The Retreating Formidable Foe

"This feeling is..."

Inside the white CGUE's cockpit, the air seemed to freeze.

Rau Le Creuset, the masked commander who always toyed with everything in the palm of his hand, was now firmly gripped by a sudden sensation that surged and churned like a deep-sea current.

His fingers paused slightly on the controls. Behind his mask, his deep-set eyes revealed a rare glint of sharp surprise and scrutiny.

This presence... was far too familiar. Familiar enough to be carved into his bones.

It was inextricably linked to someone's existence—Mu La Flaga, the creation who had inherited that man's genes, someone Creuset both hated and could never completely ignore. Whenever that blond "hawk" was nearby, Creuset could keenly sense this distinctive psychic fluctuation, a resonance rooted deep in their bloodline yet twisted by later circumstances into something filled with rejection.

"Mu... no, he isn't nearby." Creuset's senses swiftly swept the surrounding area. Mu La Flaga's relatively more "pure" presence, which had just been fighting him, had clearly left the range of their direct confrontation and was retreating in a certain direction.

He had been entirely focused on delivering the final blow to that orange Moebius Zero and had almost ignored everything around him.

"That guy is still over there..." He meant Mu.

Then who was the pilot of this crimson machine before him, radiating such a powerful sense of presence?

This feeling was astonishingly similar to Mu La Flaga's presence, as though they had been born from the same source and shared a fundamental frequency.

But... Creuset could distinguish with absolute clarity that this presence contained something more complex, more... profound. It was more aggressive than Mu's presence, yet it seemed to conceal a power that even Creuset himself found faintly unsettling.

Similar, yet subtly and fundamentally different. Like the other side of the same coin—dark and twisted, yet made from the same material.

Who was it? Who could provoke such an intense, almost instinctive reaction from him?

Since when had the Earth Alliance possessed someone like this?

Creuset's thoughts raced, his intelligence network activating like a spiderweb as it rapidly searched for possible answers.

Then a name and a report flashed through his mind like lightning.

Miguel Aiman—the subordinate he had sent to seize the G Weapons—had mentioned in his brief report after the mission's failure that, while fighting the blue-and-white machine, the Strike Gundam, he had been severely damaged by an unknown high-performance red MS that had suddenly joined the battle. That was what had caused the operation to fail in part.

A high-performance red MS...

Creuset's gaze, as precise as the finest targeting scope, locked onto the crimson Gundam hovering quietly below in a defensive stance—the Blaze Gundam.

The machine's silhouette, along with that intense presence now unsettling his mind... every clue pointed to the same answer.

"...I see." Beneath his mask, Creuset's lips curved into a cold, twisted smile carrying an almost cruel understanding. "So you were the one who made that boy Miguel retreat in such a sorry state?"

His voice transmitted over the open comm channel without any encryption, carrying an air of superiority and unquestionable certainty as it rang clearly inside the Blaze Gundam's cockpit.

"This is our 'first' meeting." He deliberately drew out the words, as if savoring some forbidden sweetness. "No, strictly speaking, it is not. The last time we met, you were still a swaddled infant... fragile beyond belief."

His words were like a serpent's tongue, cold and slick, brimming with malicious implication.

"And then... when I personally 'dealt with' that man, you were only three years old, weren't you? Innocent and ignorant, hiding in a corner like some little animal."

The cruel information contained in those words was like a bombshell, enough to make anyone who knew the truth shudder.

He was openly referring to a bloody past, a family secret deliberately buried away.

"Since then, has it been... twelve years?" Creuset's voice was filled with malicious nostalgia, as if calculating how long hatred had fermented. "I see... I never thought we would meet again in a place like this, in this way... Fate truly is amusingly strange!"

Finally, he pronounced that long-buried name, etched like a brand into the depths of his memory, one syllable at a time.

"Char... La... Flaga!!"

The instant that name was spoken, the complicated emotions Creuset had suppressed for years erupted within him like a volcano.

On one hand, there was wild joy and excitement at this fated reunion, as though a long-awaited play had finally raised its curtain and the threads of destiny had ultimately drawn them cursed bloodlines together once more.

It proved that his existence was not meaningless, that his vengeance was not aimed at nothing.

Yet on the other hand, there was an even deeper, fiercer hatred!

The existence before him was not merely another son of that man, a mortal enemy who shared his twisted genes. He was also a symbol—a symbol of the "normal" future Creuset longed for but could never possess, a symbol of the "legacy" left behind by the culprit who had created tragic existences like them.

That hatred was like boiling magma, scorching his soul and driving him to destroy everything before him.

