"Second division backup, standing by." Lt. Timothy Ayner sighed, all his muscles tight with worry. He looked down, rubbing his thumb against the picture taped below the official country banner engraved into the metal panel of his suit. It was a small good luck charm he always kept with him, a picture of his girlfriend, just recently replaced with a picture the girlfriend who had become his wife, and their newborn son. The pilot swallowed hard, looking out over the field, no illusions of glory clouding his vision. As far as he was concerned, this entire war was nonsense. Everyone knew what that border munitions depot had been primed to do, almost no one among the enlisted men blamed the Sank kingdom for attacking it. All this battle would do was feed the prime minister's ego, and make sure there were a few more chances to make the battle even bigger, blow it up into another world war. //It'll also get a lot of good men killed today.// He was no stranger to battle. He had even been given a few medals in his last fight, for succeeding in a plan so stupidly suicidal that there was no way it /couldn't/ have worked. The pilot figured it set him up perfectly for this situation. There was nothing more inherently stupid than fighting Gundams. //We're gonna get slaughtered, I don't care /how/ many of us there are.// He could not participate in the gloating banter between the other pilots, who were trying to pump themselves up before the big battle, words of victory coming much too soon for his taste. Tim knew, no matter /what/ was set up against a Gundam, the massive war machines did not go down without one hell of a fight. //If you can take them down at all.// He just hoped, perhaps, they wouldn't show. That somehow, the main swell of the battle would be diverted elsewhere. It may have been cowardly, but in his opinion, so was this entire pointless battle. "We've got initial contact." The scout suit's video display popped up on every screen in the front lines, showed a very large Gundam with a long, glowing scythe roaring toward them, followed by another, and another, leading the rest of the Sank army toward them. Tim let his hand drop down to the picture again, touching his wife's smile, the baby-fine softness on the top of his son's head, praying without words in the moments before the battle engulfed them all. ------------------------ "On your six! On your six!!!" Tim turned, blasting through an enemy suit just a few seconds before it reached him, dodging out of the way as the flaming wreckage plunged toward the ground. They had been doing well enough, and that had been with /three/ Gundams on the field, but now - "Look out!!!" Tim took a few steps backward as he turned, wishing the suit were invisible, so that he could see what was happening sooner, that he didn't give the enemy such an obviously open window of attack. One of the two new Gundams sliced through a suit just behind him, Tim heard the pilot scream, a crackle of static, and silence. He locked eyes with the suit, raised his gun, and exhaled a breath he hadn't even known he had taken as the Gundam turned away, attacking another suit that had fired a second before he had. Tim growled, clenching his teeth, preparing to fire at the back of the Gundam, before it could finish off its opponent. He didn't think it would actually damage the suit, but there was simply nothing else he could do. "Squads two and four, be advised, we are picking up something very strange on your radar, descending at - holy /shit/, descending rapidly at mark 4-oh! This thing's headed right toward you!!!" Tim could see it, felt his heart drop for a moment. It looked like little more than a massive warhead. //The Sank wouldn't? Wouldn't self-destruct its own forces, not for /this/?!// Before Tim could react, he watched as the "bomb" changed shape, and one massive wing stretched up along its back, slowing its fall, just barely. The massive machine plowed right through the front line, Tim could see various small explosions as it shot in all directions, though its attacks seemed to be doing much less visible damage than the other Gundam suits. Almost immediately, the radio erupted into chaos. "What the-?" "... suit! I can't /move/!" "Stuck to the ground! What is this shit?!" "... can't see a goddamn thing!" Tim gaped as the massive machine came to rest, watching silently as the massive body reached toward the sky in one fluid, elegant movement, wing rising up behind it like the banner of some avenging angel. "That's a Gundam." He breathed, and only then realized he was standing almost directly in its path, with no cover, at dead stop. //Shit. SHIT!!!