In the darkness, it resembled a spark leaping about at will.
"It's like a ninja manga," commented Kaname.
Kaname and Kurz couldn't see how many enemy units there were, but it sure sounded as if there were more than four. Sousuke shot them all, leaving them in pieces.
Lightning fast, Sousuke rushed the last enemy mech, firing two rounds from the shot cannon.
"And that's five!" he panted as the enemy vehicle fell to the ground, bleeding smoke.
It took exactly fifty-eight seconds for Sousuke to silence the pursuing enemy AS squad. With catlike alertness, he scanned for signs of an ambush. After ten seconds, he was convinced there were no more enemy mechs.
Good, now's our chance.
Intending to collect the others and escape, Sousuke returned to Kurz and Kaname.
But then, a silver AS popped out of a mountain recess to the right.
From point-blank range, it rapidly fired its carbine rifle with raging hostility.
Rolling his mech forward, Sousuke barely evaded the line of fire before he counterattacked with the shot cannon. The enemy seemed to anticipate this and dodged. It jumped and fired three pinpoint-accurate shots. The Arbalest kept rolling forward, somehow managing to survive.
With a grating laugh, the silver AS landed. He was using the external speaker.
"Nicely done, Kashim!"
Gauron fired his rifle again, and Sousuke shot back. They both missed, tearing trees from their roots.
Most AS battles lasted just two or three shots. One had to make the best choice, whether it was to stop and snipe, keep moving and fire containment rounds, or focus on evasive maneuvers. These decisions had to be made quickly, on the fly. And the first to make a mistake instantly would suffer fatal damage.
The fight between these two was different.
Neither yielded an inch. Never resting, they ran, jumped, ducked, rolled, and fired—again and again. Each and every shell missed. No matter how intensely they moved, the machine limbs didn't tire. This battle would end only with the destruction of one of the mechs—or one of the pilots nerves.
It was a furious dogfight, but it was on the ground.
"That silver AS is the same one from earlier," Kaname noted absentmindedly.
The white and silver puppets popped in and out of her view. Just when she thought they were behind the mountain, a burst of flames signaled their position behind a rock on the other side. They leapt, mowed down trees, and colored dark ravines red.
"Keep low," advised Kurz. "A fragment or stray bullet would be fatal."
Kaname ignored Kurz, standing completely still as if watching far-off fireworks.
"Which one's superior?"
"In normal combat, they should be equal. However…"
"However?"
"That silver AS isn't normal. It has a secret."
"That's the one that beat you?" she asked, taking her eyes off the battle.
"Yeah. My shell flew off in midair, you know. I don't know what kind of trick—"
"It's not a trick," Kaname declared. Her head felt heavy, and the eerie sense of floating enveloped her again. She heard the whispering voice.
Reverberating through her skull, the voice told her that what Kurz said wasn't right. It wasn't a trick contained in that AS. It was something else.
"Not… a trick. It's technology."
The enemy had it—in his mech.
"He'll lose," she stated.
"What?"
"At this rate Sousuke's going to lose."
A grenade Gauron lobbed exploded in uncomfortably close proximity.
The Arbalest ducked to avoid the blast and any shrapnel. Then, appearing to stand up, it grabbed a fallen tree and flung it.
When the tree crashed to the ground in between the two mechs, they could no longer see each other. At that instant, although neither could see the other, they fired simultaneously.
Conifers blew apart.
The Arbalest took a hit on the lower-right part of its head. Machine-gun ammo went off, and half of the main sensors were destroyed. Gauron's AS, on the other hand, sustained damage to its rifle; the binary liquid tank ruptured, and it broke down completely.
In terms of damage to the mechs, the Arbalest was in more serious condition. However…
I win.
Sousuke still had weapons. It was close range, and he would not miss.
Sousuke blasted away with his shot cannon. Gauron's mech still staggered from the previous attack. The small warhead flew from the barrel, separated into eight pieces, and continued toward the other mech's torso.
Sousuke didn't believe what he saw next: Every piece of the shot shattered before hitting Gauron's AS, as if it were crashing into an invisible wall. Sousuke didn't understand.
Shortly after that, a violent shock rocked the Arbalest. It seemed as though a great force were pulling Sousuke forward, but then it threw him back.
The Arbalest arced through the air, spun, and tumbled shoulder first to the surface.
Gauron's loud laughter resounded through the ravine.
"Dammit, there it was," lamented Kurz.
From a faraway vantage point, it still looked like some incomprehensible phenomenon.
It couldn't have been a fragmentation mine, nor explosive reactive armor. It was a force field and some kind of shockwave. There simply was no other way to describe it.
The white AS didn't move.
Although Kurz and Kaname couldn't see it, they imagined it to be damaged. After all, an M9 in good condition had been blown to pieces from the same device, so this prototype surely couldn't withstand it.
Kaname remained still.
"Oh, God," she pleaded.
Sousuke gasped, shaking his head. He literally was seeing red; it must have been "red out" from the G-force of the crash. His whole body felt numb, and he barely could move his fingertips. His side felt wet, indicating that his wound had reopened.
He remembered Kurz's words: "It was like being hit with a hammer."
So, this is what he had meant.
He knew Kurz's mech had been destroyed by a hit like that, so Sousuke assumed that his was in a similar state. There was no way it could be functional after that kind of shock. His AS had lost. He had lost to Gauron.
This time, it really is the end.
After a moment, his reddened vision returned to normal, and he studied the on-screen letters. Blue letters.
Contrary to his expectations, the screen read: "Damage slight—no hindrance to combat."
Now, it was Gauron's turn to question his eyes: With great effort, the white AS sat up. And then it stood.
Although the head was partially destroyed, the machine appeared to be otherwise unharmed. The Mithril AS that Gauron had defeated earlier had blown apart completely!
"Ah! Why didn't that work?"
Shaking his head, Gauron checked his drive system. He used the Lambda Driver properly—having charged its personal condenser—so it wasn't an output problem.
"A misfire? Weird."
In any case, it was an imperfect device; at times, it did not operate as desired.
The personal condensers were in a cylinder like a six-shooter, and Gauron revolved it, causing a new one to lock into place.
"There." Gauron chuckled, planning to attack with the Lambda Driver again. This time, he'd make sure to get the job done.
"What's going on?" wondered Sousuke, still in awe of the damage report.
Outside of the head damage, the machine virtually was unharmed.
"How the hell…?"
It sounded like something was turning around on the Arbalest's back—some kind of cylinder. Then, there was the sharp sound of something connecting.
"What did you do? What's that movement?"