Chapter 2: Dark Arisings
The Daughtress Neo's left leg blew up, and it struggled to maintain its balance by going down on its right knee. The rumours and stories were true after all, Crash mused, as his beam shots missed the gundam again by another wide angle. If you meet a gundam, you can kiss your *** goodbye. Why it is that it always have to be him to get into these stupid situations? Crash Tricre sighed, bathed in the faint blue glow of the monitors, the way this was going, he's gonna join his dad real soon.

Out of a sudden, a jolt shook him out of his thoughts and red warning messages flooded the screens. The gundam just took his mobile suit's arms off! They were sheared clean off by two beam shots. Kneeling on the ground with nowhere to run, the Daughtress was target practice for a merciless killer. Hands rapidly hovering over the controls, Crash mechanically corrected problem after problem, but the errors were still coming in too fast for him. Shut off arm hydraulics and liquid nitrogen coolent. Reroute wires sector A-023 to..to...[set null current value and control vector]. Autobalancing algorithm re-calibrated to account for loss of weight and torque on arms- The Daughtress suddenly lurched to the right, losing its balance. What? Autobalancing software malfunction! Reset horizontal vecotrs at left shoulder to, uh... er... Damned!! Crash lost total control over both himself and the Daughtress, as the mobile suit finally fell over onto its right side. Dammit, dammit, dammIT! He swang his arms angrily over the entire cockpit, banging and hitting on every button, switch, or screen he could reach.

By the time he regained control of himself, all Crash saw was the barrel of a beam rifle pointed right at him. Before he had time to panic, the cockpit sank into darkness.

* * *

The kid was pretty good, Seanelius Winner concluded, better than the average pilot. The fact that he was able to take out the two other Daughtresses was not purely luck nor the advantage of surprise. This kid was good enough to go toe-on-toe with them and still emerge the victor, Seanelius had to grant him that. Unfortunately, this boy messed with the wrong people. Worse, he met me.

Seanelius Winner was, despite his fragile looks, a cold-blooded killer. He was raised to be one. A shot through the cockpit of this Daughtress was nothing to him, and he would never hesitate to do so if it was necessary or, sometimes, even if unnecessary. However, this Crash Tricre seemed intriguing to him, despite no real particular reason. Even with the beam rifle aimed directly at the torso of the fallen Daughtress Neo, Seanelius was still undecided.

Two bright yellow lines streaked pass his field of vision, and the gundam Airmaster moved quickly backwards in surprise. A glance to the side revealed another mobile suit moving towards them at high speed. Seanelius Winner couldn't believe his eyes when he magnified the image of this new MS. Then his eyes narrowed. Finally, something fun for a change.

* * *

Another deep breath.

"Why the hell don't you kill me!?" Crash panicked and screamed in the cockpit. Being sound-proof, it was silent as a tomb, and dark, with only a few blinking red lights. He quickly tried the release hatch. It didn't work! Unbelieving, he twisted the knob again, and again, and again. Just as he was about to kick the damned thing, he realised what was going and nearly laughed at the stupidity of the engineers who designed this thing. The hatch was operated by electricity!! Because of the short-circuit by the Daughtress, energy was not forth-coming and the hatch will not open.

More light-hearted now, Crash started taking apart panels in search of the circuit-breakers. He wondered if that was the reason there were always so many war casualties. Sliding open a small box next to his right leg, he found the switches and proceeded to flip them all open. Funny how he was taking all these so calmly now, when he was the one who always cried to his father that he will die in a cockpit, whenever he was thrown into one. Funnier how the realisation that this was true actually made all those screaming and panic seem childish.

* * *

The Airmaster hovered silently in the air, arms folded around its chest, waiting for the new blue-white gundam which had joined the fight. Tapping his fingers on the joystick impatiently, Seanelius observed that this new gundam had a large shield with built-in thrusters, which it held in front of it to ski at high velocity in their direction. There was only one gundam so far that Seanelius knew was able to this. And there were only two possible pilots...

