The heavy silence inside the cockpit of the White Gundam was suffocating. Maki was still shivering in her seat, her skin ghostly pale as she clutched her chest. Her breath came in short, jagged gasps, the terrifying aftershock of the Mind Space connection with Ichi still rippling through her nervous system.
Zaki looked at his twin sister, his heart squeezing with a mix of intense worry and burning anger. He could feel her pain, and he wasn't going to let her suffer for another second.
With a decisive motion, Zaki slammed his hand onto the master control override, locking Maki's terminal out of the primary flight functions. He took full command of the White Gundam, his fingers gripping the control sticks so hard his knuckles turned white.
"Zaki... no..." Maki whimpered, her voice incredibly weak as she reached out a trembling hand. "Let me... let me help. I can still connect..."
"No, Maki! Shut up and just stay quiet!" Zaki snapped back, his voice cutting through her panic with a harsh, unyielding firmness. It was rare for him to speak to her like that, but his eyes were blazing with determination. He softened his tone just a fraction, looking at her through his peripheral vision. "Please... just sit back and let me handle this. I am going to do this myself. I'll protect you from this twisted copy, no matter what."
On the main monitor, the communication window with the Black Gundam remained open. Ichi's flat, grey-white eyes stared at Zaki, her head tilting slightly to the side like a curious bird looking at a nuisance.
"Male pilot," Ichi's mechanical monotone echoed from the speakers. "Identify yourself. You are standing in the way of my sister. Disconnect immediately. Do not interfere with our reunion."
"You talk too much," Zaki growled, his face twisted in a look of pure defiance. "And you seriously think I'm just gonna let you touch her?"
Zaki didn't wait for a reply. He kicked the thrusters into maximum overdrive. The White Gundam's base frame roared to life, shedding the quiet grace of its stealth mode for pure, raw aggression.
With a lightning-fast motion of his right hand, Zaki reached across to the left shoulder armor compartment, grabbing the hilt of the standard beam saber.
SHIIIII-NG!
A brilliant, burning emerald-green plasma blade ignited, hissing violently against the cold air. At the same time, the White Gundam raised its primary beam rifle in its left hand. The machine soared through the sky like a white bullet, lunging directly at the black phantom.
"Get away from my family!" Zaki roared.
The White Gundam brought the green blade down with terrifying force. Ichi reacted instantly, her Black Gundam raising its sleek beam rapier just in time.
CLAAAAANG!
The two plasma blades collided in a violent explosion of sparks, the green and purple energy grinding against each other with a deafening screech. Through the optical cameras, the two Gundams were face-to-face, their visors reflecting the chaotic light of their clashing weapons.
"Who are you?" Ichi asked, her flat voice completely unchanged despite the immense kinetic pressure of the clash. "Why do you protect the sister? You are not like us. You do not possess the connection."
"I don't care about your stupid connections!" Zaki yelled, ripping his saber back and launching a brutal flurry of consecutive slashes.
The Black Gundam danced backward through the air, its purple-feathered thrusters flaring as it effortlessly evaded the green blade by mere inches. As it created distance, Ichi flicked her left wrist, bringing her rapid-fire beam rifle to bear.
Pew! Pew! Pew!
Three rapid, neon-pink beam shots screamed through the air. Zaki didn't panic. He pulled the stick back, forcing the White Gundam into a sharp, descending spiral, raising his solid shield to absorb the residual heat of the explosions. The impact rattled the cockpit, but Zaki kept his eyes locked on the target.
He raised his own rifle and pulled the trigger.
BARK!
A thick, high-output green beam shot fired from the White Gundam's rifle, cutting a line straight toward the black machine. But Ichi simply tilted her wings, her machine executing a flawless side-roll that let the green energy pass harmlessly into the clouds.
"I don't care who made you, or what kind of sick lab you crawled out of," Zaki shouted over the open frequency, his voice dripping with pure, brotherly rage. "But I will never forgive you for stealing my sister's face! You're nothing but a fake, and I'm going to take you down to protect the person I actually love!"
