The stars near Solomon burned red.
Federation signals screamed across open channels, a storm of panic and static. The black sea of space was alive with fire — shattered Ball units tumbled in silence, their hulls glowing from residual plasma, while the hulking carcasses of three assault carriers drifted like broken moons.
Inside the Indra-class carrier Heaven's Roar, klaxons blared. Technicians scrambled, pilots shouted over each other. The battle had begun long before they could even organize. Zeon's counterattack was monstrous — a single Mobile Armor and a handful of new-type machines had torn through the vanguard like paper.
"Strike Gundam, launch authorization granted! Gary Lin, you're up!" shouted the deck officer.
Gary sat inside his cockpit, still blinking at the holographic readouts. The noise of battle filtered through the hull, a deep, constant roar.
He muttered to himself, half in disbelief, half in panic,
> "I swear this looks way too cinematic for real life…"
The launch catapult extended, shaking under distant impacts.
Gary took a breath, gripped the controls, and forced a grin — that old nervous smile of someone trying to pretend this was all just a game.
"Gary Lin, Strike Gundam — launching!"
The machine burst out of the carrier bay, streaking into the void. Explosions flared all around him — burnt metal, shattered limbs of GM units, trails of smoke frozen in vacuum.
He caught sight of them then — far off, like monsters in the night.
The Elmeth moved like a ghostly manta ray, releasing bright funnels that danced and cut through Federation units in impossible arcs.
Beside it floated the Great Zeong, towering and regal, its massive limbs breaking through wreckage with casual dominance. Four smaller Zeong units followed it in formation, their finger-beams slicing through GMs by the dozens.
Gary's jaw dropped.
> "Oh, you've got to be kidding me... That's the Great Zeong?! They actually built it?! Wait— why does that Elmeth look like a death star-shaped jellyfish?!"
His display flickered. A holographic grid materialized — the System.
[MISSION: Counter-Elmeth and Great Zeong detected.]
[Sub-Objective Unlocked: Eliminate General Delaz. Destroy 5 Musai-class Cruisers.]
Gary's hand froze on the throttle.
> "Wait, wait, that's not even related! How the hell is that a sub-quest?!"
[Reward: 10,000 System Points, +3 Attribute Upgrade Tickets.]
He exhaled. "…Yeah, okay, screw logic. Guess I'm doing this."
---
Far behind him, the Revil Fleet struggled to reorganize.
General Revil himself, calm amid chaos, gave new orders.
> "All Gundam units — scramble. Elmeth and Great Zeong are priority targets. General Timothy, move your vanguard into Solomon's outer range. General Tianem, support the flank. Our main force will cover the rear and provide artillery."
Inside the hangar of the Pegasus-class carrier White Base II, five silhouettes stood by their launch rails.
"Alex Gundam — you'll take point," the researcher said.
Amuro Ray adjusted his helmet, glancing at the blue-and-white armor. "So this is the upgrade? Fine. Let's see if it keeps up."
Nearby, the other pilots prepared:
Hikigaya Hachiman, muttering under his breath, "…Siscon or not, Komachi better not see this mess…"
Mikazuki Augus, quiet, checking his weapons with mechanical precision.
Lockon Stratos, calm as always, scope linked to his targeting feed.
Athrun Zala, eyes sharp, focused yet uncertain.
One by one, their Gundams launched — Aegis, Buster, Duel, Blitz — streaking past debris toward the gleaming monsters that awaited.
The Federation's counterattack had begun.
---
Gary Lin dove through the debris field, Strike Gundam cutting past the drifting remains of friendly units.
Beam fire rained from Solomon's outer perimeter, painting the void in green streaks. Zeon's first defense line — dozens of Musai cruisers, Zaku IIs, Rick Doms, and Gelgoogs — braced for the Federation wave.
> "All units, this is General Delaz!" the Zeon frequency echoed, proud and defiant. "Hold the line! For Zeon and for Dozle-sama!"
Gary intercepted the broadcast by accident.
> "Delaz… that's my target, huh? System, you seriously want me to assassinate a general in the middle of a warzone?"
[Affirmative. Target importance: HIGH.]
He sighed. "Right. Of course."
His radar blinked red.
Multiple enemy signatures — fast movers, heavy fire. A squadron of Rick Doms closed in.
Gary pulled back the thruster stick. Strike rolled left, dodging a barrage, then snapped forward — beam rifle firing in tight bursts. Two Doms exploded in synchronized flashes.