// Tim raised his gun, but even as he did so, he saw he was far too late. The Gundam had already lifted its own weapon, a massive, dark cannon lying across the white arm, and fired at him. Tim looked down at the picture taped to his controls, watching the massive shot approach almost in slow motion, and winced as the deathblow hit. The suit rocked slightly, there was a loud, almost ear-shattering noise from the radio, and a few sparks flew up from each of his control panels. Tim blinked, coughing, waving away the smoke rising up from around him, surprised it hadn't /hurt/ more. The cockpit was dark, he could still hear the battle raging around him. If this was what death felt like, he thought, it was pretty damn pathetic. //You're not dead, stupid. All the systems are shorted out. You're just frozen on the battlefield. The gun didn't kill you.// It wasn't exactly where he wanted to be, he thought, as he heard a few explosions outside, too close for comfort. //It's still better than being dead. Much better. But... that was a dead-on shot! What in the hell did that Gundam hit me with?// --------------------------- "Holy shit! /That/ didn't happen in the simulation." Relena blinked, staring out the forward window, watching as the electrical blast from the Longbow arced from ship to ship, taking out not one, but five enemy suits with a single shot. She could hear Dorothy chuckling gleefully behind her, firing multiple shots in wide arcs across the field, testing all of Howard's weapon systems at once. //I never thought, I never really thought that I'd actually be in a battle.// Relena almost sensed the incoming shot before she saw it, had already brought the Valkyrie into a low roll before she saw the suit that was firing on her. "Dorothy?" "Already on it." "How?" Relena bit off her question, dodging another few shots, leaping into the air to allow Dorothy enough range for another shot with the Longbow, knocking out nearly another whole regiment of the army's offensive line. They landed almost too lightly to be believed, turning swiftly, surveying the rest of the battlefield for a moment before firing off another round of magnets toward the enemy. The prime minister's forces were in barely controlled chaos now, swarming away from their former positions, retreating, trying to regroup. //Oh, I don't /think/ so.// Relena smiled to herself, picking out what seemed to be the weakest spot in the new offensive line, feeling the power building in the machine beneath her, ready to strike, to leap into the battle once more. "Dorothy?" The blonde laughed again. "Just lead the way!" Relena paused, unable to continue the attack, curiosity piqued. "How the hell do you do that?" "Hm?" Dorothy was still firing, laying a line of magnetic restraints and vibration disks over the enemy forces. "Do what?" "Know what I'm going to do, know where to fire even before I'm pointed that way?" "Tandem system. The Valkyrie's core operating program. It's what we spent all that time on in training... The system naturally adapts to two-person input, and gives me the best possible targeting system based on those results. It lets me sense your reactions as soon as you make them, and adapt." "Ah, so I'm not suddenly psychic, then." Dorothy laughed, an elated, husky purr. "Relena, if you could read my thoughts right now, you'd probably kick me right out of this Gundam." ------------------------- "So, are we going to go out there, or are we just going to sit here like lumps?" For the last few minutes, none of the Gundam pilots had moved, just watched from various positions on the field, as the new suit reduced the enemy ships to rubble, moving swiftly and efficiently through their ranks, cutting them down left and right. "I vote lump." Duo muttered, watching the new suit fight its way out of a mob of enemy fighters with incredible ease. "Is it just me, or does that suit not seem to be doing any actual /damage/?" "I don't know... that looks like plenty of damage to me." Quatre responded, staring at the remains of suits littering the battlefield. "Duo's right, though, it looks like all the cockpits are still whole - untouched." Trowa frowned, knowing there was something very important he was overlooking. "No casualties. They're fighting a battle, but nobody's dying." Quatre's confused tone spoke for them all. Trowa's eyes narrowed. "Well, we can't just sit back and watch. I'm going in there." The pilot only got one foot out, moved slightly from his position, when a large, dark ball flew out from one of the new suit's arms, coming straight at him. "Trowa!" There wasn't enough time to react, Trowa flinched as the strike hit, and the entire cockpit went black. "Trowa! Trowa!!!" "It's okay. I'm... all right?" Trowa blinked, realizing that, whatever horrible attack he had been expecting, it hadn't happened yet, and looked like it wasn't going to. The brunette pilot looked out his now opaque cockpit window, seeing tiny bubbles on the other side of the cockpit glass, a slow moving substance that had completely covered his view of the field. //... tar?