The Collapse of Heliopolis Colony

"It's that G! Has Athrun already engaged it... Damn it!" Michel cursed inwardly. The battlefield was far more chaotic than he had expected.

Now, not only did he have to face the unbelievably fast red demon before him, he also had to worry about the situation elsewhere.

"No choice! Matthew, do you hear me? Ditch the equipment and circle around from behind! Find an opening and attack that red one! I'll suppress him from the front!"

Michel's voice was filled with the fury and resolve of someone staking everything on one desperate move. Carried through encrypted communications, it echoed across the tense battlefield, filled with explosions, alarms, and battle cries, seeming to condense into a bloody military order that could not be questioned.

"Are you coming?!"

On the other side, Xia Ya also sensed the powerful fighting spirit radiating from the experienced opponent before him.

He answered tensely, his voice carrying a barely perceptible tremor of excitement mixed with intense nervousness.

Adrenaline surged through his body, making his senses sharper than ever before.

Piloting a Ginn that had become relatively nimble after shedding its cumbersome equipment, Michel charged like an enraged bull that knew only how to rush forward. He raised the Heavy Cleaver in his hand—a commonly used close-combat physical weapon for Ginns, heavy and tremendously powerful.

Then, with the engine at full throttle, he launched a decisive and ferocious charge at the Blaze Gundam.

The thrusters behind the machine spewed blazing plasma flames as it lunged at its target with unstoppable momentum.

Faced with the Ginn's savage assault, as though it intended to cleave both him and his machine apart, Xia Ya sat inside the shaking cockpit of the Blaze Gundam with an unusually calm gaze, deep as an icy pool. Only focused light flickered within his eyes.

He reacted quickly, steadily raising his left hand and bringing an Anti-Beam Shield marked with a distinctive emblem before the machine.

Almost at the same time, he raised the Beam Saber in his right hand. The pink energy blade activated once more, emitting a soft hum as it gave off a dazzling radiance sharp enough to sting the eyes, like Death's scythe poised to reap a life at any moment.

Rather than use the Blaze Gundam's speed advantage to evade, Xia Ya chose to meet the attack head-on!

He wanted to find out just how far this Blaze Gundam had gone in terms of basic power and structural strength, beyond mere speed.

In an instant, the two MS collided heavily!

Clang—!

The Ginn's Heavy Cleaver came crashing down with immense force and astonishing speed, hacking viciously toward the Blaze Gundam's head.

Yet, at the very instant the blade was about to strike its target, Xia Ya precisely blocked the deadly blow with the Anti-Beam Shield in his left hand.

The Heavy Cleaver struck the shield's sturdy surface solidly. A deafening boom rang out, as though two metal hills had collided.

The physical blade scraped and clashed violently against the shield's special surface, bursting into dazzling sparks.

Though it was called an Anti-Beam Shield and had primarily been designed to defend against energy weapons, the shield's physical structure was also exceptionally strong.

It fiercely knocked the powerful Heavy Cleaver aside, and the enormous recoil left Michel's Ginn unbalanced for an instant.

Now! Xia Ya keenly caught the brief opening created by the Ginn's loss of balance after its weapon had been deflected.

A sharp glint flashed in his eyes. Without hesitation, he seized that fleeting chance. His Beam Saber shot out like a striking viper toward the exposed main camera of Michel's Ginn!

"!?"

However, just as Xia Ya thought the strike was certain to land and was about to disable another enemy machine's vision, his heart jolted—the slash had missed!

Michel truly was an experienced ace pilot.

Relying on piloting skills far beyond those of an ordinary soldier and sharp judgment of the battle, he had actually forced the Ginn into an extreme sideways evasion at the critical instant he lost balance. By the narrowest margin, he vanished from Xia Ya's sight and the Beam Saber's path.

Not only that, Michel counterattacked with remarkable skill even as he evaded!

Before Xia Ya could recover from the shock of his missed strike and make his next pursuit or defensive move, the cockpit of his Blaze Gundam was suddenly hit by a powerful impact from below and to the side!

The sudden force felt like being rammed by a charging rhinoceros, or struck head-on by an invisible giant hammer.

The immense force passed through the machine's frame and into the cockpit in an instant. Xia Ya felt like beans in a violently shaken can, as though his organs had all been knocked out of place while tearing pain swept through him.

"Guaaahhhhh!"

Unable to suppress it any longer under the crushing pain, Xia Ya let out a tortured scream.

Yet even then, his willpower remained astonishing. His eyes stayed wide open, fixed on the rapidly spinning images on the screen and the flashing warning lights. His hands gripped the controls as if welded to them, showing no sign of letting go.

He understood all too well that on this brutal battlefield, where life and death could be decided in an instant, even a momentary lapse or the slightest relaxation could mean the destruction of his machine and his death.