Hearing those words, something strange happened inside the Black Gundam. For the very first time, Ichi's flat, ghostly grey eyes widened by a fraction of a millimeter. A flicker of genuine confusion passed through her artificial mind.
"A fake...?" Ichi repeated, her monotone voice holding a strange, hollow echo. She stared at Zaki's cockpit readouts. "If she is my sister... and we are born from the same genetic source... then that means you are my brother too, Zaki Kimeza."
"Don't you dare call my name with that mouth!" Zaki's temper completely flared.
He pushed the thrusters forward, the White Gundam charging into the line of fire once again, its green beam saber raised for a killing blow.
"Irrelevant," Ichi whispered, her face returning to its dead, frozen state. She smoothly slotted her beam rapier back into her waist storage. Then, the heavy armor plates on both sides of her hips slid open, revealing a pair of long, devastating railgun barrels. "If you refuse to accept the family... then you must vanish."
The dual railguns hummed with a terrifying amount of blue electricity, locking onto the center mass of the advancing White Gundam.
"Die," Ichi said.
BOOOOOOM!
Two massive, hyper-velocity solid slugs wrapped in plasma energy erupted from her hips, tearing through the airspace with enough force to shatter a mountain. The shockwave created a massive vacuum in the sky.
But they hit absolutely nothing.
A split second before the triggers were pulled, Zaki had slammed the emergency button on his left console. System: Mirage Camouflage - Engage!
The White Gundam's signature completely vanished from the radar. Its physical body shimmered, dissolving into the gray sky like a ghost. The two railgun shots flew straight through the empty space where Zaki had been a millisecond prior, plunging into the valley below and triggering a colossal explosion that leveled a massive forest ridge.
"Target lost," Ichi noted flatly, her sensors going into a frantic scanning loop. "Where is—"
"Behind you!" Zaki's voice barked through the static.
The White Gundam materialized directly in the Black Gundam's blind spot, its green beam saber swinging down in a vicious vertical arc meant to split the black machine in half.
CRASH!
But Ichi was terrifyingly fast. Without even looking, she forced her machine into a 180-degree spin, raising her long, bird-like shield just in time. The green saber bit deep into the black shield, sending a massive shower of white-hot sparks flying into the cockpit cameras.
Zaki glared through the screen, his face just inches away from the digital display. "Listen to me, you piece of junk. From any perspective, from any logic, I will never consider you my sister. To me, you are just a fake. A ghost. Nothing more!"
Ichi remained perfectly still, holding the shield against his blade. "A fake..." she repeated quietly. She hadn't been programmed to understand rejection. She didn't expect to be called an imitation by the very family she was sent to find.
With a sharp movement, she triggered the shield's explosive purge bolts. The long shield detached from her arm, detonating in a small burst that forced the White Gundam to back away. The Black Gundam floated backward, its purple crow wings stabilizing its position in the sky.
"My name is Ichi," she said, her voice echoing clearly through the main speakers of the White Ark squad. She ignored Zaki for a moment, her flat gaze shifting down toward the secondary screen where Maki's terrified face was displayed. "And you... you are Maki Kimeza. And your protector is Zaki Kimeza."
Maki gasped, her eyes widening as she stared at the screen. "How... how do you know our names? I never told you!"
Ichi's lips formed a tiny, completely hollow imitation of a smile. It was a expression devoid of any real human warmth. "I told you, sister. We are connected. Through the Mind Space, I can see everything. I can see your childhood. I can see your mother, Airi. I can see the memories you hold inside your heart. We are two sides of the same coin."
Before the conversation could continue, a thunderous voice shattered the radio frequency.
"Insolent, arrogant machines!"
High above the valley, the massive, sky-fortress carrier ship, the Garuda Base, was descending through the clouds. King Sergeth Colombus of the Neptune Kingdom was screaming into his command microphone from the bridge, his face purple with rage as he looked at his fallen daughter's Mobile Armor.
