Releena noticed that time seemed to slow to a crawl with a gun pointed at you, even if a friend of yours like Lady Une points it. The gun seemed very out of place in the sterile whiteness of the hospital room, along with those in the hands of several eager officers surrounding them. "Damn," Lady Une said mildly, "I was hoping we would catch an assassin." "I wondered why getting in the hospital was so easy," Hilde said calmly, as Lady Une and several Preventer officers put their guns away. "Easy?!" Releena said in disbelief, and brushed at the dust and garbage that covered her head to toe from their rather difficult entrance through the ducts. "Well, relatively easy, anyway," Hilde corrected. She got serious as she looked over at Une, "Who did this?" "Wu-Fei" Une sighed softly, her voice contempt filled as she lay back down uncomfortably in the bed. "He came in my office and then shot me, right before he set off the explosives he and his allies planted in Preventer headquarters. Apparently," Une added with a rueful smile, "he wanted to make sure I didn't get out." Hilde just nodded grimly at that piece of news a disgusted look on her face, but Releena looked at Lady Une in shock and disbelief. "Wu-Fei?" Releena asked quietly. "But, he was one of the Gundam pilots. He rejected this kind of madness when he saw the people united with us. We thought of him as a friend, damn it! Why would he..." Hilde sighed softly, "I'm very sorry Releena. People do change, even the ones we think of as our friends. Never forget that he also fought for the Marimana Army at one point." Lady Une added, "I did some checking the last day or two." She sighed, waving her hand about, "I haven't been able to do very much else in here. It seems Wu-Fei has been taking on more and more dangerous assignments and actively taking greater risks. And most of them have been involving Mobile suit combat as well." Releena didn't say anything at this point, her expression deeply troubled. She didn’t know what to say, as much as she did want to say something. "Do we know what their objective is?" Hilde asked Une softly, her expression grim. "He gloated a bit, figuring I was dead anyway. Apparently the 'Ghosts of Valhalla' want to re-ignite the old conflicts and try to restart the war. They're going to use a figurehead to rally the colonies while they mobilize the Earth forces to war," Une explained. "So what will the figurehead be?" Releena asked quietly. "We're not totally sure, but we know he transferred massive quantities of Gundanium alloy to a unknown location. They also striped some parts the Tallgeese Mk. III itself, but exactly what they took we don't know. Another computer virus, this time in our main computer, deleted the data," Une said with a grimace. "Epyon," Hilde said very softly. They both looked at her in surprise, and she elaborated, in a calm, almost deadpan voice "They're rebuilding the Epyon suit. It was the symbol of the Colonies' opposition to Earth in the final battle of the last war, and after it disappeared the suit seemed to acquire an almost mythic status. The right pilot could use it to rally the Colony dissidents against Earth again. It has to be!" "Wu-Fei will be the pilot," Releena said softly, "if what you say is true, he'd almost have to be. We've got to stop her before she can contact the Colonies in Epyon." "But even the Peacemaker suits wouldn't stand a chance," Une said softly. "They're not Gundams, and even a poor copy of Epyon would still be too much for them." "We need a Gundam of our own to face it," Noin said softly. "But where..." she started, then her eyes suddenly widened. "Wait, how badly parted out was the Mk. III by Wu-Fei?" "We started repairs on it as soon as we found out what Wu-Fei had done to it. It should still be in complete working order!" she cried. She popped open her cell-phone and began to bark out orders to fit the suit with atmospheric escape boosters and prepare it for immediate emergency launch. "Also, who do we get to pilot it?" Releena asked worriedly. Hilde smiled slightly, knowing just how Releena was going to react to what she was going to say, "I will." Releena barely managed to keep the blow up from happening until they were in a fast car heading for the Tallgeese Mk. III's hangar bay. "Why on Earth does it have to be you?" she finally asked Hilde angrily. "There's nobody else," Hilde answered quietly, "who's piloted a Gundam or even fought one before and lived, who's available to the Preventers." "What about Trowa?" Releena demanded. "He was badly injured getting casualties out of the Preventer headquarters fire." Hilde saw the worried look on Releena's face and quickly added, "A piece of the roof fell on him. He'll be all right, but he's in no shape to try piloting a Gundam for a while." "What about Duo, then?" Releena asked more softly, but something in the tone of her voice said she already knew the answers. "Duo is both basically unreachable," Hilde said with a sigh. "He was put on a deep cover assignment following up a death threat made shortly after Catherine was made your double," she said softly. "And I don't dare call in Quatre." Even Releena had to agree with that. Quatre Rebaba Winner had become one of the driving forces behind the reconstruction of the Earth and the Colonies, as well as a major political force. His loss would be devastating to everyone. "And that leaves..." "Your brother and sister-in-law, the Lady Une and me," Noin concluded. "The first two are... way, way out of reach on Mars, and there's no chance in hell I'm going to let a woman with a serious bullet wound climb into a mobile suit." Releena was about to speak, when the cell phone chirped and interrupted the moment. Hilde pulled it out, and both of them heard Lady Une's voice come in loud and clear "Epyon has launched! I repeat: Epyon has launched! Hilde, you've got less than two hours to try and intercept it, understood?" "Got it!" Hilde barked. Then she floored the gas pedal, moved them back on the blacktop with a screech of tires and down the road at top speed. Releena was silent, lost in thought. "I understand you have to do this," Releena said as she stopped Noin at the cockpit hatch, "but please, make sure you come back to me." "Of course" Hilde said softly, then she grinned at Releena; "We do have a wedding to go to, remember?" Hilde leaned over and kissed her, then climbed in and sealed the cockpit. Releena watched the suit launch; a silver figure soared into the sky. She waved good bye, even though she wondered if Hilde could even see it, but she didn't really care. Hilde would know that she was sure of. Hilde smiled as she shut down the rear view camera as Releena's image shrank in the distance. She had to focus on the battle ahead, not on whom she was leaving behind. She carefully ran through her checklist as she moved, and declared each aloud as she finished "EMP canon, check! Beam saber, check!" She received the tracking data and studied Epyon's flight path to plan where she would need to intercept it. "Shield, check!" 