"It's the Strike! The Strike is out!"
Dearka, in the "ranged slot," was the first to spot the Strike.
The gray-black machine cut across the sky and came right up in front of them.
The four of them braced as if against a formidable foe.
[It's the Type 59! The Type 59's come down the mountain!]
[Look closely—Athrun's squad, minus a healer, is the textbook hero party]
[Check the official site, they just dropped the mecha designs for all five G-Weapons]
[Aegis is the tank, Duel is melee DPS, Blitz is the assassin, Dearka is ranged—it really is a raid comp]
[All five Gundams have about the same specs, huh]
[The villains are the heroes, the protagonist is the BOSS]
[This is just what war is really like. From your own side, the enemy always looks terrifying]
[The people across from you are flesh and blood too. The Archangel's crew is stressed to the max, and so is the enemy—in each other's eyes, the other side is downright frightening. That's the alienation war does to people]
The audience sighed over it all.
Players from this Gunpla world seemed to resonate more easily with that kind of thing. After all, this world was, at its roots, a part of "Gundam"—so it was only natural that it thought deeply about war and mobile suits. Even overrun by a girl idol, the world's "foundation" hadn't changed.
The Strike's cameras caught the silhouettes of the GINNs, fitted with D-Type Heavy Assault Equipment.
"A perfect match..."
Murrue and the others were observing the enemy force as well.
ZAFT's incursion matched Inori's report exactly.
"The G-Weapons... they really did all sortie..."
Murrue murmured.
"If our opponent is that man Le Creuset, then of course he's got the nerve for it," Mu said.
Murrue watched the Phase Shift Armor refract an eerie rainbow sheen out of the explosion's glare.
The stolen G-Weapons were now turning their muzzles on their own creators—an absurdity that sent stabbing pains through Murrue's stomach.
—Phase Shift Armor. This was the very thing Murrue's own team had developed.
"Korinthos Missiles entering launch sequence! Fire-control radar locking on!"
Badgiruel, sharing CIC duty with Mu, had barely issued the order when Murrue cut her off. "Physical rounds are useless against Phase Shift Armor! Switch the main cannon to focused-diffusion mode. Evasion routes must avoid support axes seven through nine! This ship's top priority is to withdraw from Heliopolis, not to tangle with the enemy. The G-Weapons... leave them to the Strike."
"Nani?! The Strike, one against four?!"
She knew the Strike's pilot was a Coordinator, yet Badgiruel didn't treat Kira as a piece to be sacrificed.
On the contrary, her military professionalism wouldn't allow her to do that.
[Thought she was playing bad cop, but she's surprisingly got a human side]
[It's really just because the Strike is the only combat asset]
[It's military professionalism, more like]
[I'm down! Ensign Badgiruel, please let me be your dog!]
[Too many simps like you flooding the market—now we've got serious lapdog inflation!]
[Four on one—the advantage is mine, lololol]
[Badgiruel has no clue how much pressure the other side is under]
"The Strike is enough. Our target is those four GINNs—they're the ones coming for us!"
Murrue trusted Kira.
"But... yes, ma'am!" Badgiruel didn't argue; she chose at once to obey.
On the battlefield, hesitation was fatal. Even the worst order beat sitting still and waiting to die.
"Here they come!"
They were all Gundams, but inside Kira's helmet was a VR visor, and the pseudo-360-degree display it projected was practically indistinguishable from a true full-surround monitor.
The Strike's own cameras didn't support that kind of display, but the rice cooker filled the gap nicely.
On that display, four crimson lock-on frames were rapidly contracting.
"Enemy data calculated."
"Wind-resistance parameters provided, trajectories corrected."
"Predicting enemy movement paths."
"Preset attack trajectories ready."
In Kira's pupils, the streams of data Inori fed her surged like a waterfall.
Only Kira could process data like this. Even another Coordinator couldn't handle so vast a load all at once.
"Sniper lock detected."
Kira suddenly shoved the control stick with her left hand, caught Inori's hand, and pressed it down.
The Aile thrusters on the Strike's back erupted with blue-white flame, and the machine snapped backward in a posture that defied the laws of inertia.
Two hypervelocity armor-piercing rounds grazed the cockpit armor, then struck the colony's glass dome and spiderwebbed it with cracks.
The Buster's muzzle was still smoking. Dearka stared in disbelief. "Impossible! How did she predict a blind-spot trajectory?!"
They'd had little time, but before the attack Athrun and the others had settled on a tactic.
—If the enemy could dodge everything she could see, then let the attack come from somewhere she couldn't.
The four machines had split up the instant they breached the colony, leaving the Aegis and the Duel out front as bait while Dearka slipped into the cameras' blind spot.
An MS was huge, with plenty of blind spots. Aside from the Aegis, the G-Weapons' structures were all much alike, so it was easy to analyze where the Strike's field of view went dark.
The Strike had Phase Shift Armor, but they'd remembered how it had switched its Phase Shift Armor off the first time. Athrun made a bold guess that the enemy would very likely do the same again here—so a single armor-piercing round could "settle it in one shot."
And sure enough, just as Athrun predicted, the Strike had left its Phase Shift Armor off.
And yet the snipe still failed.
"—?!"
In that instant, Dearka saw the Strike's beam rifle swing to bear on him.
"—The moment she dodged my attack, she pinpointed my position and counterattacked?!"
The Buster didn't even have time to adjust its posture before Kira fired first. Three beams sealed off every escape route in a triangular formation.
"We're not pushovers either!" Yzak's Duel suddenly cut into the battlefield from the side, its anti-beam shield knocking away the fatal shot at the last possible moment.
This too was part of Athrun's plan—cover one another during attacks, so that if one attack failed, someone else could step in and block the counter.
Kira's combat experience was still lacking. Otherwise she should have put one shot on Dearka, used one of the other two to force Yzak's Duel back on defense, and aimed the last at a part of the Duel it couldn't guard.
That way Yzak couldn't save Dearka, and would take a hit himself.
But Inori hadn't handed Kira a battle plan.
Too many battle plans would only stunt Kira's growth. In this early stage, she still needed to let Kira "grind for experience."
And beyond that, there was one most important reason...
Because that way it wouldn't be fun!
A back-and-forth fight was the most worth watching. A one-shot-one-kill slaughter couldn't even stretch the fight out.
If they were going to fight, then let them fight gorgeously!
The gorgeous clashes, the collisions of ideals in battle—that was the very best of Gundam!