"I don't care about your names or your models!" Sergeth roared at his operators. "Activate every single mega-particle cannon on the hull! Turn all primary lasers toward those two Gundams! Wipe the White Ghost and that black piece of trash off the face of this planet! Fire! Fire now!"
The massive underside of the Garuda Base began to glow with a terrifying, blinding yellow light as dozens of weapon turrets locked onto Zaki and Ichi.
Ichi slowly turned the Black Gundam's head toward the massive battleship. Her gray eyes narrowed by a fraction.
"Noise," she said flatly. "You are being too loud."
Without even turning her entire body, she leveled her rapid-fire beam rifle with her left hand, her internal targeting computer mapping the structural weak points of the entire battleship within a microsecond.
PEW! PEW! PEW! PEW!
She unleashed a continuous, blinding stream of rapid-fire pink beams. Each shot traveled with mathematical perfection, hitting the primary cooling vents and the ammunition storage sectors of the Garuda Base's weapon arrays.
BOOM! BOOM! EXPLOSION!
A chain reaction of massive, fiery explosions ripped through the entire hull of the Neptune flagship. The multi-ton mega-particle cannons were completely vaporized before they could even fire a single shot. The massive battleship groaned, black smoke pouring from its engines as it lost altitude, crashing heavily into the distant valley floor, completely out of the fight.
Zaki watched the massive ship burn, a cold sweat running down his neck. She did that in three seconds... without even looking.
Ichi turned her machine back toward the White Gundam. But before she could raise her rifle, a bright red warning light began to flash on her central console. A secondary holographic screen popped up, showing the faces of her true creators—the Kings of Mars and Mercury.
"Ichi, report," the Mars King Grisel Nova commanded. "The target is right in front of you. Why haven't you terminated the White Ghost?"
"Energy levels have dropped to forty percent," Ichi replied to her masters, her voice completely calm. "The high-mobility combat mode and the railgun deployment consumed too much fuel. If I continue the engagement against the White Ghost in this state, my probability of defeat rises to sixty-two percent. Requesting tactical withdrawal."
The two Kings looked at each other on the screen. The Mercury King Sirius Nelphime gave a slow, satisfied nod. "Very well. You have already humiliated the Neptune Kingdom and proven the absolute supremacy of our technology. That is enough for today. Fall back to the research facility."
"Understood," Ichi said.
She turned her neon-pink visors back toward Zaki and Maki. The purple flames on her wings began to flicker, slowly dissolving her machine into the surrounding air as her stealth system re-engaged.
"Zaki Kimeza. Maki Kimeza," Ichi's voice whispered through their cockpit speakers, fading away like a ghost in the wind. "We will meet again very soon. Next time, I will claim my sister."
With a soft hum, the Black Gundam completely vanished from sight, leaving the quiet valley behind.
Zaki gripped his controls, his fingers twitching as he stared at the empty sky. Part of him wanted to push the throttles forward, to hunt her down through the clouds and finish this nightmare right now. But he looked down at his cockpit diagnostics. His own fuel was low, his armor was compromised, and Maki was still recovering from the mental shock. He knew his limits. He couldn't chase a phantom.
He slowly let go of the control sticks, letting the White Gundam drop its beam saber. The green blade hissed and vanished.
Beside him, Maki finally let out a long, ragged breath, her eyes still staring at the spot where the black machine had been.
"She's... she's so mysterious," Maki whispered, her voice trembling as she wiped the cold sweat from her forehead. "And she felt... so cold, Zaki. Like there was nothing inside her at all."
Zaki didn't answer right away. He looked out at the burning remains of the Titan and the battleship, before turning his eyes toward the empty horizon. The war had just changed. They were no longer just fighting for the freedom of Earth—they were fighting to protect their very identity from a mirror made of pure malice.
"Let's go home, Maki," Zaki said quietly, his voice full of a dark, unyielding resolve. "We need to get ready. Because next time... I'm going to break that copy into pieces."
To be continued...