// "Stay out of this, boys. This battle is /mine/." All the pilots blinked, and Heero gasped as a decidedly female growl cut over their communication links, delivering a short, sweet message. "What the-?" "Who the hell was that?" The Wing Zero was already in the air, roaring into the heat of battle with weapons online and targeted. No one else had figured it out, but Heero recognized that voice all too well, and it filled him with fury, and a new mission, to leave pieces of the new Gundam all over the battlefield. "DOROTHY!!!!" ----------------------------- Relena had taken over some of the weapons systems, mainly aiming shots into the back ranks with the Longbow whenever she got the chance, when she wasn't blocking incoming fire with the massive shield on the Gundam's arm. It should have been awkward, at the very least it should have been unnerving, but Relena felt nothing but excitement, thrilled at the ease with which the suit responded to her commands, watching the enemy's ranks slowly dissolve into complete chaos right in front of her. She could see, both through the cockpit and the high-resolution monitors, the results of her attacks, including one very colorful result from the shakers that had attached themselves to a nearby suit. Relena couldn't help but laugh as the suit almost jumped up and down, before it cracked, nearly down the middle, falling apart like a shelled nut. She grimaced, watching as the pilot lost what had been his lunch down the side of the one still-vertical leg. //Oops, zoomed in a little too close on that one.// Her head swiveled, as she saw the other arm swing outward, watched one of the suit's shots hurl far out, towards the Gundams, perched at the edge of the battle. "Who was that for?" Relena was just a little surprised the Gundams weren't attacking yet. //What are they waiting for?// "If the Gundams interfere now, it won't be a peaceful victory, Relena. They'll kill, it's all they can do. We can't let them enter the battle now. We have to win this one on our own." Relena nodded, and turned quickly as she saw a blur of motion on her right. Almost immediately, she felt the control wrenched out from under her, the Valkyrie swerving sharply back to where it had been facing. "Dorothy, what's going-?" Relena lost the end of her sentence, as she looked up, and saw Wing Zero charging at them, green energy sword drawn and blazing. She couldn't believe what she heard, Heero's voice screaming Dorothy's name, more angry than she had ever heard him before. "Heero?!" Relena yelled his name again as his sword connected with the Valkyrie's shields, and realized that Dorothy had switched over /everything/, including communications, to her control. This was a fight between her and Yuy, the other girl was now helpless in the suit. Relena searched the control panels around her, trying to reestablish a connection to the suit, listening to the battle of words, nearly as vicious as that of blows, as Dorothy and Heero entered their brutal duel. "Hello again, Heero." Dorothy smiled around gritted teeth, as she slid out from around the first strike, lashing out as Heero's suit stumbled forward slightly. The Japanese pilot recovered too quickly for her attack to work, and started slashing out, again and again with his sword, the Valkyrie matching him, blocking each strike. Neither suit was giving any ground. "Where's Relena?" Relena gasped in surprise, but quickly realized that there wasn't any way he could know she was inside the suit. She pounded on a few more buttons, unable to figure out what her partner had done as the Valkyrie dodged and attacked, slamming her around in the cockpit like a doll in a tumble dryer. "Why would you care?" Heero snarled, and gave up his tactical assault, dropping his sword and simply slamming into the Valkyrie full force. The suits crashed backward, Dorothy taken off guard by the surprise attack, unable to compensate. "Where is she, you /bitch/!!!" "Again, I ask." Dorothy snarled, slowly forcing his arm from its bar grip on the Valkyrie's neck. "Why the hell do you care where Relena is?!" "This isn't going to work." Heero laughed sharply. "I'm not going to let you mess with me like that. You're going to tell me where Relena is before I kill you, and then I'll get her back, and everything will be all right. Everything will be the way it was before." "Ah yes, she'll go back to being everyone's hope for the future, and you'll go back into space?" "Yes!" Heero screamed, realizing his mistake the moment he said it. "No! I -I..." The Gundam staggered back slightly. Heero pulled out the glowing green blade once again, but didn't attack right away, almost freezing in place. His voice was angry, but more hesitant. Dorothy had gotten to him, just a little, and he was unsure of himself. "It isn't - you're just making things difficult. It was fine, everything was fine before you interfered!" "I did a lot more than interfere, Yuy." Dorothy was beside herself with anger, unable to believe that even now, Heero could lie to himself, could put Relena back in her gilded cage, lock the door and walk away without more than a moment of easily buried regret. She wanted to hurt him, and knew exactly how to do it. "I can tell you right now, your pretty little future is never going to happen. I won't let you