Letting go meant handing his life entirely over to Destiny.

After taking the heavy blow, the Blaze Gundam lost balance and began tilting backward out of control.

Suppressing the pain and dizziness raging through his body, Xia Ya stomped hard on the attitude-control pedals while frantically adjusting the thrusters' angles and output, trying to stabilize the unruly Blaze Gundam before it crashed into the colony's ground or buildings.

At that moment, a thick beam clearly comparable to a battleship's main cannon swept across his view with a piercing energy hum.

The beam was aimed at Michel's Ginn, which had just taken the chance to kick the Blaze Gundam away.

It was the Archangel!

They had finally reacted to the battle here and begun using ship-mounted weapons to suppress and counterattack Michel's Ginn, attempting to relieve Xia Ya.

However, Michel's Ginn displayed astonishing agility entirely unbecoming of a mass-produced machine.

Facing the incoming battleship beam, he merely had his machine perform an effortless roll, elegantly and precisely avoiding the deadly stream of energy.

Unfortunately, the beam that missed did not vanish into the vastness of space.

It flew straight ahead without obstruction and struck the central colony shaft behind Michel's Ginn—the massive core structure supporting the stability of the entire Heliopolis Colony!

"Boom—!!!"

An enormous explosion erupted, far duller and more chilling than an MS explosion.

A critical part of the main shaft was directly hit by the high-energy beam, vaporized, and blown apart.

Massive cracks spread visibly across the shaft's surface like a spiderweb as countless fragments and structural debris were hurled in every direction.

"No! Brother! Stop! If this continues... Heliopolis will... will fall—!"

Seeing this, Xia Ya's heart clenched, and his pupils shrank sharply. Ignoring his own safety and the enemy before him, he nearly screamed himself hoarse toward the Archangel, toward Mu—his only family, who might have been commanding from the bridge—as he issued a heart-wrenching warning.

His voice was filled with indescribable worry and urgency.

Because he understood better than anyone that if this massive colony lost its structural stability and began to break apart, or even fell entirely, it would bring about an unimaginable disaster.

Tens of thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands, of innocent lives would vanish completely in this man-made catastrophe.

The very next second after Xia Ya issued his warning, as overwhelming unease filled his heart, the sensor system in the Blaze Gundam's cockpit suddenly erupted with its sharpest, most urgent alarm—an enemy machine was rapidly approaching from behind! It was an omen of death!

"Fallllll! Go to hell with me!!"

It was Matthew's Ginn. Following Michel's earlier orders, he had successfully discarded the D Equipment and silently circled behind the Blaze Gundam!

Matthew's face was twisted with vengeful malice and the madness of mutual destruction. Roaring wildly, he piloted his standard Ginn and raised the Heavy Cleaver high, driving it viciously toward the Blaze Gundam's relatively vulnerable back—particularly the cockpit area!

The motion was brutal, resolute, and filled with the intent to perish together.

"Even if it's a latest-model MS! Once it takes this hit, it'll definitely—!" Matthew's roar echoed through the communications. He was certain this strike would land.

However, at the very moment the Heavy Cleaver's tip was about to touch the Blaze Gundam's back armor, Xia Ya's voice rang out with exceptional calm, carrying absolute confidence and control.

"I can see it!"

As though he had eyes in the back of his head, Xia Ya performed an almost miraculous maneuver at the last possible moment.

He jerked the controls while firing the lateral thrusters at full power.

The Blaze Gundam moved like a nimble bird with a life of its own, completing an unbelievable rapid flip in midair!

Not only did the maneuver precisely evade Matthew's supposedly certain lethal backstab, it also made use of the momentum generated by the rotation.

Immediately afterward, Xia Ya spun the machine another half turn. Borrowing the powerful centrifugal force, he swung the Beam Saber again! A pink arc of death swept through the air with elegant coldness.

Slish!

The beam blade precisely severed the sensor unit on Matthew Unit's head.

Another Ginn's main camera had been cleanly stripped away.

The cockpit screen of Matthew Unit was instantly swallowed by darkness and static, plunging it into the same "blind" state as the earlier Aurora Unit, like a beast that had lost its eyes and could only charge about wildly.

Xia Ya's assault did not end there.

As he severed the opponent's camera, he did not pause. His left-hand Anti-Beam Shield swung forward like a heavy hammer, riding the remaining momentum of the machine's rotation, and smashed solidly into the chest armor of Matthew Unit, which had lost its vision and had no time to react.

Bang—!!!

Another heavy impact rang out.

Matthew's Ginn could not withstand the tremendous blow. Like a stone struck by a high-speed train, it flew backward uncontrollably, carving a long, tumbling path through the chaotic battlefield and temporarily losing its threat.

"Matthew!? Are you all right?! Damn you! You bastard, aaaaahhhhh!!!"

