(Looks like the PG White Strike Gundam Frame)
[Holy crap! A Gundam frame!]
[Holy crap! New Gunpla!]
[Three minutes—I want to see this Gundam in GBN!]
Although in the audience's world, Gundam had long since passed its prime, there were still plenty of die-hard veterans. At the sight of the Gundam frame, every last one of them was fired up.
In the world of SEED, the pace of technological development was nothing short of absurd. Setting aside the Coordinators' space nation PLANT, even the Earth Alliance's technology was remarkably advanced.
The Gundam had entered development in CE 69, and it had been barely a year since then. Yet in less than a year's time, five Gundams would be completed—and behind those five, Orb had been secretly manufacturing several more experimental "Astray Gundams" on the side.
The development speed, the production speed—absolutely insane.
Right now, the Gundam was still a half-finished product. Nothing but a skeleton. Even the skeleton wasn't complete—there were only so many joints that could actually move.
But as long as there was a skeleton, that was enough.
"Where is everyone?!" Kira looked around frantically.
"They've all evacuated," Inori answered.
"Are we really going to fight that MS with this skeleton?" Kira didn't think this was going to work. "This machine doesn't even have a completed interface."
"Correct. So I will serve as the operating interface."
Inori leaped into the cockpit, and Kira followed.
That was when Kira noticed the rice-cooker robot was here too.
Its cables had already been jacked into the Gundam frame's internals.
"Put this on."
Inori handed Kira a pair of glasses.
They weren't glasses—they were a VR device. The Gundam frame had no main camera installed, so what was connected instead was the camera feed from the rice-cooker robot, Fyu-Neru.
"Oh."
Kira put on the headset.
And at that moment, Inori turned around, laced her fingers through Kira's, and rested her forehead against the VR visor.
[Ahhh, my maiden's heart!]
[This is it, this is it!]
[Down with the MyGO dynasty—our sacred duty!]
[Wuaaaaaah (making unhinged noises)]
[Hand-operated mecha!]
[A real-life bishoujo piloting interface]
[Perfect! Perfect!]
Before Kira's eyes, the external view unfolded.
"This is...!"
A fully virtualized control interface. Her hands, clasped by Inori, felt as though they were resting on some incredibly soft control sticks.
This feeling... was amazing!
And right at that moment, the Black GINN had already charged into the manufacturing hangar, raising its MMI-M8A3 76mm Heavy Assault Machine Gun.
"Watch out!"
But Kira dodged in a flash, and the half-assembled Gundam frame leaped into the air, perfectly evading the attack.
The pitch-black Gundam frame wove through the barrage with fluid agility. Its blinding speed and astonishing predictive ability left every single one of the GINN's shots hitting nothing but air.
"No weapons?!"
Kira was thinking about how to counterattack.
"The adjacent warehouse has prototype Beam Sabers." Inori's voice echoed inside Kira's mind.
"Got it!"
Kira looked up.
Then she smashed through the wall beside her and snatched up a Beam Saber.
But at that instant, the power cables still connected to the Gundam frame were severed.
Red warning lights immediately began flashing inside the cockpit.
"Kira, the MS frame has no backup power supply. We have fifty-nine seconds remaining."
"That's enough!"
Kira ignited the beam.
And on the audience's screen, a fifty-nine-second countdown had appeared.
Remaining operational time.
And Kira—was going to take down the GINN in those fifty-nine seconds.
[Grass (a type of exclamation), is this an EVA reference?]
[Keep watching the show, why are you pausing?!]
[Hurry up and pause, who watches shows anymore?!]
[What's going on? I was about to record it but the screen went black]
[Apparently it's a brand-new livestream format. The episodic version comes out a month later—if you can't record it, just watch it live]
Before the battle even started, the "informed viewers" had already been trying to record.
But unfortunately, this second audience world had received the exact same treatment as the first.
The battle had begun.
The GINN opened with a spray of its Assault Machine Gun, but the underground space was far larger than expected.
Once it ran through its ammo, the GINN switched to its Missile Launcher.
"These are harder to dodge!"
Because the AI was guiding the missiles manually the entire way, they were impossible to evade by conventional means. Kira dodged nimbly, but the missiles pursued relentlessly.
"At a distance exceeding ten meters, the missile's detonation will not cause critical damage," Inori provided her analysis.
"Right!"
Kira spun around almost instantly, made her judgment call, and slashed the missile apart.
"Whoa!"
The shockwave hit her hard. Kira took a beating, but her Coordinator physiology kept her from suffering any serious harm. What worried Kira more was Inori, right in front of her: "Inori-chan?!"
"No problem. Here it comes!"
The missile had been a feint. At that very moment, the GINN had closed in from behind. Heavy Sword in hand, it brought the blade crashing down toward Kira.
Kira pushed the evasion to its absolute limit, but the Gundam frame itself couldn't withstand this degree of torque. Unable to handle the stress, the frame began to deform, dragging Kira's movements along with it.
At the critical moment, Kira caught the Heavy Sword with her left hand, barely dodging aside—but the left arm had been severed clean off.
Still, Kira seized the opening and swung the Beam Saber in her right hand.
But the GINN sidestepped. In one fluid motion, it completed its recovery swing and executed a stylish back-dash, letting the Beam Saber graze past its flank by a hair.
Kira shifted from a cleave to a slash, spinning into another strike. The GINN handled it with composure, dropping into a half-kneel to let the Beam Saber slide through the gap at its waist.
By now the GINN couldn't recover its stance—but instead of trying, it simply turned its back and fired its thrusters directly at the rice-cooker robot serving as the camera.
Fyu-Neru had no choice but to dart behind the frame to dodge.
But at that point, Kira's vision had gone completely black, and the GINN found its opening to disengage.
[What kind of godlike offense and defense was that]
[Slashing a missile with a sword, and the grunt suit pulling iai moves]
[That dodge was insanely cool—shame the machine can't keep up]
[I think the GINN's ambush and blasting the camera with its thruster was just as insane though]
[But doesn't the protagonist feel kinda weak?]
[Nah, with moves like that, you'd need at least an Amuro to pull it off]
[Trying to replicate this in GBN would be brutal—manual missile guidance alone would weed out half the players]
[I think Team Avalon could probably do it? Supposedly the strongest team in their bracket]
[Hard to say. The micro demands are insane. The AI was dodging at the absolute minimum safe distance every single time—if a human tried, they'd eat hits dozens of times before nailing it once]
[I asked my AI, and it said it would need the same firmware and hardware]
[I'm dying]
Twelve seconds left. One more attack was possible, and the Gundam had already lost its left arm.
"Only one chance..."
Kira slowly raised her head.
A seed exploded inside her mind.
She was entering SEED Mode!
(Lacia—absolutely gorgeous)