Beep, beep, beep!
The cockpit radar detector sounded an alert.
Following the direction of the red mark on the radar, he saw a blue-and-white Mobile Suit emerge from the ruined factory at Morgenroete.
"Strike Gundam—"
Seeing its distinctive shape and color scheme, Ino closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then raised his gun and locked on to the enemy.
Rat-a-tat-tat—
He squeezed the trigger, and bullets from the rifle rained down in an instant.
Kira had only just emerged from the factory when the sudden, piercing alarm startled him.
Rumble—
A series of explosions followed, sending shock waves through the surrounding area.
The dense hail of bullets drove Kira straight back inside.
"Ino, conventional ammunition can't inflict fatal damage on it!"
Michel, watching the battle closely, couldn't help warning him. "Go after the Archangel. I'll deal with it!"
"Get lost! Don't try to teach me how to fight!"
Ino cursed at Michel's suggestion. If he weren't saving him, who the hell would want to fight a walking time bomb like that?
The SEED Factor was basically a cheat granted to the chosen, and one of the strongest cheats at that.
No matter how skilled a pilot without the SEED Factor was, if he fought alone while his Mobile Suit was at a disadvantage—
he would never beat a pilot who had the SEED Factor.
"I... you..."
Michel was dumbfounded by Ino's sudden outburst.
As far as he could remember, Ino had never cursed at anyone before.
Ino ignored Michel's stunned expression.
He set the MMI-M8A3 76mm Heavy Assault Machine Gun at his waist, then pulled out the M69 "Elephant" Modified Heavy Particle Cannon mounted on his back and charged forward.
Did he not know that conventional weapons couldn't penetrate its armor? He did. That was exactly why he'd chosen to use them.
What if he crushed Kira's morale the moment they met?
He wasn't entirely sure when the SEED Factor awakened, either. He wasn't a geneticist, for one thing, and as far as he knew, he didn't have it himself.
But one thing was certain: it activated automatically when its owner faced a crisis of life and death or experienced intense emotions.
Especially in someone like Kira Yamato, the so-called strongest Coordinator. For him, it would almost certainly activate at once.
Ino had never experienced firsthand how powerful the Strike Gundam became when Kira went into SEED mode, and he had no desire to find out.
If Kira suddenly started chopping beams in half with his bare hands, Ino would fall apart on the spot.
"So that's the one Mr. Mu was talking about..."
Inside the Strike Gundam's cockpit, Kira peered through the smoke at the Mobile Suit, whose colors differed from those of the other Ginns, and remembered Mr. Mu's warning.
"I'm going easy on you, so don't you dare go into SEED mode on me..."
As he spoke, Ino raised his gun and locked on to the Strike Gundam.
Then, as the Strike Gundam's piercing alarm sounded, he squeezed the trigger.
Beep, beep!
Bang!
Boom!
But a shield appeared, and the beam was blocked outright.
The Strike Gundam darted in front of Ino.
The physical beam saber was nearly as tall as his Mobile Suit. Ino flipped his machine backward and dodged the slash.
At the same time, he squeezed the trigger—
Bang!
Ino's expression turned grave as his opponent spun around and raised his shield to block the beam from that angle.
Beep, beep, beep!
Before Ino could recover from his surprise, the beam saber appeared in front of him again.
"What a damn cheat!"
Watching his opponent's moves, Ino couldn't help complaining. He piloted his Mobile Suit into another evasive maneuver and fired.
Now he understood what it meant to have cheat-level abilities.
He wasn't even taking the fight completely seriously, yet Kira Yamato's reaction speed was already enough to let him stand up to most elite ZAFT pilots in green uniforms who were flying high-performance Ginns.
Michel hadn't been especially unlucky to die at Kira's hands, after all.
For a while,
the two Mobile Suits fought in the skies, neither able to gain the upper hand.
[Dispersal warheads loaded!]
[Anti-air warheads—fire!]
