Chapter 290 - 291: So This Is Fate (Wistful Gaze)

Chapter 290: Chapter 291: So This Is Fate (Wistful Gaze)

As the Archangel began its maneuver, the battle below did not pause.

The Strike and the two Astrays wanted to break away, but Athrun and the others weren’t about to indulge them.

On a real battlefield, who would ever wait for a magical girl’s "transformation sequence" to finish?

"Don’t even think about running!"

When Athrun noticed the Strike seemed a little distracted, he immediately realized this was an opening, and had another GINN follow up as well—five mobile suits against a single Strike.

On the other side, Miguel had once again tied Mu down, leaving him no room to act.

This fight was different from every one before it.

Not only had Athrun’s squad improved, ZAFT as a whole could be said to have LEVELED UP.

Athrun’s squad, right now, was strong!

"Kira, head for the designated coordinates."

Inori didn’t have Kira stay locked in the melee; instead she fed her a set of coordinates.

"The Strike’s already finished!"

Yzak came charging in like a cockroach that just wouldn’t die.

"An opening!"

With his AI’s support, Dearka shifted to a position better suited for sniping.

From this position—he could blow the Strike’s head off with a single shot!

"Bang!"

"—Huh?" Dearka was dumbfounded.

He’d been attacked?

When?

His display had gone pitch black.

His camera had been shot out.

"Switching to secondary cameras!"

Dearka switched at once, but it was already too late.

By now Kira had already slipped out of the optimal firing line.

"A meteoroid?!"

Checking the interface again, his AI indicated that what had hit the camera wasn’t an Earth Alliance attack—it was a meteoroid?!

The PS armor was useful, sure, but it could also overload.

So a moment ago the Buster’s head had been struck by an extremely high-speed meteoroid fragment, and the PS armor hadn’t even had a chance to work before it was punched clean through.

"Talk about rotten luck." Dearka figured this was no fault of his own skill.

But then he sensed something was off, because his AI’s warnings kept multiplying.

"Don’t tell me there’s a whole field of high-speed debris?!"

Meanwhile, on the other side, apart from the GINNs, Athrun and the others paid no mind to the so-called meteoroid warnings.

An ordinary meteoroid couldn’t punch through PS armor.

Still, Dearka reported the situation on his end.

"Then keep firing, idiot!" Yzak shouted.

"Right!" The secondary cameras still worked; he could still attack!

True enough—even debris couldn’t do much damage to a G-weapon; what happened just now had merely been a fluke!

"Just a little more!"

At the last moment, the Aegis had all but landed a hit on the Strike.

"Bang!"

But at precisely that instant, Cagalli drove the Aegis back with her beam rifle.

The Aegis meant to press its attack, but thanks to Dearka’s "blunder"—and with the GINN Olor was piloting also getting struck by debris—the Strike won itself a moment to breathe and slipped out of firing range.

"Ha—I may have lost the sword, but I’ve still got a gun!"

If not for the AI’s reminder, Cagalli wouldn’t even have remembered she was carrying a beam rifle—another piece of gear she’d swiped off the Strike.

"That cursed red machine—hnh—?!"

At that moment the AI system displayed the Red Frame’s status.

The Red Frame was not far off, and it was currently in a half-wrecked state.

"At the very least, I’ll take one of them down first!"

The Aegis instantly swung its muzzle around, taking aim at the Red Frame that had spoiled his moment.

"What?!"

Cagalli hadn’t expected the Aegis to suddenly turn on her; she bit her lip, and the Red Frame’s gauntlet scraped a shower of blinding sparks across the Aegis Gundam’s shoulder armor.

The Strike’s sword was gone, but the shield from the Sword Striker pack, in the end, still saved Cagalli’s life.

"I won’t let you get away!"

Cagalli twisted her machine around, and the Red Frame’s legs clamped around the Aegis’s waist.

The Red Frame’s two legs coiled around the Aegis, pinning it fast.

When the Aegis had come at her, Cagalli had lost her beam rifle, but she still had one last Armor Schneider.

"What a pain you are!"

Athrun was furious.

His Aegis was the mobile armor meant to capture the enemy, yet Cagalli had turned it around and locked down the Aegis with her own MS instead!

The pose of the two Gundams, had it been struck by actual people, would have been rather... suggestive.

Carried by inertia, the two machines tumbled toward the debris field, alarms blaring in waves inside the cockpits.

"Dammit! It won’t go in! So hard!" Cagalli slammed the controls forward, the Armor Schneider’s edge scraping across the Aegis’s PS armor.

Cagalli stabbed away with all her might, but the PS armor didn’t so much as budge.

"Cagalli!"

"Kid!"

Mu’s and Kira’s voices came at the same moment.

"Huh?"

Looking again, in the corner of the camera feed, the Archangel hung "upside down" against the sky.

It and the Laurasia-class below formed a perfect parallel line.

"Those three MS are luring the G-weapons into position!"

Le Creuset, for his part, saw through what was happening.

"And more than that—why wasn’t a piece of debris this large detected before now?!"

The debris was huge, and it was fast.

"Of course—the electromagnetic environment here!"

This place had been of his own choosing.

More precisely, Le Creuset had chosen this battlefield on his AI’s advice.

It was an environment with a vicious electromagnetic profile; at even a slightly greater range, communications would be disrupted—the Nazca-class had used this very complexity to close in on the Archangel.

But now he had spun himself into his own cocoon.

And Cagalli and Athrun, all this while, were still "pulling each other’s hair."

The two machines were still tangled together. His temper stoked by the Red Frame, Athrun simply used the Aegis’s grappling claw to lock hard onto the Red Frame’s waist armor.

Either way, this Red Frame with no PS armor was sure to have its defenses "cracked" before he did.

The alarms shrilled, and there were the shouts and transmissions of the others too.

But neither of them had any attention to spare for anything else now.

And only when the surrounding alarms grew more urgent did the two finally come to their senses—but by then, the enormous meteoroid was already about to hit.

The AIs on both sides offered their plans at the same time.

"Use the Aegis underfoot as a cushion..."

"Attack from the Laurasia-class detected. Recommend using the red MS as a shield, and the Aegis’s leg PS armor to cushion the asteroid’s impact..."

What Cagalli got was a simple, plain prompt; what Athrun got was a detailed report.

Meanwhile, to save itself, the Laurasia-class fired both of its 937mm dual high-energy cannons at full power—a barrage originally meant for the Archangel that instead struck the asteroid.

"BOOM—!"

The asteroid burst apart violently across the battlefield, like a balloon that had been popped.

But all in all, they had survived.

"Lohengrin positron blaster cannon—fire!"

But in the next instant, the Archangel’s positron blaster had completed its flanking arc and ran the Laurasia-class straight through.

The Laurasia-class was crippled.

As the aftershock of the explosion died away, the battlefield too was momentarily "swept clean." Only the Aegis and the Red Frame—who knew where they had been "blown off" to...