The third tried to ram him, and Gary responded with a blade — the beam saber cleaved the suit in half.
> "Alright, Strike… you still got it," he muttered, sweat dripping down his neck.
He pushed forward again, deeper into enemy fire. Ahead, the first Musai-class cruiser came into view, its cannons blazing. Gary dodged, looped behind it, and fired a full-power beam rifle shot straight into its engine block. The cruiser exploded in a silent, burning bloom.
[Target Destroyed: 1/5]
[Progress: 12% — Do not retreat.]
Gary grimaced.
> "You're worse than a gacha banner, System."
He accelerated again, weaving through enemy fire as more Zeon units converged. The sheer scale of Solomon loomed before him — a fortress that glowed like a second sun, surrounded by death and flame.
On his radar, Amuro and the other Gundam units moved in a different direction, their signals already clashing with the powerful psychic waves emitted by the Elmeth and the Great Zeong. The true battle was beginning elsewhere.
But Gary Lin had his own war — one pilot, one Strike Gundam, against the fortress of Solomon and the iron will of General Delaz.
He steadied his breathing, muttering as the Strike's sensors lit up with new targets.
> "Okay, Delaz… let's see who's the protagonist of this episode."
The Strike's thrusters flared white, cutting through the void as beam fire streaked past.
Solomon loomed larger, defiant and terrible, and Gary Lin charged straight into it — a single bright spark against an empire of steel.
The Strike Gundam tore through the smoke and ruin like a knife through paper, white-and-blue armor flashing against the crimson glow of Solomon. Gary Lin's breath went shallow inside the cockpit; the HUD spat metrics and threats, but his hands were steady. He'd wanted the mission. He'd wanted the spotlight. Now that he had it, the center of that spotlight was a furnace of guns and angry metal.
Straight ahead gleamed Delaz's command cruiser, black and scarred but intact — the heart of the first defense line. Gary targeted it with a single, stupid certainty: go straight, hit hard, don't think. The Strike responded like an extension of him. He felt, briefly, the childish euphoria of a fanboy live-streaming his first boss battle. It was glorious. It was terrifying. It would, he thought a fraction too late, probably get him killed.
The world around him tightened.
The first volley came from three Rick Doms bristling with beam bazookas. Gary rolled hard, the Strike's thrusters whining as beams licked past the shoulders of his cockpit. He cut a reply—one precise burst into a torso, another to the cockpit—then lined up a full-strength beam rifle shot into a Musai's reactor. The cruiser ruptured in a bloom of molten metal and frozen debris. He flicked a glance at his status bar: Target Destroyed 1/5. Progress: 12%.
He grinned, stupid and sharp, and then the sensors screamed.
Red signatures popped up on the scope like angry fireflies. They weren't single suits anymore; they were cordons—Gelgoogs, Zaku IIs, several Dom squadrons converging in a wide net. Delaz's fleet did not rely on a single hammer blow; it closed like a trap. Gary realized, in a cold pit, that he'd flown into the center of the jaw.
"Perfect," he breathed, not sure whether he meant the trap or the irony.
A small, dry voice in his neural HUD chirped. [SYSTEM]: Host excitement level recalibrated. Probability of stylish demise increased by 62%. Recommend: reduce flair.
Gary slammed his hand on the control column. "Shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up."
[SYSTEM]: Sarcasm logged. Emotional support unavailable.
He felt the heat of hundreds of targeting solutions touching the Strike; he felt the sudden awareness of being circled. For the first time in the sortie, the naive part of him—the otaku who loved dramatic set pieces—saw the script clearly: protagonist overreaches, side characters suffer. He cursed himself out loud. "You absolute idiot, Gary. Why did you do the dramatic charge? Why did you think—"
A cluster of beam shots slashed toward the Strike. Gary punched evasive thrusters, letting the suit tumble on a razor edge. A Dom's beam slammed into his left arm, tearing away plating; alarms redlined. He tasted copper in his mouth. He thought, for one ridiculous instant, of the system's reward screen flashing blueprint art while his hull numbers dropped.
If the trap had been perfectly set, then the rescue that followed was a godsend.
A white shape carved through the smoke and debris above him — the silhouette of a Gundam axle-braced, broadsides humming. The White Base's carrier flight had arrived, and with it a clean, steady voice that cut into the frantic comms.
"Lin, pull back," the voice said, pragmatic and rough in the sort of voice a hundred battlefields had aged. "You're not soloing a fortress. Hold position and buy time."
