Chapter 360: The Second Defensive Battle (1)
At the same time, aboard the Earth Alliance warship, a radar operator reported to Azrael in a panic, "Bad news, sir! The Corpse-Armor Longblade unit and the two Sword Calamities have defected on the spot and are attacking our other MS units!"
Azrael stared in disbelief and shouted angrily, "What? How could this happen? They all betrayed us?!"
The officer beside him also yelled furiously at Azrael, "This is your foolproof plan? Your Artificial Coordinators are completely unreliable—they defected the moment they hit the battlefield!"
"It's fine. I was prepared for this." Azrael replied awkwardly, then said to his subordinate, "Activate the remote self-destruct devices on the Corpse-Armor Longblades. Let them make one last contribution."
"Yes, sir." The subordinate immediately pressed the remote detonation controls on the Corpse-Armor Longblade units, but there was no response at all. After checking, he reported, "Sir, the remote self-destruct units are being interfered with by an unknown signal. They've all failed. The Corpse-Armor Longblades cannot be remotely detonated."
"What?! How could this happen? Damn it!" Azrael raged, stamping his feet. "Find out what's going on immediately! I want them all to be buried along with Orb!"
A few dozen seconds earlier, Nami had reported to Tolle, "Master, the Earth Alliance is trying to make the Corpse-Armor Longblades self-destruct, but I intercepted and blocked all of those signals."
"Hm? Azrael really is relentless. Nami, good thing you're here. Help me remove all the self-destruct devices on those Corpse-Armor Longblades."
"Yes, Master. Nami will go remove the self-destruct devices from those machines now."
As Tolle spoke with Nami, he continued to tangle with the Forbidden Gundam. But without the support of the Raider and Calamity, things became much easier for him, and he leisurely piloted the Flight Armor Strike while slowly toying with it.
Meanwhile, the Orb M1 Astray units were still being hit by large-scale attacks from the Earth Alliance MS forces, and many machines were being blown apart.
Seeing this, Tolle felt a bit guilty, thinking that maybe he shouldn't keep slacking off.
He immediately accelerated the Flight Armor Strike straight at the Forbidden Gundam and used the left Disaster-Born giant pincer to clamp down tightly on the Forbidden's heavy scythe.
Just as the right Disaster-Born giant pincer followed up to clamp down on the Forbidden Gundam's head—
"Damn it! Let go of my weapon! Move, damn you!"
After Shani tried yanking the heavy scythe with no result, he decisively abandoned it, twisted away, and turned to flee, barely dodging the Disaster-Born pincer's attack.
"Oh, Shani, that was pretty decisive. I was planning to use the Disaster-Born pincers to siphon a bit of your energy, but I guess that won't work. Still, playing around with your heavy scythe isn't bad either—my fake Big Goose could use a solid weapon."
Tolle stowed the beam rifle on his back waist and began swinging the heavy scythe.
Seeing his weapon get stolen again, Shani switched into MA mode and fired a self-guided, auto-twisting plasma cluster beam.
After Tolle dodged it, Shani opened a comm channel and shouted angrily, "You thief! Give me back my weapon!"
"Oh? It's in my hands now—how are you going to prove it was yours?" Tolle sneered, then added viciously, "Besides, I'm not a thief, I'm a robber! Now I'm going to loot you—hand over your machine too."
The Flight Armor Strike raised the heavy scythe and charged at the Forbidden Gundam.
"You damn bastard. I'll be back, and when I am, I'll make you pay back double!"
Having lost his melee weapon, Shani could only turn and run, piloting the Forbidden Gundam straight toward Orb's coastline.
Just as Tolle was about to pursue him, the Raider Gundam rushed in. From long range it fired three beams from its mouth energy cannon and the twin horn cannons on its shield system, blocking the Flight Armor Strike's pursuit path.
But the beams did no damage at all, as they were all twisted aside by the energy-deflection armor.
"What a pain. I never expected Shani's gear to become this troublesome once it fell into enemy hands."
Clotho immediately raised the wrecking-ball spike again and hurled it at the Flight Armor Strike at high speed.
Tolle pulled back on the control stick and swiftly dodged out of the way.
Over on the Forbidden Gundam's side, Shani found two destroyed Strike Dagger wrecks on the battlefield and pulled out the intact beam sabers from their backs.
After activating the beam sabers, he immediately charged back toward Tolle.
At the same time, Kira also launched in the Freedom Gundam. The moment he entered the battlefield, he saw Mu and the four people who had been persuading defections earlier working together to attack the Earth Alliance's Sword Calamity and Corpse-Armor Longblade units.
Looking incredulous, he asked Mu and the others nearby, "Colonel Flaga, what's going on with those machines? Weren't they Earth Alliance units?"
Mu said proudly, "Oh, they used to be some kind of Artificial Coordinator unit of the Earth Alliance, but they were persuaded to defect by John Kelly and Edward. Now they're helping us fight off the Earth Alliance's invasion."
"So that's how it is." With that, Kira switched the Freedom Gundam into high-mobility mode and charged toward the Earth Alliance MS forces.
He activated the rapid multi-lock system, targeted the Earth Alliance units, and fired everything at once—head vulcans, plasma cluster beam cannons, railguns, and beam rifles—wiping out dozens of Strike Daggers in a single salvo.
After finishing that volley, while the weapons were cooling down, he drew his beam sabers and charged into the MS groups that were closing in on the M1 Astrays.
With the Freedom Gundam's beam sabers swinging nonstop, large numbers of Strike Daggers and Duel Daggers were cut into MS stumps.
"So you finally showed up—the white machine." Spotting the Freedom Gundam nearby, Orga immediately locked onto it and fired continuous beam-barrage attacks from the Calamity Gundam's twin long-range high-energy beam cannons.
Kira pulled back on the controls and went full throttle. The Freedom Gundam shot upward in an instant, swiftly dodging the relentless beam barrages.
At that moment, Clotho and Shani also spotted the Freedom Gundam. They abandoned their attempt to attack Tolle and immediately turned toward the Freedom's position, rushing straight at it.
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