[Gottfried Mk-71 225mm—fire!]
[Enemy Mobile Suit approaching!]
"Evade, turn left twenty degrees!"
"We're too late!"
Rumble—
The battle around the Archangel was raging just as fiercely.
Because Ino had joined the fight, the number of enemy Mobile Suits targeting the Archangel had risen from two to three, one of them being Michel, an elite pilot in green.
The Archangel's bridge crew was also incomplete and lacked any real combat experience, so the ship was quickly forced onto the defensive.
[Missiles approaching!]
[Activate the automatic defense system!]
Rumble—
"This isn't working. Leave the targeting to me. I'll lock on manually!"
Feeling the situation the Archangel was in, Mr. Mu abandoned all restraint and switched to manual targeting.
The automatic defense system needed data to work. Without enough combat data, it wasn't nearly as effective as expected.
ZAFT's soldiers could easily find gaps in its automatic defense.
On top of that, their Mobile Suits were equipped with heavy anti-ship weapons. The Archangel's bulkheads could barely withstand even a single direct hit.
Meanwhile,
Ino and Kira were still locked in a fierce battle.
Neither of them could gain the upper hand.
Because of the gap in their Mobile Suits' performance, Ino couldn't shake off the Strike Gundam's close pursuit.
But thanks to his combat experience, Kira couldn't land a hit on Ino no matter how long he swung at him. Instead, Ino kept him on the defensive the whole time.
"That growth rate really is a little frightening."
Feeling the faint pressure gradually coming from the Strike Gundam, Ino couldn't help marveling.
That was what it meant to be a cheat. No question about it.
They'd only been fighting for a short while, yet Kira was already starting to find his footing.
In some ways, that speed of learning and ability to adapt were far better than Ino's.
After all, Ino's learning speed came from the talent his predecessor had left behind, a talent forged into his body over ten years at a spy training camp.
But Kira Yamato had come straight from the factory with it.
Thinking about it, Coordinators really were a despairing existence. From birth, they possessed talents far beyond those of ordinary people.
No wonder the conflict between Naturals and Coordinators had become so severe. If Ino had been a Natural born in this world, he wouldn't have been able to tolerate the existence of Coordinators, either.
"But you're still too young."
Ino pushed the thought aside, flipped his Mobile Suit, and fired from an awkward angle.
Bang!
As the beam burst out, it drove Kira Yamato, who had just been preparing to close in, back again.
"Haah... haah..."
Inside the Strike Gundam's cockpit, Kira Yamato's forehead was already covered in sweat.
Honestly, lasting this long meant Kira had far more mental fortitude than most Coordinators.
Not everyone could stay so calm while listening to the radar lock-on alarm blare nonstop.
But no matter how strong his nerves were, Kira was still just a teenage boy who had never set foot on a battlefield until yesterday.
Faced with Ino's relentless pursuit, he couldn't help feeling helpless.
The gap between them was too great, greater even than the difference in their Mobile Suits' performance.
He'd tried to use his boomerang more than once, but his opponent never gave him the chance.
Somehow, he also had a feeling that the moment he threw it, his opponent would intercept it before it could hit.
Besides, he wasn't familiar with the boomerang, so it was difficult to control it precisely.
For a moment, Kira, who had only just stepped onto the battlefield, began to panic.
"Kid, head toward the Archangel!"
Mr. Mu's voice rang out in the cockpit. "You're not ready to take that guy on!"
Watching the battle closely, Mr. Mu could see that the Strike Gundam was in a tight spot.
It couldn't hit its target. Whenever it finally caught up after accelerating, the enemy would turn and blast it back.
This was the first time he'd seen anyone use a beam cannon that skillfully.
Still, something about the enemy felt strange to him, as if he were deliberately holding back.
Back in the space around the colony satellite,
the enemy hadn't attacked this often when fighting him. If the Moebius hadn't been faster, he'd have been shot down already.
Was it possible he was just that bad?
Before you continue