'That's an awfully inefficient route to take,' Hilde thought, 'but he probably wants a chance to show off the suit. Epyon will have more of an impact that way when he tries to rally the colonies behind her with it.' She grinned ferally, 'Gives me more time to reach him, too.' She opened the throttle and tore upward to the edge of the atmosphere, up where Epyon hung, and waited for her. "Space drive, check!" she said having already detaching the suit’s spent booster pack, she would need the suit’s own drive systems for space flight. It rested there, saving it's fuel as it rotated with the Earth until it reached the proper moment to move out into space. The dragon-like flight mode was a sight that had struck fear in men during the last war, and now they wanted to revive that terror. 'Not if I can help it,' Hilde thought, and fired a demolition charge from one of the Mk. III’s weapon pods! The explosive threw Epyon into a short-lived nose-dive, but it quickly recovered and rose again even as it changed into its own mobile suit form. The dragon wings stretched outward, the energy blade ignited and the heat rod whip unfurled, ready for battle. Hilde’s video screen came on and she saw Wu-Fei's face contorted in rage at her. "WHAT?!?" the Chinese pilot roared. "They send some damned weak onna to take me down?! INJUSTICE!!! When I find who’s responsible for this insult, they’ll beg me to let them die!" If she could’ve, she would have smacked Wu-Fei in the face fight through the com-signal. "We don't have to do this," Wu-Fei said to him angrily. She continued more calmly this time, "If you power down your weapons and follow me down, we can try to fix things." "Oh, really?" Wu-Fei said wryly. "You think you will give me orders, BITCH?" the last part said with real venom in his voice. Before Hilde could reply, or even begin to wonder, he attacked, energy blade swinging! Hilde parried her own blade stopping Epyon's cold! "Releena would," Hilde answered him, only to be answered with a snarl of anger and a series of slashing attacks from Epyon's sword! Epyon drove her backwards, but Hilde was too fast for the Epyon copy for Wu- Fei to get any solid hits in! As they fought, Hilde realized this was a very poor copy indeed, not nearly as fast as her own suit, much less the first Epyon! They bobbed and weaved together along the edge of the atmosphere, their weapons fired as Wu-Fei tried to knock Hilde out of the sky, and Hilde worked to find a way to disable her foe. Hilde had a real advantage in speed and maneuverability, but Wu-Fei fought with a burning fury and as well as the skill that made him a Gundam Pilot. Hilde ran through the refitted suit's arsenal, and fired restraint device after restraint device at Epyon with little or no effect. She shot to disable Epyon's joints but was unable to cleanly hit them. Finally, Hilde realized she had only one weapon to stop Epyon with, and as they fought, she began to conceive of a plan to use it! "Releena?!" Wu-Fei suddenly growled to Hilde angrily. "I hate her! This false peace of hers is the greatest injustice of all. When I first joined the Barton Foundation, it was to make a world that would be built by the strength of will and justice of those who fought for what they believed in. Instead, the deaths of those with the courage to fight for their own sense of integrity died for nothing! When the people rose up in defiance against Barton, I had hope for the future. Instead, all I see are weak, complacent people who’d rather let the world fall apart in the name of paperwork! I intend to undo that mistake!" Epyon's "heat rod" snaked out and wrapped around the Tallgeese's arm, heated white hot, but strangely the forearm armor was only scorched! "Thank god for Gundanium," Hilde muttered, and quickly yanked the off- balance Epyon towards her by the whip! Before Wu-Fei could recover, Hilde took her EMP canon and fired right into the chest of Epyon, and right through the cockpit and Wu-Fei's own body! The scream tore through Hilde's cockpit speakers, as Epyon went limp in space with all it's command systems shut down at once. Hilde brought her suit in close and gently, carefully cradled Epyon in her arms as she prepared for the long trip home. Lady Une looked into the antisepticly white hospital room and leaned heavily on both Hilde and Releena's support. Wu-Fei lay unmoving there in the hospital bed as the monitors tracked his condition. "Will he make it?" Une asked them quietly. "No," Hilde said softly, a bit of sadness in her voice. "As soon as we got the suit opened, his brain and nervous system started shutting down. He’s not expected to last the night." "Good," Une said, and smiled darkly as she continued, "This way the son- of-a-bitch saves the taxpayers the cost of a trial." Hilde rolled her eyes and Releena looked at Une disapprovingly. "Commander Une," Releena started, only to be cut off. "Releena, he betrayed his oath, his friends, and me personally after Sally begged my to let him join after the Barton Foundation incident," Une said seriously. "I'm not prepared to easily excuse that." They all went back to Une's room, where she quite painfully lay back down again. "We'll be back to see you soon," HIHi HilJHHH Hilde said softly. Une smiled to herself as she saw the two of them leave together, holding each other's hands. 'I wonder when the wedding will be?' Une wondered to herself drowsily before she finally fell to sleep. Later on that night, Wu-Fei Chang died of his injuries, thus giving him his precious warrior’s death. Not a single person mourned the arrogant bastard’s passing the next day.
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