Spelled out, it sounds terribly complicated, but the whole exchange lasted no more than a second.
"The Strike is counterattacking Dearka—its posture leaves it completely unable to watch for my attack over here!"
The Aegis had already transformed into Mobile Armor Mode, its 580mm "Scylla" Multi-Phase Energy Cannon glowing with the red light of death.
"Aegis has locked onto this unit."
"Scylla cannon trajectory predicted."
"Evasion plan provided."
Still holding Inori's hands, Kira continued to climb.
The Strike's cockpit was cramped, and the two of them were now pressed almost flush together.
The wing-shaped thrusters on the Strike's back suddenly flipped ninety degrees, and the machine slid twenty meters sideways as if yanked by an invisible giant hand.
The crimson beam grazed past where it had just been, boiling the colony's artificial lake into a cloud of scalding steam.
"I'd already accounted for that!" The still-cloaked Blitz, its silhouette traced out by the steam, stabbed its cold-glinting beam saber at the Strike's back.
But the gray-black machine, which should have lost its balance, suddenly used its shield as a pivot to complete a pendulum maneuver, its beam saber carving a crescent arc from below.
Amid the shrieking of torn metal, the Blitz barely evaded—but its beam saber was sliced clean apart.
"This failed too?!"
Athrun stared, dumbfounded.
At the start, Athrun and the others hadn't placed much confidence in Dearka's snipe either.
But it was enough if Dearka could just draw the Strike's attention.
The moment Dearka's attack threw the Strike off-balance, Athrun's Aegis would press the attack.
Yet those attacks had a purpose of their own, too: to cover the Blitz.
The Blitz had its Mirage Colloid system—using Mirage Colloid particles to cloak itself.
If a blind-spot attack could be predicted, then what about an attack that was truly invisible?
"The Strike... could it be that it hasn't engaged its flight-control system at all?" Athrun swallowed.
"Flight control off, Phase Shift Armor off, radar off, fire control off—this guy hasn't turned on a single thing!"
Yzak roared.
"The Strike is using the Aile Striker pack, but it's loaded down with so much ammunition that its speed is compromised! The Aegis in Mobile Armor Mode has more speed... Yzak, Dearka, Nicol—Plan C! Don't give her a moment to breathe!"
Athrun's roar burst across the comm channel.
They couldn't let themselves be intimidated by the enemy!
The Aegis's claws tore open the curtain of steam, its Mobile Armor form like a steel beast gaping a bloody maw.
At the same moment, the Duel's two beam sabers slashed down diagonally from the right, and the death-cross formed by the twin beam blades sealed off every inch of dodging space.
"A bit stronger than before—but compared to that GINN... you're a long way off!"
The Strike suddenly hurled its shield overhead.
The Aegis's claws grazed the shield's surface, throwing off a spray of sparks.
That tiny disturbance bought the Strike 0.3 seconds.
The Strike put a precise beam-rifle shot into the Duel, destroying one of its beam sabers and forcing Yzak to abandon his slash and defend.
"Got you!"
Dearka's savage grin came with a thunder of cannon fire.
Since the Strike wasn't using fire control, he wouldn't either.
Pure optical aiming was difficult—without assistance it was hard to lock onto an enemy.
But without a lock... the enemy wouldn't be tipped off!
The sniper rifle fired another round.
But Kira seemed to have calculated the timing long ago. The Aile Striker pack on the Strike's back suddenly detached, and the now off-balance machine kicked the Aegis square in the body, dodging the snipe while vaulting higher into the air—and the just-separated Aile pack somehow reattached itself midair!
"BOOM!"
The sniper round slammed square into the colony's central axis, leaving Heliopolis even more precariously close to collapse.
"Are you people insane? This place is going to come apart!"
Kira opened the public channel.
"A girl?!"
All four of them were stunned by Kira's voice.
—The person sitting inside the Strike was actually a girl!
"They had it coming!" Yzak didn't hold back. He swapped for the beam rifle and fired again, but the attack was, unsurprisingly, evaded.
Athrun had the faint sense he'd heard this voice somewhere before.
He suddenly thought of the blonde girl he'd seen the day he'd infiltrated the colony—this voice bore a slight resemblance to hers.
Though this Strike pilot's voice was far gentler and more pleasant than that blonde's.
Couldn't be, could it?
Meanwhile, over on the other side, Miguel had begun his assault on the Archangel.
Miguel's heavily armed GINN also kept landing hits on the central axis and the steel cables.
The massive alloy cables snapped one after another...
"Stop it!"
"This place is going to be your grave!" Having found that shooting wasn't working, Yzak swapped back to a beam saber.
But he didn't rush in recklessly.
Charging in would be as good as suicide.
Kira was frantic.
No matter what, Heliopolis was the home she'd lived in.
[God-tier animation]
[What a slick, flashy fight]
[Cutting the flight control stole the whole show]
[I was there live]
[The pendulum!]
[I can already hear the logistics team wailing]
[The logistics crew's tearing their hair out in agony]
[Holy crap, look at all those beyond-the-limit maneuvers]
[Every control turned off—isn't this pure manual piloting?]
[Basically no OS, right?]
[She's using the Inori OS!]
[What the hell is an "Inori OS"?!]
Through that whole flurry of combat, the audience hadn't blinked. That single seamless "action sequence" felt like even pausing it once would be an insult.
So it was only after this stretch came to a lull that the danmaku finally erupted in a flood.
[The colony's in this state—it's definitely going down, right?]
[Feels like the colony breaking apart will be the end of episode one]
[If you want to top 0079, then bring on the explosion]
"Heliopolis, structural integrity 67%. When it drops to 40%, Heliopolis will disintegrate."
Inori's voice came through.
"Kira... do you want to protect Heliopolis?"
"Of course!" Kira gripped Inori's hands even tighter.
"Then—grant me higher authorization."
Back in Episode Zero, Inori had been able to control a GINN partly because she'd tampered with the GINN's internals, and partly because her authorization back in Episode Zero had been greater.
But this was the main storyline now, and her assigned role had reverted to its original state.
More importantly, what Inori intended to do this time was far more consequential. She couldn't proceed without the approval of both the "protagonist" and the "master."
"Authorization?"
"Beyond the five G-Series units developed by the Earth Alliance, Orb itself secretly developed five new machines in the deeper layers of the colony, using G-Series data. One of them withdrew from Heliopolis once the attack began, and activated a self-destruct countdown at Morgenroete's facility."
Hearing this, Kira nearly choked.
"You're saying that Heliopolis actually had the strength to fight back—it had this Gundam—and yet they chose to flee without a fight?!"
—Goddammit.
Kira's blood pressure spiked.