treat Relena like an object anymore. If it means I have to fight against the Sank my entire life, I swear you'll never get your hands on her again." She smiled, wishing she could see the look on her rival's face. "And if you kill me, you can be sure that Relena will /never/ forgive you. I told you not to walk away, that it was your last chance to tell her how you felt. Now Relena's found someone else, someone to love her the way you were too afraid to!" "SHUT UP!!!!" Dorothy knew it was the worst thing she could say to him, knew that Heero realized he had lost, really lost, and he wanted to kill her for it now more than ever. //What I wanted. You think I'm afraid of you, Perfect Soldier? Come on, you want me dead, you son of a bitch? Bring it on!!!// Her first shot with the Longbow missed, and the blonde barely pulled it out of the way as Heero's sword came up. The blow that landed against her shield arm shook the entire Valkyrie so hard her teeth rattled. //You're pissed, Yuy? Well, guess what? I am too!// If this was going to be the final fight, she was damn sure not going to let Heero walk away with an easy victory. The pilot was still screaming at her, a few words growled now and again between vicious attacks on her suit. "You. You did this to her. If I get rid of you, I get rid of the problem." Dorothy blocked his sword strikes, unable to do more at the moment, searching for an opening, a chance to counter. She reminded herself that there was still a war going on, despite their duel, and that Yuy wasn't the only danger. Heero seemed to share none of her concerns, still ranting and raving inside his suit. "All I have to do... is kill you, and she'll come back. She'll be fine. Everything will be back to normal." Heero swung down, and Dorothy missed the edge of the stroke, winced with the realization that the blade had cut into the Valkyrie's left leg, not a severe injury, but one that would slow her down enough for trouble. Already, she saw Heero's sword rising up again, and realized she had to think of something, /fast/. "This is all your fault! You did this to her! You messed with her head! All I have to do is kill you, and everything will be all right." "Stop it, Heero." The Wing Zero froze, Heero choking on the rest of his angry words, stunned at the voice that broke through the Valkyrie's communications. "Relena?" In the cockpit of the Valkyrie, Relena had finally managed to regain control of the radio. The brunette was watching the Wing Zero carefully, not needing, not /wanting/ to see the brown-haired pilot's reaction to what she knew she had to say. "Just stop. This isn't the time, or the place for this. We're in the middle of a war, if you hadn't noticed." "... Relena?" Heero sounded like a broken record, the same tone, the same infliction of disbelief in his voice as he said her name. "What are you doing?" He sounded so shocked, so lost, but Relena couldn't lie to him, couldn't afford to pull her punches. "This is my Gundam, Heero. The Valkyrie. It's mine. Mine and Dorothy's." "A Gundam? But... but /why/?!" Heero's voice was a taut, hoarse whisper. "We could protect you. /I/ could protect you, just fine." "I don't want to be protected, Heero. I can't afford to be a ruler who can't take care of herself. The Sank doesn't need a person like that in command." "You don't need me at all, then." "That's not it at all!" Relena hated the way he always took the situation to extremes, especially this one, because she could no longer give him what he seemed, only now, to want. "You'll always be my friend, Heero. Always. I would never ask you to leave the Sank kingdom." "F-friend?" Heero spluttered out the word, more shocked than he should have been. "Then you, and Dorothy... she wasn't lying?" "No. Dorothy wasn't lying." Relena was too focused on the conversation to hear the blonde's tiny sigh of relief. "But Relena, I..." Heero sounded devastated. "I. I love..." "Heero." The brown haired girl winced, not wanting to hurt him, knowing there was no other way. "I'm sorry, it's just too late for that." Before another word could be spoken, an alarm shrieked inside the Valkyrie's cockpit. "Incoming!!!" Dorothy shouted, raising the suit's shield arm toward the sky. ---------------------------- Wufei didn't know exactly what was going on, except that Heero Yuy seemed to have just abandoned everything he had ever learned about battle, as soon as he found out who was in the new Gundam suit. The dark-haired Asian pilot had easily recognized Dorothy Catalonia's voice, and was not terribly surprised at Heero's reaction, just a little ashamed. //Hung up on Relena, eh? Going crazy over a woman? Pretty sad,, Heero, especially for you.