The Strike patched through to the Archangel.
"Murrue-san, please eject the Sword Striker Pack. I've already provided the ejection angle and initial velocity data."
"Right!"
Murrue nodded at once.
The Strike had a Striker Pack System, but that didn't mean it could swap loadouts anytime, anywhere.
What Kira was about to do amounted to manually pulling off a precise spacecraft docking, in a space environment, with no assistance at all!
But Murrue chose to trust Kira now.
Soon, the Sword Striker equipment was ejected.
After using the two Astray drones to force Athrun and the others back, Kira jettisoned the Aile Striker Pack again in one smooth motion and mounted the Sword Striker.
Then the Strike's Phase Shift Armor, kept off all this time, finally switched on.
[Grass (a type of exclamation), phase two]
[Fam, our BOSS just entered phase two, anyone feel me]
[The hero squad ran out of time, the enrage mechanic kicked in, they're gonna get wiped]
[Kira? More like kill-ya!]
[Full marks for that pun]
[Shame folks elsewhere won't get the pun]
With the Phase Shift Armor on, Kira stopped holding back. The two Astrays, under Inori's control, tangled up Athrun's group while Kira flew straight for the four GINNs.
"Strike!"
The moment Miguel saw the Strike, he charged in, trying to cover his teammates.
"Huh...?!"
But in a single pass, the GINN's arms were sliced off again, and that heavy-assault gear was destroyed outright.
"Miguel!" Olor tried to cover Miguel too, but Kira had already closed in—instantly severing the legs of Olor's machine, then rising and shearing off its arms as well.
"I see... so this is... power..."
Kira understood.
With power in her hands, she wouldn't have to make agonizing choices.
Kira didn't want to kill.
"On the battlefield, if you don't want to kill, you get killed. But if I have enough power, then even without killing... I can still protect everything!"
[Discharged!]
[This time she's really discharged]
[Fair's fair, it actually makes sense]
[A true strong one has the freedom to choose not to kill]
[Weird—when other protagonists say they won't kill, I just find it pretentious; when Kira says it, all I feel is raw dominance]
[This is the composure of the strong, I guess]
[Feels pretty reasonable, honestly]
[Go check the official site—they announced the Red Astray and Blue Astray too, said they're putting out kits]
[Holy, Bandai's really going all out]
[It's just too much, my wallet can't keep up]
[Anyway I'm planning to use the Strike to play GBN]
[The Strike's own specs are actually pretty average—it's mainly the pilot who's incredible]
[Kira took the Strike to heights it was never meant to reach]
[Wonder which is stronger, the Strike or the original Gundam]
[GBN balances the stats, the gap won't be too big]
[Looking forward to a Strike Custom]
The GINNs had no Phase Shift Armor, so in an instant Kira stripped all four limbs from one of them.
Then she charged the other two, again shearing off one GINN's four limbs in a flash, before rushing up to the fourth and cutting its limbs away too.
[Slicing melons, chopping veggies]
[Truly—melons sliced, veggies chopped]
[Feels like the pilots didn't even react]
[Four machines deleted in a blink]
[You've disturbed the Witch]
[Now I get just how formidable that black GINN in the prologue really was]
[A god-tier AI that piloted a mook machine with the aura of a BOSS]
[So THAT'S why Kira keeps fixating on the black GINN—with a gap this wide, she really can't let it go]
[Holy, GBN better not implement a super AI like this—we really wouldn't be able to beat it]
[Shocking: GBN players can't even beat the CPU—is this the collapse of mecha gaming, or the fall of Gundam?]
[Don't jinx it—the GBN organizers are flaky. If they really cooked up a thing like this, we'd be in trouble]
[Human: Fall Flat]
"Miguel!" By now Athrun and the others had rushed to Miguel's side.
They hadn't wasted a fraction of a second, yet over here Kira had already finished disabling all four machines.
And aboard the Archangel, Murrue was dumbstruck too. "Kira...?"
She'd figured Kira was strong—but disabling four machines in a single pass was still downright terrifying.
"Captain!" Badgiruel's voice came.
This was no time to be shocked.
This was the very chance to press their advantage!
"Lay down suppressing fire!" Murrue hurriedly ordered.
"Retreat!" Miguel roared.
With his arms severed a second time, Miguel too realized that retreat was probably all they had left.
Without the four GINNs pinning it down, the Archangel unleashed its full firepower, and ZAFT was simply no match now.
"Understood!"
Athrun knew it was hopeless too; all they could do now was withdraw at once.
The Archangel kept firing, but Kira and the two Astrays didn't attack—they only watched as the four G-Weapons covered the four "limbless" machines in their retreat.
"...It's over."
Kira lifted her head.
Once she pulled off the visor, the space before her turned back into the dim, cramped interior of the Strike's cockpit.
With the two Astrays in tow, the Strike finally returned to the deck.
Murrue, Mu, and the others came to meet her there.
"What's the story with these two machines? And the pilots?"
Mu looked up at the Astrays.
"No."
Inori's voice came.
Kira was descending from the Strike now, Inori held in both arms.
Cradled against her, Inori said, "They're drones."
"Nani?! Orb already has technology like this?!"
Murrue was shocked enough to last a hundred years.
"Not Orb's technology. Fyu-Neru's."
Two rice-cooker robots hopped out of the Astrays' cockpits.
"The one truly in control was Kira."
"Triple-tasking...?"
Mu was stunned.
"A Coordinator can even pull off something like that?" Badgiruel racked her brain and still couldn't make sense of it.
"An MS developed by Orb!"
Back in the cabin, Cagalli had watched the whole thing outside through the ship's internal cameras.
Now she came bursting out, gasping for breath, unable to catch it.
"What on earth is going on here...?"
"Prototypes built by Orb."
The prototypes of Orb's Astray Gundams.
In "the original work," what Kira helped tune and modify after entering Orb were the mass-production units, improved from parameters obtained off these very prototypes.
The Astray series had loads of gaudy variants.
But how to put it... "the worst student has the fanciest supplies"—that was probably exactly this situation.
SEED's Astray side-story manga looked flashy, but once it hit the battlefield, its units were the sort Kira treated as roadside mooks, dying at random to some unidentified AOE.
Most were mooks with cosmetic skins; a small handful were elite units that came with skills.
The side-story manga itself wasn't popular, but... the plastic kits sold like wildfire!
Inori had once thought about scrapping the entire side-story.
But on second thought—for the sake of selling kits, she couldn't scrap all of it.
The Astrays could bring in money.
The side-story had nothing to do with her, and even if it made money, none of it would come her way, so no matter how many kits it moved, it was no concern of hers.
But... the client had no idea Astray would move this many kits down the line!
So piggybacking on a pair of Astrays and collecting a wave of popularity in the process—why not?
All! According! To! Plan!