A transmission broke in and an image of the pilot of Gundam X Divider appeared on the screen. It was a young man with green eyes and long, messy hair of an even darker green.

"I'm Garrod Ran of the Earth Federation, Peace Corps. Who are you people and what are you doing?"

Garrod Ran. Seanelius couldn't believe his luck. This man was the young gundam ace pilot five years ago, the one who piloted gundam Double X and destroyed the Frost brothers. By doing so, he had stopped the plan to destroy both the New federation and Space revolutionary army. After that, Jamil Neate of the Old federation and Lancerow Dawell of the Space revolutionary army represented the Earth and the space colonies respectively and forged a peace alliance. The New federation was renamed the Earth federation after that.

The Airmaster only laughed," Garrod Ran." After that, it transformed into a plane and sped towards the gundam X Divider, guns ablazing.

* * *

Left abandoned and forgotten, the Daughtress laid on the charred ground in the middle of the ruined town. From its torso, out pop the cockpit door and a lone figure climbed out. He stood up unsteadily before realising that the mobile suit was on its side and tumbled down onto the soil.

"Ooof! What the- Ugh!" Crash Tricre lifted his hand and saw that bits of the neighbour's dog, Spot, were stuck to it. He quickly wiped it onto the grass and ran forward, not knowing what was happening at all and where the red-white gundam was. Careful, he cautioned himself, you don't survive once to go off and seek death again so soon. Peeking over a car, he saw the gundam fighting another...gundam!

The other gundam looked familiar, and Crash searched his memories hard before finally remembering the pictures he saw in the city and what the mechanic said about it. This was the gundam X Divider! It was piloted by Garrod Ran, ace pilot, after the establishment of the Earth federation peace corps.

As he looked on, Crash marvelled at Garrod's skill, as he dodged the other gundam's incoming shots easily and retaliated back with his beam machinegun. He was further impressed when the X Divider raised its shield, which split open to reveal a line of barrels, and fired a barrage of dark pink beams. The Airmaster was caught by this sudden attack and fumbled to escape, having one of its wing tips sliced off in the process.

Crash turned around at the sound of wheels on mud and saw a large green jeep crushing the remains of some townspeople and moving towards the gundams. The driver was a tall, old man with grey hair and was holding a radiophone to his ears. It's Cartens Vorzmov! What is he doing here? Having some really bad feeling about this, Crash moved silently closer, body bent down to avoid being seen.

"-is destroyed already! Leave Garrod for now and return to base.... Dammit Seanelius! I'm talking to you! Get out of there! It's an order!"

The red-white gundam hesitated, then flew off away from the X Divider, flipping from side to side to dodge the energy bolts. So Cartens is involved in this.. massacre! It was him! Him who ordered the destruction of the town! He who killed my father! Crash gritted his teeth and lifted a stone from the sidewalk, running straight at the killer. At the loud scream, Cartens brought his head around just in time for him to see a rock falling onto his head.

* * *

Seanelius Winner looked back and saw the gundam X Divider stand there and stare back at him. Damn! Now Garrod thinks he's a coward and a weakling! Slamming his fists onto the dashboard, he was surprised to find a transmission from his headquarters. He grudgingly flipped the switch and let the connection through. It was his superior.

"Why can't I just kill him?" Seanelius spat, astonished by his own anger. He was usually known for his cold calmness and rationality, but losing a prey so sought after pissed him off no end.

His superior was unfaltered and replied,"Today is not the time yet. Our current plan is to destroy both the Earth federation and the Space revolutionary army first! After the failure five years ago, we cannot take any more risks. You know he stopped the Frost brothers before. Even though he may be unable to stop us, but I fear he and his team will prove to be a big annoyance. Whatever the reason, it is best to leave him out of this until phase one is complete. Then you'll do him as you please."

"...Fine."