// The Wing Zero had, of course, been more than a match for the girl's suit, though Wufei was surprised the Gundam pilot wasn't doing better against Dorothy. The two were actually evenly matched. Wufei didn't know what was said between them, the two pilots had switched to a private channel as soon as their battle had started. Which meant there was no way to contact them when the enemies' left flank, which Wufei had assumed was soundly beaten, suddenly surged forward in a surprise attack. Quatre and Trowa vanished in the mob of enemy suits, the latter pilot's Gundam still operating with almost no visual acuity. Wufei engaged a few ships that were taking advantage of this fact, destroying them easily as they focused solely on the Heavyarms. After the simple fight, Wufei noticed, the Wing Zero had frozen in place, along with Catalonia's suit, in the middle of the battlefield. //Yuy, you /idiot/! What do you think you're doing?!// Wufei saw the incoming missile on his radar, but there was no way to warn either suit in time. Dorothy's Gundam seemed to see the attack at the last second, raising one arm just before both ships were engulfed in a massive explosion. ------------------------- "YES!!!" The prime minister pounded his hand against the dashboard of the armored carrier, watching the explosion from a guarded position across the battlefield. He had been a little nervous when the new suit had appeared, but it had made an incredibly bad tactical decision by stopping in the middle of the field, and he had taken full advantage of it. The man standing behind him did not seem to share his enthusiasm. "I don't believe that suit was sent to kill. We're receiving reports of no casualties from the downed suits." "Who cares?" The prime minister laughed. "That'll put that bitch in her place, wherever she is." The minister of Finance stood against one wall, arms crossed, utterly unimpressed. While the prime minister's policies of national pride had been well accepted among the people, his declaration of war made /everyone/ nervous, most of all the Parliament. No one was eager to return to a full-out war, and while the prime minister had been gathering his forces, the parliament had been quietly making plans. //We're not going to win this war. Not against six Gundams. This has gotten out of hand.// The finance minister heard the prime minister choke as the smoke cleared from the battlefield, revealing both suits, in perfect shape. The Finance minister had been expecting it. The new suit rose to its feet, and pulled out its massive primary cannon, delivering a punishing retaliatory strike deep into their territory. Flashes of electricity leapt from suit to suit across the long line, but, just as before, there were no explosions, and no fatalities. "No. NO!" The prime minister howled directions into his radio, sending every suit he could back into the fray, now focused only on destroying the Gundams, determined to fight the battle to the last. //Thankfully, we have a backup plan.// The minister of Finance quietly walked away, out of the armored carrier. After a few moments, he pulled out his cell phone. "Hello? Yes. Yes. Everything is in order. Please start the maneuver." He hung up the phone, walking just a little bit faster away from the prime minister's position. "This battle has gone on for far too long." ------------------------ Duo had his first suspicions about the new Gundam when the familiar sound of rock music filled the Deathscythe's cockpit, effectively jamming all communications on the normal frequencies. He flipped a switch, turning the radio to a Gundam-only frequency, as a realization began piecing together in his brain. "-in the world is going on?" Quatre burst in, exasperated. "That new Gundam just took out Wing Zero." Duo said mildly, watching the massive black wing unfold from the back of the new Gundam. The suit took off, leaving the Wing Zero stuck to the ground in a huge pile of some sort of chemical foam. The American pilot couldn't tell, but it didn't look like Heero was doing much to try and fight his way out of it either. Duo thought about calling the other pilot, to make sure he was okay, but remembering how angry Yuy had been only a few minutes before made him think the better of it. //I wonder what they were talking about?// "Anyone know how Catalonia managed to get a Gundam?" Trowa murmured. The pilot sounded all right, a little relieved after being able to get enough of the black goo off his window to see the battlefield. Duo didn't answer, flipping his com link back to the regular channel, listening to the surf-rock anthems still obliterating any other communications. //If I didn't know better - One of the last things /Howard/ did to the Deathscythe was add one of these scrambler thingies.// Duo had thoroughly enjoyed playing the "Top Gun" soundtrack every chance he got for a while, annoying both enemies and any nearby allies. //... but Howard, working for Catalona?! Not possible.