Athrun's Sortie 2

It was so fast that, in the blink of an eye, it had already overtaken the ZAFT ace units that had launched ahead of it—the Buster Gundam and the Duel Gundam. Before Athrun's Justice Gundam, these elite ZAFT machines seemed like nothing more than background scenery, effortlessly left behind.

Justice Gundam's crimson figure carried unparalleled speed and power, driven by a will that permitted no deviation. Like a dark red phantom, it sliced through the layers of airspace above Orb, heading straight for the capital of the Orb Union—Onogoro Island!

That was Orb's administrative center, the location of Cagalli Yula Athha's headquarters, and the very heart of the bloodiest battlefield in this ZAFT assault!

An unavoidable multi-sided melee awaited its arrival with irreversible momentum.

The vast Izanagi Coast of the Orb Union had now become the core meat grinder of the war.

On the sea, artillery fire raised towering waves; in the sky, beams interwove into a net; on the ground, metal machines roared and collided. Xia Ya piloted the Blaze Gundam in a near-suicidal struggle against the beastlike Calamity Gundam. The inhumanly precise control and destructive firepower of Calamity's Extended pilot left him with almost no attention to spare for the other fronts.

Yet amid this life-or-death battle, combat intelligence from Orb headquarters, filled with shock and disbelief, suddenly pierced Xia Ya's intense concentration like an icy iron spike: "ZAFT Forces, a large MS force, is approaching Izanagi!"

"ZAFT!?"

The cry escaped Xia Ya's throat, carrying astonishment and shock even he himself had not realized.

Inside the cockpit, his deep eyes widened sharply, his pupils contracting violently in shock.

His keen Newtype instincts and memories spanning time and space suddenly came together, racing through his mind as he assessed this unexpected development.

ZAFT, the Coordinators' military alliance, had