to the point of having lost his goddam mind. He is playing Shinji's mother like a piano. Each creak of the control-grips might as well be her moaning in his ear. Telling your friend you were inside his mother and she might've liked it -- that's just not a conversation a man ought to have with another man. At least, not a man you're trying to keep from killing himself.

Koji Kabuto tilts his head back to rest on the edge of the chair. Sayaka is running her delicate fingers through his hair. It's a pleasant feeling, making his scalp tingle with every touch no matter how gentle. "Shinji Ikari saved the world by rejecting Instrumentality. He decided that humanity was better  off being individuals rather than a collected whole."

"He spoke for us in a way no other person could. And he did it living a life of loneliness, rejection, pain, and heart-break. Despite it, he thought this way of life was better than anything else. That ought to mean something.."

Koji looks thoughtful. "Maybe Shinji Ikari is the soul of humanity."

Sayaka wrinkles her nose, "Koji-kun, don't you think that's a bit pretentious and obtuse?

Koji Kabuto makes a face.

Unit-02 is coming.

Koji Kabuto is ready. His heart meeting the omnipresent heartbeat within the Entry Plug with every heavy thump.

His eyes are huge and watery. What was that about his mom..?

AT Fields collide. The light is blinding, overloading Unit-01's cameras.

"I.." the edge slides off Koji's legendary temper, the fighting boy of the island nation of Japan. Always ready, never stopping. "..I'm sorry." His lips press together, forming a thin squiggle of an apologetic pity.

Koji Kabuto has never truly known his mother. But that has not stopped him from fighting for her, either.

Asuka Langley Sohryu attempts to pierce the AT-Field. It does not want to budge, but her fury is enough to wrench out an opening.

Unit-01 brings its arms forward, attempting to shield itself. The light--!

Electricity crackles across the Entry Plug's chairs.

Across the battlefield, Lethe Rusina's ASK-UC90 Flickerist beeps with an incoming bit of battle-data.

!ALERT! Koji Kabuto gains INVINCIBLE !ALERT!

Once was bad. Twice is worse.

There is an explosion and Unit-01 is hurled backward. Its long limbs trailing behind it, like some kind of backgammon shuttlecock. It hits a chunk of Copernicus Base, turning brick and plasteel into powder.

Koji Kabuto wrestles with the controls. Yui Ikari complies like a good Japanese wife. She rises up, letting the fighting boy within her tell her what to do. She's battered and bleeding. Yet the blood pouring from her numerous wounds are fading to a trickle. Synthetic muscle re-knits itself, compelled by Koji's indomitable will.

He wrestles with his orders in the clicks between a second. Recover Unit-02 and neutralize its pilot, by any means necessary. Unit-01 collects its fingers together. Its eyes subverted from its smoldering red to a brilliant yellow. The power of innovation--

..and then a saucer-dome wobbles forward.

"Boss!?!"

His attention snaps. His eyes jump back to Unit-02, wide and panicked. And all of a sudden, a length of nylon cord falls over Unit-01 and cinches around its waist.

"Iie--!" No! Koji tries to protest. It's futile. Unit-01 is being pulled off the Martian soil.

One hand swings out, grasping Boss's Borot-saucer.

The other reaches out -- to its max. It mirrors Koji's movements inside the Entry Plug, arm stretched to its limits. Mechanical hands flail in the rapidly increasing distance at Unit-02.

On the Moon, a group of men discuss the recent developments within the Earth Sphere.

Klaus Grado is shaking his head sadly. Wong Lee scowls, his hawkish face full of disappointment.

A good man is being pulled out of the room by a pair of Anaheim employees. "He's gone mad," AEUG attache Madchar hollaring on the top of his lungs. "Sedate him!"

Bright Noa can't even move. Both of his arms are restrained, he can only flex his fingers ineffectively in the air. He's swinging his legs, kicking violently in the air. He is livid. Why aren't they seeing what he sees? It's so obvious. So plain as day.

Quattro Bajeena stands idly by, his face unreadable with those giant Aviators over his eyes. The light glints off them and in the reflection coming off it, a needle is pressed into Bright's neck.

Phenobarbital is shot directly into Bright Noa's veins. He goes limp, a spot of glistening drool escaping the corner of his mouth. Just enough to keep him asleep, while the Argama is sent back to Earth to face a giant man who was once good and now oppresses the very people he sought out to protect.

"ASUUUUUUUUUKAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA !!"

Koji Kabuto screams as Unit-01 is pulled toward the retreating Vesalius. It isn't the loss that bothers him today. Or the joy that he didn't have to kill a girl he never wanted to hurt (well, much) that overwhelms him.

It is the dawning realization that ours is a generational conflict. Told and retold, if only to futively warn us about how short-sighted we all really are.

And so, the oppressive drum beat marches on. The spectre of war returns to haunt All Known Space, with all its glory and horror.