第九章「遺されし者達」1
CHAPTER.09 – THOSE LEFT BEHIND (1)

　As Danton’s R-Jarja moved towards the enormous foe before Arlette’s eyes, she could do nothing but watch from behind with sorrow.

　With its options exhausted and its chassis covered in battle scars, Danton’s machine looked like it could collapse at any moment. Only the sheer force of the pilot’s will, it seemed, kept it moving at all.

　Arlette knew he couldn’t possibly win against the other machine. That if she let him go, Danton’s life would come to an end right before her eyes. Yes, Arlette knew that better than anyone. Yet, at that moment, she found herself powerless to do anything else.

　”Danton…”

　It had suddenly dawned on Arlette one day that he was always there, right by her side. Danton was inflexible and straight-laced to a fault, and whenever he opened his mouth, it seemed like nothing came from it but an endless stream of complaints. At points, she had found it outright depressing, and she couldn’t count the number of times they had quarreled over silly, meaningless things.

　Yet before she met him, Arlette had been unable to feel even those sorts of negative emotions. Her heart had been completely closed to the world. And if she had begun to feel like a person again, it had undoubtedly been down to the help of that same awkward, standoffish test pilot.

　Even after life had taken them away from the battlefield, and they had begun to live for a time as parent and child, that relationship had never changed. He had continued to treat her like he did any other human being. And before she had realized it, his presence in her life had saved her, just as her presence had saved him.

　Now, in that very instant, that same man was right before her eyes, struggling to cling to life…

　”Never!”

　Suddenly, strength seemed to return to the fingers that Arlette had wrapped around her machine’s Arm Raker. She wouldn’t let him die. They would return together. To the home they shared. To that tiny shop on the tiny street corner in the tiny colony.

　She still had far too many things she needed to tell him. He needed to be nicer to their customers. He needed to stop coming into her room and tidying up without permission. He was eating far too much sugar, and she had to make him cut down to one cream soda a day…

　There were still so many things she had to say. So, no matter what…

　”Move! Ahava Azieru!”

　She pulled feverishly at the Arm Raker. Yet, just as she did, there was a discharge of bright light from something in her vicinity. It bathed the inside of Arlette’s cockpit in light, and she looked up, eyes wide with surprise. Searching for the source of the light, Arlette found that it had come from the sample case attached to the waist of the normal suit.

　Arlette had seen that same warm light before. It was a light she would never forget. The same light that was discharged by the two mobile suits that fought on the day Axis fell. It was a light that had bathed the whole battlefield in an instant.

　The light of the psycho-frame.

　The fragment of the psycho-frame recovered from the Sazabi was shining brightly in response to Arlette’s thoughts. With a low rumble, her machine’s previously dead consoles began to burst into light, one after the next. And a green lamp lit in front of her, signifying that the suit’s once locked features were now usable.

　”Captain…” Arlette whispered as she looked at the light with eyes filled with tears. “Lend me your strength.”

× × ×

　The light of the psycho-frame discharged by the Ahava Azieru reached as far as the R-Jarja and Tristan as they engaged in combat.

　”W-What the…?!”

　Quentin was shaken by the sudden flash, and his attacks momentarily abated, giving Danton’s R-Jarja the chance to regain its balance. The light grew to swallow the whole of the surrounding sector of space, and soon the consciousnesses of the two pilots left behind their machines, and began to drift through the vast, white expanse.

× × ×

　”What the…”

　Danton gazed with astonishment at the sight that lay before his eyes. He was in a room, surrounded on all sides by pure white walls. There, a girl sat alone, typing furiously upon a keyboard. Her profile was devoid of any expression, just as it had always been, back when they had first met. And before Danton knew it, he too had started to change to match these new surroundings.

　Catching sight of a normal suit painted in moss green, Danton suddenly realized that the scenes before him were familiar. And just as this realization hit him, the door behind him opened without a sound.

　”Hello there. I see the two of you have hit it off.”

　The man who entered addressed Danton and the girl in a relaxed tone. He was dressed in a casual suit, and his still youthful features were covered with an odd mask. He was someone Danton would never forget. The man who had changed his destiny, and Arlette’s too.

　”Char…”

　Yes, the man who entered was none other than Char Aznable, as he was in his younger years.