Gary blinked at the IFR tick. The name matched the tone: Bright Noa. The man's presence in the comm was the sort of order you followed even when you wanted to argue. "Bright? About time," Gary said, half embarrassed, half relieved. He gunned the Thrusters to yaw away as a thick volley of Dom fire thudded into the space where he'd been.
An angular machine answered Bright's command with an unmistakable thump: the Guncannon. Hayato's voice—light, a little sarcastic—came over the line. "Lin, stick to my line. I'm not babysitting anyone who treats their suit like a sports car."
"Just—just cover me, gents," Gary said, and then, terribly, he also said, "If I die, please—get a decent highlight reel."
Hayato laughed, the sound oddly human over the deafening static. "Don't push me, kid."
From the deck of White Base, Fraw observed the chaos as only she could: straightforward worry, a bouquet of practical orders already forming in her mind. She'd seen the Strike's entry through the sensors—saw, too, how it had burst into the trap—and she barked an instruction. "Guncannon teams, Hayato and Kai, cover low approach. Amuro, I want your eyes on Delaz's node when you can spare them."
Kai, a veteran in the Guncannon, answered with a gravelly straightness. "We'll set up a suppression corridor. Lin, you get through and don't die, okay?"
Gary's eyelids twitched. "Thanks. Very inspiring."
On the Strike's external cam, the Guncannon's twin barrels flared, and Hayato's shots flew with measured rhythm. The shells forced the closest Dom squadrons to break lock and duck behind wreckage; the barrage created a ragged lane through which Gary could breathe and maneuver. Hayato and Kai moved like stone brakes on a runaway train, carving very literal holes in Delaz's net.
A new visual surfaced on Gary's HUD: a formation of mobile suits racing in from the flank, metal glinting under bursts of light. For a dizzying second he thought they were enemy Zaku spires. Then he recognized the xenon-plain shimmer of the uniforms—Zeon gray, a little more disciplined, and at their tip the hard, unmistakable profile of the GED squad's machines.
Tanya's suits swept in—fewer than a full squadron but precise, composed. Mila's Gelgoog sliced low, two Dom targets collapsing beneath her coordinated strikes. Ritcher's long-barreled sniper beam seared across the map and took out a Rick Dom's head unit with surgical mercy. Zhou Wei moved like a ghost, planting a series of micro-beams into the backline that made enemy formations stutter.
Gary felt his shoulders drop half an inch with relief, then tighten with fresh annoyance. Of all the possible reinforcements, he'd been saved by the very people he'd expected to be fighting: Zeon's elite pilots.
He muttered in the cockpit, equal parts gratitude and vengeful humor. "Of course. Of course it's women who show up and bail me out. Couldn't die by something noble, could I?"
[SYSTEM]: Observation: Host morbidity humor registered. Probability of 'die by women' event: non-zero. Recommend: live.
He winced at the system's dry logic. "Very funny."
Across channels Hayato grunted. "You okay, Strike?" He didn't sound like he believed Gary's perfunctory grin.
"I'm fine," Gary lied, but the Strike moved with renewed violence—partly because of survival instinct, partly because the gauntlet of fire now had a path. He darted, cutting down a flank of Gelgoog alternates with swift, clean shots, using the suppression corridor like an overworked courier.
Tanya's voice came through faintly on local frequency, clipped and businesslike. "Strange—your presence in the middle of our pattern was uncalled for, Federation pilot. Maintain caution."
Gary choked on a laugh that tasted like adrenaline. "Yeah, sorry, wrong place, wrong time?"
Mila's retort was dry and efficient. "Then don't be wrong again."
Somewhere behind the plumes and metal rain, Ramba Ral's name flickered in the comms like a memory. Gary thought of the older pilot and the older lessons—savagery, discipline, the idea that war had its own logic. He also thought, with an irrational flicker of gratitude, that if he was going to be carved up by fate, at least he'd be in good company.
The Strike slid deeper into the lane, the hull ringing with impacts. Delaz's ships were not idle. From the cruiser's bristling sides, a curtain of micro-beams stitched a lattice of lethal light. Jason Arkadi's infamous projects weren't on Gary's feed; he still didn't know Jason's name, didn't know which hands had shaped the nightmare in front of them. All he knew was the cable-tight focus of life-and-death mathematics hacked into visor readouts.
Delaz's voice, amplified across the comm and thick with late-war contempt, filled the space. "You believe one suit can pass my defenses? How quaint." He ordered a squadron of Gelgoogs to converge, and a Rick Dom's energy slap cut the Strike's left stabilizer.