Watching his last wingman get defeated so mockingly by the enemy, the Fury in Michel's heart finally shattered the restraints of reason and flared to its peak.

His eyes turned bloodshot, and every muscle in his body tensed. Like a wounded beast driven completely mad, he no longer cared about tactics or his duties as captain. Only revenge remained in his mind.

He abruptly turned his machine and aimed the Ginn's only remaining weapon—a standard assault rifle—at the Blaze Gundam, which had just dealt with Matthew and was adjusting its posture.

He was about to empty every round in the magazine. Even if he could not destroy it, he would still cripple it—

However, just as Michel was about to pull the trigger—

"Rumble, rumble, rumble—!!!"

A succession of gigantic explosions, louder, more sustained, and more despairing than any before, shattered the battlefield's brief standoff and silence like muffled thunder from the depths of the universe.

The terrifying roar echoed and traveled through the colony's internal structure, forcing both sides' MS—the Blaze Gundam, Michel's Ginn, and even the distant Strike Gundam and Aegis Gundam still locked in combat—to halt their movements, stunned by the sudden, monumental sound of destruction.

This was an ending that had long been inevitable, the final straw that broke the camel's back.

The prolonged, high-intensity MS battle had already left the surface structure of the massive Heliopolis Colony riddled with holes, covered in craters from explosions and cracks caused by impacts. Not to mention the hollowed-out internal areas built for the MS factory, whose structural strength had always been a hidden danger.

The inner walls had also been torn to pieces by the earlier crossfire, like an old wooden house gnawed through by termites.

And the Archangel's recent cannon shot had only made matters worse, becoming the fatal blow that lit the fuse.

It had directly blasted away part of the central main shaft supporting the colony's structural stability, destroying its balance of forces.

Under such devastating blows from within and without, the space colony that had once symbolized peace and prosperity finally reached the limit of what its structure could bear.

The fact that it had held together until now was already a tragic miracle.

As the final series of destructive explosions erupted, Heliopolis began to collapse and disintegrate on a massive, irreversible scale!

The alloy outer walls and internal structures that had once seemed incomparably sturdy now fractured, crumbled, and came apart like a fragile castle of building blocks amid exploding internal pressure and the collapse of its outer framework.

Huge fissures spread through every section of the colony. Black, icy space, filled with the scent of death, gradually emerged through the widening ruptures, like an ancient beast hidden in darkness behind a magnificent curtain, slowly opening an abyssal maw vast enough to swallow everything.

Then came the catastrophic consequence—sudden, devastating decompression!

Air and all manner of debris inside the colony were swept up by violent currents created by the immense pressure difference between inside and outside, surging madly toward the vacuum of space like floodwaters bursting through a collapsed dam.

An irresistible and terrifying suction force instantly seized every object on the battlefield—including the Blaze Gundam and Michel's Ginn, which had been facing each other.

The two machines were dragged away by the powerful pull from the collapsing structure like fallen leaves in a gale, swept in different directions and losing control over their own posture.

"Jiliang—! Where are you!? Jiliang—!"

Amid the sudden, apocalyptic chaos, Michel's Ginn, which had been such a threat moments ago, was completely driven from Xia Ya's mind.

Defeating the enemy no longer mattered. Survival no longer mattered. At this moment, only extreme fear and concern for Jiliang's safety remained in his heart.

Inside the cockpit, as everything spun and rolled and his vision filled with flying debris and flashes of explosions, Xia Ya desperately twisted his head, searching anxiously through the blurred screen. He tried to catch sight of the Strike Gundam amid the rubble filling the sky and the chaotic currents.

However, under such terrible conditions of extremely low visibility, even maintaining a clear line of sight had become exceptionally difficult.

High-speed metal fragments, shattered remains of building structures, and ice crystals instantly frozen after leaking from ruptured pipes filled the surrounding space.

The light was dim and chaotic. Flashes from explosions repeatedly tore through the darkness, only to be swallowed at once by deeper darkness.

He felt as though he were at the center of a terrifying cosmic storm that swept away everything.

Xia Ya pushed the Blaze Gundam's thrusters to their maximum output once more, trying to resist the overwhelming pull that seemed ready to tear the machine apart and escape this region of death.

But before the immense forces of nature, his efforts seemed so insignificant.

The machine was still flung wildly in every direction by that violent force, like a lone boat on a raging sea, utterly unable to control its course.

At last, after an even more violent bout of shaking and tumbling, Xia Ya's vision went dark. Then it was stabbed by the cold starlight of outer space.

The Blaze Gundam he piloted was flung out like it had been hurled by an invisible giant hand, completely leaving the main wreckage of the disintegrating Heliopolis Colony and being mercilessly cast, utterly alone, into the vast, silent space outside the colony.