　”Then this light must be…”

　Before Danton knew it, the images around him had changed. This time, the scene was of himself and the others lingering around a mobile suit dock. A wild-looking machine stood before them, painted in red and black. An MS-14S Gelgoog. The first suit Danton had ever operated as a test pilot.

　”So that’s what this is about…”

　This is mine and Arlette’s past. The light from the psycho-frame is synchronizing our memories.

　”Psycho-waves… I’d always taken the stories with a grain of salt, but I never imagined I’d experience that same phenomenon myself…”

　As the scenes from Danton’s past played out before his eyes like a kaleidoscope, the scene began to shift again. This time, the memories were of a time further beyond the days he had spent within the A.E.U.G together with Char, then going by the name of Quattro. They were of his time on Axis. Of a time when he had always been by Arlette’s side, in time growing so comfortable in that role that he had forgotten that they were even waging war.

　He thought about the questions that had always played on his mind. Why had Char taken in Arlette? Why had he paired the two of them together? And why, after changing his name and appearance and moving through several different camps, had Char not only not rejected Arlette but actively kept her by his side as she remained set on following him wherever he went? Danton had always longed to know the answers to these questions. Yet Char had remained tight-lipped to the very end. And before Danton could press him for answers, he had disappeared, leaving behind both himself and Arlette.

　Still, as he retraced his memories again at that moment, Danton found himself coming upon a certain theory. He and Arlette never had minced words with one another and had frequently clashed, yet they each provided something that the other was missing. They had even been teased at times by those around them, who compared their relationship to that of a close brother and sister. Perhaps when Char had looked at this relationship, he had seen some reflection of the past he had lost. The warmth of his younger days that he himself had once cast aside: the appearance of a “family.”

× × ×

　With a jolt, Danton suddenly came to, finding himself once more in the R-Jarja’s cockpit. Looking at his instruments, alarmed, he found that almost no time had passed. The Gundam-type machine in front of him was still silent. The journey into his memories, which had felt like a long, long dream, had actually been nothing more than a momentary flashback.

　Danton shook his head, casting off the lingering remnants of the vision, and looked towards the enemy in front of him. And as he did, his eyes grew wide with astonishment. Light particles had begun to gather inside the cannon’s barrel mounted on the tip of the shoulder of the Gundam-type machine before him. It was a mega-particle cannon… Surely they weren’t planning on firing it at such a close distance?!

　”Tch!”

　Clicking his tongue in anger, Danton feverishly pushed on the control stick.

× × ×

　”Danton!”

　Arlette began to move at that very same instant. The Ahava Azieru came charging from behind Danton, expanding its I-field. Decaying rapidly under the field’s repulsive force, the cannon’s mega particles scattered away into nothingness like petals falling from a flower. Arlette’s sudden attack took Quentin by surprise, and he cried out in shock as she allowed her machine to continue to barrel forward into his, grabbing hold of the Gundam-type.

× × ×

　”You piece of shit!”

　Reeling from a level of g-force that would have rendered any ordinary pilot unconscious, Quentin made a sudden braking of his suit and recovered its balance.

　”Stay out of this, you big hunk of junk!”

　Launching a flurry of diversionary missiles, Quentin drew some distance from the two machines he now found himself facing.

　”Tch… What the hell was that?”

　Rubbing his head, he glared at the red mobile armor displayed on his monitor. As the light had surrounded his machine, he had found his mind filled with unfamiliar images; the sight of a young man and girl he didn’t recognize. His instincts told him that they were the pilots’ memories that sat in the cockpits of the two machines before him. As Cyber-Newtype, Quentin had shared Arlette’s memories on a much deeper level than Danton had, not only seeing and hearing as she did, but sharing in her very emotions.

　”It was just like…”

　Quentin’s own memories flashed through his mind, seeming to overlap with the things he had seen and felt through Arlette. Of a time when he had lost everything and lived out his days with no one else around him but his younger brother.

　”After I worked so hard to forget that damned shit…”

　Eyes filled with rage, Quentin gave the red mobile armor a piercing glare. Conserving bullets was clearly no longer an option.

　”Get the hell out of my way!”

　Quentin’s fingers danced across the console, and in an instant, the Kurwenal discharged its entire remaining stock of missiles.