// Duo frowned, realizing his deductive powers were pretty much useless against this problem. "Hey, look at that!" Duo looked up, as Quatre alerted them to the fact that a small contingent of their rebel friends, Tyse and three other ships, were now hurrying up the battlefield, running deep into enemy territory. "Where the hell are they going?" Duo muttered. "It almost looks like... there's no one trying to stop them?" Quatre was puzzled, and he was not the only one. "It's a trap, it has to be." Trowa frowned, watching moment after moment, as no enemy forces attacked the four suits. "... but for who?" ------------------------ Relena shut off the scrambler, heard Dorothy chuckle in amusement as three suits, completely turned around by the lack of radio communications, flew right into their path with a scattering of sudden obscenities. The brunette wasn't sure where the magnet she shot hit, only that the first suit's engine spluttered, died and the suit made a long sweeping trail right into the ground, skidding a half-mile or so away. Dorothy leapt up to catch the second suit by one leg, swinging around and sending it crashing into the other suit, both of whom fell into a massive tangle of metal at the base of a small hill. "We can't keep doing this forever, Dorothy." "Why not?" Dorothy laughed again, bringing the windshield cover cannon up for another few shots. "Aren't you having fun?" Relena ignored her question, looking around the battlefield. It had been the right decision, she knew, to stop the Wing Zero where they had, but she also knew that, given time, Heero could be in danger. There were too many incapacitated suits, too many chances for easy kills, and she didn't want any more bloodshed. "We've got to find the prime minister. If we find him, we stop this battle. We've already got Trowa and Heero incapacitated." "-and Wufei." "What?" Dorothy lined up the Longbow's shot, waiting just after the moment Nataku struck its enemy to fire her own blast. It was petty, it was pointless, and the blonde knew it was something she absolutely /had/ to do. "Stick this in your tailpipe, Mr. I-won't-fight-women." Relena watched the two-part beam blast into the Asian pilot's suit, looked down to a gauge on the Valkyrie's control panel to see that the energy from Wufei's Gundam had been transferred into their own. It was a surprisingly small amount. "Everyone's running out of time here, there's already been too much fighting. We've got to come up with a solution." The leader of the Sank kingdom bit her lip, mind racing. The Valkyrie was an amazing piece of machinery, that much was true, but even it could not win a war on its own. //Think, Relena. Think.// "Hey? Where are they going?" Relena looked up, as four suits zoomed past them, headed to some unknown point in the distance. The brunette's eyes narrowed. "Follow them." -------------------------- "Hello there." They hadn't been following the rebel suits long before they were noticed. Relena thought she recognized the cheery purr that rumbled across her com link, but it was a vague identification at that. "... and who might I have the privilege of speaking to?" The voice continued, the steely tone only half-hidden by false cheer. "This is Relena Peacecraft, pilot of the Valkyrie and ruler of the Sank kingdom." "Peacecraft?!" The brunette heard other communications links open up, as the other pilots voiced their surprise. Relena could also hear Dorothy checking weapon and shield systems as they flew down into enemy territory, but strangely enough, no one had fired on them for quite a while. "Yes. We've come here to stop this war." The pilots all laughed, before the one who had first hailed her spoke up again. "Well... ma'am. I guess if anyone could do it, you'd be the one." Relena arched an eyebrow. "Just who am I talking to?" "This is Tyse Derrick, current leader of the rebellion. I was the one who called you a... "worthless, ineffectual puppet" at the last meeting between our three countries." He laughed. "I take it back now, of course." "Where are we going, exactly?" His voice became more serious, and betrayed his excitement. "We got a leak out from their internal chain of command, that the prime minister is out here somewhere." "I'd say that's pretty convenient." Dorothy murmured to Relena. "It's also convenient that they've stopped firing at us." Relena shut off her outgoing com link for a moment, turning slightly towards her partner. "What do you think?" "Well, as a random, bullshit guess-" Dorothy frowned. "I'd say..." She murmured to herself, thinking out loud. "It just doesn't make sense, when there was no way we could do this before. There's /no/ cover fire. It's almost like they /want/ us to kill him." "There he is!!! Right /THERE/!!!" Relena turned, as Tyse's triumphant cry tore through the conversation, and the other pilots whooped and hollered over the com link. The brown-haired girl could see the small black building, sticking out from the landscape like a sore thumb, surrounded by only a few guns, one or two suits. //This isn't right. There's no way they'd put an important leader in there, unless-// Relena's eyes widened, she gasped, and instantly hit the Valkyrie's booster engines, throwing the Valkyrie directly into the path of Tyse Derrick and his companions.
Back to Valkyrie Index - Back to Gundam Wing Shoujo-Ai Fanfiction