Gary cursed, rolled, and fired back. A Gelgoog exploded in the silent bloom of space. The Strike's beam saber arced like an angry comet, slamming into the Dom's flank. He moved like a man with nothing to lose and everything to prove, the cockpit a furnace—and inside him, a single, stubborn insistence: not yet. Not today.
Hayato's Guncannon bellowed again, its shots precise and sustained, suppressing the next wave long enough for Gary to thread another path through. Kai called coordinates, acrid and steady, a rhythm that made the chaos feel slightly ordered. "Two o'clock, punch through that gap, Strike."
"Copy!" Gary snapped. "Gunning it!"
He bucked forward, the Strike screaming as it punched the Guncannon's corridor. A musai cruiser shuddered as another beam found its engine. Delaz's line buckled, a thin seam opening in the fortress face. For a breath, Gary belonged to the story he'd always loved—the single suit that carved destiny's way—but reality was sharper than fiction. His knee jerked with shock as the Strike's HUD flashed critical; a stray volley had nicked the reactor housing, and heat warnings bloomed like angry flowers.
Tanya's squad, efficient as clockwork, kept the most dangerous interceptors preoccupied. Nyaan and Machu—pilots out of strange origin—moved with the nervous, ferocious grace of people who had been yanked across worlds and told to fight. They took hits and answered in kind. Gary watched Nyaan's G-Fred spiral past, sleek and weathered, and thought with weird clarity that the battlefield was a mosaic of lives and stories that would not line up neatly in the end.
He listened to the system chatter—mocking, mathematical—and he laughed, a ragged little sound. "System," he said, panting, "if I make it through this, remind me to unplug you for a week."
[SYSTEM]: Suggestion logged: Host intends an impractical leisure activity. Emotional state: hopeful. Recommend: survival.
He didn't have the luxury of actual celebration. With each breath the Strike took, more hostiles converged. Delaz herself, somewhere in a glassed command room, made decisions like a surgeon—send in a Dom squad to the lower flank, angle a Rick Dom's engine to cut off their exit vector. The net, though fraying, still closed like a mouth.
But the corridor of white fire held—Bright's White Base and its pilots had turned a moment that would have been a cautionary tale into a fight for control. The difference between a single suit and a small phalanx had been the manner of intervention. It was ugly, terrified, and maddeningly human.
Gary's hands shook as he lined up another shot. "We're not done," he said to the empty space. He felt the Strike's soul like a living thing around him—searing, responsive. He would not be a neat legend today; he would be messy, tired, and alive. He would grind and last and live to see who could be blamed later.
A stray line of comms sagged through the battlefield, and someone—maybe Hayato, maybe Bright—said a sentence that had no poetry in it but everything that mattered.
"Stay with us, Lin."
He glanced up, visor glinting with sparks from a close impact, and answered, a little too loudly and a lot too cheerfully, "Trying my best not to be a corpse today."
[SYSTEM]: Humor appreciated. Survival calculation increased by 3%.
On the battlefield, the fight kept its terrible, glorious pace. Delaz barked orders. Tanya's squad kept intercepting the worst of the rage. Hayato and Kai promised a steady beat of suppression. Bright threaded the larger strategy like a spine. Gary moved through the ruins between them, a single bright machine taking hits and giving back as much as it could.
He felt small, then stubborn, then absurdly content at the thought that, if he died that day, at least he'd have a hell of a final highlight reel.
The Strike dove again, laser burn and metal rain all around. The corridor led to the heart of Solomon—if he could break through this seam, Revil's forces could have a sliver of hope. If he failed, the enemy's net would swallow them all like a maw.
There was no soundtrack, only the creak of metal and the whine of servos and radio voices; there was no perfect end, only the next shot, the next calculated risk. Gary pulled his suit through the breach, struck another Musai with a furious, gleaming beam, and felt, absurdly, like both a character and the writer of his luck.
Above the roar, the system offered its final, perfectly timed bit of obnoxious commentary.
[SYSTEM]: Notification — "At least you die by women" event probability reduced to nominal.
Gary snorted, the sound more relief than humor. Then he pushed the Strike forward, into the next ring of fire, into the meat of Delaz's force, bullets and beams and the thin, stubborn hope of someone who'd chosen to stand rather than run.
The battle for Solomon continued, ugly and immediate and without pity, and Gary Lin's Strike Gundam was still in it—smoking, scarred, and stubbornly alive.