Chapter 292 - 293: What a Great Girl—Pity She’s Got a Mouth

Chapter 292: Chapter 293: What a Great Girl—Pity She’s Got a Mouth

So big!

No—so white!

No, no—maybe not that white!

Ah, that’s not it!

The Red Frame’s pilot is a girl?!

And this girl is—?!

Enemy or not, the sheer amount of skin Cagalli’s outfit showed had crossed over into the "indecent" range.

Because she was always so brash, everyone on the Archangel treated her as one of the guys—but in front of Athrun, Cagalli’s appearance was still rather... devastating.

[Seven years! Seven years again!]

[Is it Cagalli’s home turf this time?]

[I’m still waiting for the champ to SOLO a GINN]

The first, everyday-audience world had danmaku too, but that side only brought in 30% of the revenue and didn’t count toward the Client’s requirements, so Inori mostly paid attention to the reactions of the GBN world’s audience.

Only occasionally, when she wanted to see some snarky commentary, would she go back and check the everyday-audience world’s danmaku. That world had Gundam SEED, and this suddenly-aired new installment struck that audience as quite novel.

"Ah—you’re that person from that day?!"

Cagalli remembered.

This Athrun was the man she’d run into after arriving at Heliopolis—the one who’d seemed to mistake her for someone else.

Wait—who was it he’d been looking for again?

No—now wasn’t the time to think about that!

This man was ZAFT—he was the enemy!

He was even one of those who had destroyed Heliopolis!

Blood rushing to her head, Cagalli immediately moved to attack Athrun and yanked out a gun.

But Athrun was a step faster; he seized Cagalli’s wrist, twisted it behind her back, and disarmed her outright.

Cagalli kept struggling.

But Cagalli’s spacesuit was transparent, and through that layer of clear latex, her back kept rubbing against Athrun, making him flush.

[Trash as always]

[Ugh, Cagalli!]

[Why does it feel like Athrun’s totally getting played?]

[The only man who treats Cagalli like a girl]

[Now that you mention it, yeah]

[Hold on—in Athrun’s memory, Kira as a kid was basically a little boy. Now Cagalli’s a tomboy—don’t tell me that’s his type?]

[Holy crap, the truth comes out!]

Because this world had no SEED anime, the audience here would instead run wild with their imaginations.

On the other side, by contrast—in the world that had watched the everyday Gundam SEED anime—the audience kept spamming memes like "three days and three nights" and "Cross Ange."

It couldn’t be helped.

Cagalli’s uniform really did look like the high-transparency style from Cross Ange—it was just that the exposed areas had been sealed off with clear latex.

Oh, and the color had been changed too—originally blue, but Cagalli’s was red.

"Can you hear me?" Athrun adjusted the comms frequency on his end.

"Let go of me!"

Cagalli’s voice came through the headset loud enough to blow out the street.

"Are you really Earth Alliance military?"

After tying Cagalli up in the Aegis’s cockpit, Athrun searched the interior of her machine.

The Red Frame was in worse shape than the Aegis; the entire interior was wrecked—without a spacesuit, she’d likely have died long ago.

"No dog tags, either. And that kind of screaming on the battlefield—I’ve never heard anything like it."

Athrun felt Cagalli was nothing at all like a soldier.

"I never imagined the Earth Alliance had developed so many MS."

"These aren’t Earth Alliance machines!"

As if—the Astrays belonged to us, to Orb!

No!

She couldn’t say that!

How could she let ZAFT find out these things were Orb’s?!

Realizing she’d let it slip, Cagalli hurriedly clamped her mouth shut.

Bad, bad, bad—she’d nearly said the wrong thing.

"Not? A mercenary, then? Or what?"

Athrun guessed, while Cagalli kept her mouth shut, deciding silence was golden.

"Makes sense—no soldier would go into battle dressed like you." Athrun mused.

"This is an ultra-advanced spacesuit! It’s not some ridiculous getup!"

Cagalli knew perfectly well how bad she looked, so she reflexively started arguing back.

[Ugh, Cagalli, ugh...]

[Classic goading tactic, sigh...]

[Just now I thought Cagalli had learned her lesson, and now look at her]

"If you’re not a soldier, then don’t go being the Alliance’s hired muscle." Athrun was now certain the other party had zero military training.

A complete "newbie."

"And whose fault is that? You’re the ones who destroyed Heliopolis! That was a neutral nation!"

With that one line, Cagalli sank Athrun on the spot.

"And that’s because Orb was neutral on the surface, but was actually helping the Earth Alliance develop those things! We were acting to protect PLANT too!"

Athrun said.

"But—you destroyed Heliopolis!" Cagalli shouted.

"What choice did we have?!" Athrun shouted back. "We can’t beat things like that! If they made it back to the Alliance, all sixty million people of PLANT would die!"

For that very reason, the Archangel could not be allowed to return to the Alliance.

Cagalli froze as well.

It was true.

Cagalli had felt the Strike’s terrifying power firsthand.

"You’re a Natural, aren’t you? And yet even someone like you can pilot one of those things now!"

[I suspect you’re finding creative ways to call Cagalli trash]

[Trash or not, she can still pilot a Gundam—the rest of them can’t]

[Cagalli slander]

[Turns out Athrun’s squad really is treating the Strike like a boss fight lol]

"Piloting an MS..."

This battle suit Inori had handed her... however dubious it looked, it really did let her pilot the Red Frame.

"This isn’t Alliance technology either!" Cagalli said.

"...Orb’s, then?" Athrun felt he’d grasped something.

"?!!" Cagalli hurriedly shut her mouth.

[Such a pretty girl—why’d she have to have such a mouth]

[Ahh, our girl Cagalli, Cagalli!]

[Just say less, it won’t kill you]

Once Cagalli went quiet, Athrun stopped paying her any mind as well.

Now wasn’t the time for bickering; he had more important things to do.

Otherwise the two of them might well die in this place.

"Remaining oxygen... about six hours’ worth."

The Aegis’s cockpit was already leaking air.

"The surroundings..."

Athrun surveyed the area.

The spatial situation around them wasn’t good.

The Aegis’s transmitter was damaged too.

Fortunately the onboard computer still ran.

"Radar... no good. Long-range comms... hm?"

Long-range communications were out, but the AI offered solutions—everything from building a makeshift comm device to how to survive in space.

"In any case, first let’s find a way to send a distress signal... is the comm system on your end still working?"

His own was unusable, and the reliability of a jury-rigged comm system was fairly low.

Better to ask Cagalli first.

But Cagalli shook her head.

"The machine over there is completely dead too."

"I see..."

Athrun lifted his head and looked around.

Perhaps there was still something usable among the debris?