The two extremes tangled and clashed within his heart, eventually converging into an irresistible impulse for destruction.

"Come! Let me see how much of that man you inherited!!"

A feverish, dangerous light flashed in Creuset's eyes, his killing intent overwhelming.

He gripped the controls tightly. The CGUE's engines gave a low roar, its powerful thrusters about to ignite. The white demon was preparing to bring down its blade of vengeance, tearing that glaring crimson to pieces and offering the most dazzling sparks as a sacrifice for this reunion, twelve years overdue!

However—

Just as the CGUE was about to become a bolt of white lightning and pounce upon the Blaze Gundam—

Beep! Beep! Beep!!!

Inside the cockpit, a piercing, urgent alarm suddenly rang out like a blaring horn! It was a top-priority threat warning!

"Hm?" Creuset's movements abruptly froze, and a thread of cold reason instantly cut through his frenzied killing intent. He swiftly turned his gaze toward the wide-area scan display on the main sensor.

On the screen, a massive marker indicating a high-energy reaction was rapidly approaching from a section of the colony—the direction where a large-scale explosion and battle had occurred earlier—at an astonishing speed!

"This is... a battleship!?" Creuset frowned tightly and immediately switched viewing modes, zooming in with the optical camera.

There, in the devastated spaceport district, a gigantic warship completely covered in white armor was smashing through wreckage and smoke like an icebreaker. Its design was strange, yet brimming with power and majesty. Moving with agility utterly disproportionate to its enormous size, it charged at high speed toward their battlefield!

Its bow possessed a unique design, while its overall lines were sleek and aggressively sharp. One glance was enough to tell that it was no ordinary vessel.

"A warship operating inside a colony!? And... it wasn't destroyed in the earlier explosion?!" Creuset blurted out, his voice filled with incredulous surprise.

He had an exceptionally thorough understanding of the Earth Alliance's G Project. He knew the prototype data, performance characteristics, and even parts of the development background of those five Gundams—or so he believed.

Yet he had originally assumed that the carrier assigned to transport the G Weapons had either been sunk by his side during the earlier raid and ensuing melee, withdrawn in an emergency, or perhaps even reduced to cosmic dust beneath ZAFT's follow-up bombardment.

But this suddenly appearing white warship had not only survived, it was also capable of high-speed maneuvering within the colony. This was completely beyond his expectations.

One Gundam pilot had already turned out to be an unexpected mortal enemy, and now a powerful warship had emerged as well... The situation had instantly become more complicated.

"...Tch, it can't be helped." Creuset cursed inwardly, forcibly suppressing the battle lust and urge for revenge burning within him like a raging fire.

He stared fixedly at the crimson Blaze Gundam below, as though he intended to engrave every detail of it into his soul.

Though he was utterly unwilling, though he desperately wanted to erase this Char La Flaga immediately, reason told him that now was not the time.

Against a Gundam of unknown capabilities but immense presence, a mortal enemy who had likewise inherited Flaga blood, a suddenly appearing powerful warship, and the possibility that Mu La Flaga's MA or other Earth Alliance remnants might emerge from another direction at any moment...

Continuing the fight was far too risky. Especially when he was alone.

"Heh heh..." A low, meaningful chuckle came from beneath the mask.

The son of his enemy, whom he had believed he might never see again in this lifetime, had appeared before him in such a dramatic manner.

This tangled fate, it seemed, was not something that could be easily severed through one or two battles.

It was like a resilient vine that had already sunk its roots deep. No matter how it was torn apart, it would always wind itself around him again.

"The next time we meet, I won't let you go so easily..." Creuset's lips curved into an inscrutable smile, as though making a declaration—or uttering a curse. "Wait for me... my hateful, yet 'adorable'... little brother."

He did not speak those words over the comm channel. He merely whispered them in his heart, like a prophecy known only to himself.

Then he brushed his fingers across the control panel, and the CGUE's thruster vectors suddenly shifted.

Like the most agile cheetah, the white machine traced a smooth, swift arc through the air. It precisely evaded any attack that might come from the Blaze Gundam below and also withdrew beyond the effective range the white warship was about to enter.

Without the slightest hesitation, Creuset piloted the CGUE away in a streak of white light, rapidly retreating toward the space outside the colony where the ZAFT fleet was stationed.

The thruster flames left a brief, brilliant trail of light behind it before vanishing into Heliopolis's shattered dome and drifting smoke, leaving behind only silent stillness, unfulfilled fighting spirit, and a cold anticipation for their next clash.