Mobile Suit Gundam: Alicorn - Volume 2

by Alines Reinhard

Chapter 20

It have been a few minutes into the test flight, and as Flash could see, everything was going on smoothly.

“Oh, hello there Mr. Ace Pilot!” Black Wine said through the microphone with an almost mocked voice “Hope you still have a smooth flight there, my friend!”

“I’m not your friend…” Flash mumbled.

“First, congratulation! You have passed the first test, and you are the first-ever test pilot to do so! You know, many of the previous ones have had their lives… ruined by this cursed thing. I don’t know why, but anyway… You are the savior of Equestria, my friend. Second, in just a few more minutes, we will be connected with each other, forming a combat duo for supporting each other in battles. Basically, we are inseparable…”

“No pony wanted to be friends with you!” Flash growled in his helmet.

But the blue unicorn doesn’t have any sign of stopping, as if his communication from Flash’s suit was cut off and only allowing Black Wine to move his mouth with any unfortunate listener around:

“Now, what I want you to do is simply fight with that suit, under my direct order. You’ve heard about nuclear bombs, weapons that can only be used if a President allowed them to use, right? You’ll be exactly that! It’s not every creature who has become a POW suddenly becomes a great pony’s right arm, right?”

Then, his speech suddenly stopped. He lowered his voice and asked as if he try to show some care toward his new “most-important” pilot:

“Are you alright? Is there any anomaly in the cockpit?” he asked with a hoarser voice than normal.

“Normal” Flash abruptly answered.

“Uh… Good… Good to hear that!”

And the two suits continue to fly into the snowy sky.

The test flight doesn’t require him to constantly report back to the Cloudsdale, since there are computers and onboard cameras to do most of the job. He only gets to look at monitors and carefully pilot the suit on its designated flight path, the job he has done best. The path was simple: a giant baseball bat that passed over mountains, rivers, and bays below, seemingly over a frozen northern land. He speculated it might be the Yak’s kingdom, Yolinda’s home kingdom, or even the unexplored north,

“Yolinda…” Flash mumbled, “Are there any mountains or valleys you can recognize?”

“I don’t think so… the snow is too dense. But it could be somewhere above the Yakyakistan’s capital… Uhm… Hopefully it does…”

Right next to his ears, there are strange loud moving sounds. It is a sound only he could be heard, a sound that represented his imprisoned friends in the white mobile suit nearly a kilometer in front of him.

“What are you guys doing?” Flash mumbled.

“Finding a new place for us to stay!” Luster Dawn leaned her head, but she soon take it back to its normal position and slightly show her ground teeth “Argh, that evil unicorn froze us. He has complete control over the Alicorn!”

“Wait, what? How?” Flash stunted.

“I don’t know. Magic, algorithm, newly installed device… Maybe the same one that kept us on the Cloudsdale all these months, after we’ve been captured. We are looking into it!” Luster Dawn answered with a tired voice, which Flash noticed right away.

“You guys, or at least only Luster. You should take a rest. I’ll try to free y’all later.”

“Wait… I think we find some interesting thing on this suit!” Griselda said excitingly “Let me show it to you!”

Suddenly, an image of a large two-wing door with lavender faces flashes right before his face, causing him to be startled. He knows it’s just an illusion that his friends brought to him, but it feels like its surface just slapped into his face.

“What the… what is that door?” he whispered.

“We found something being imprisoned behind those doors. There is constant talking by… whoever is behind it!” Butter Burger shuddered.

But still, Flash maintained his calmness and quickly evaded himself and the suit from hitting a mountain summit, after the alarm comes up just a moment. When he looked back at the statistic, he only fly around 3000 meters from the rocky and snowy mountains, which also happened to be the average height of the Great North Mountains Range.

“Hold on…” Flash strained his voice “…I’ll... I’ll increase the altitude!” Flash said.

“That’s a close call, Brandon!” the Chancellor said through the comlink “Are you alright?”

“Yes…”

The duo was informed by the bridge that they should increase their altitude to around 10000 meters, which they gladly did. On the way, some of the villages below flash under their feet.

Flash could be heard Yolinda gasp when she saw those brown houses behind the clouds and thick snow.

“Are they… are they yak’s village? I can see their roof! We are definitely above Yakyakistan!”

“Oh, that’s great Yolinda!” Luster Dawn excitingly squeezed “Hey Flash, do you see it?”

“Absolutely… I'm kinda surprised you yaks can build villages on such a rough and high place! How can you do that?”

“There are woods all around those mountains. I think they are not so far down the mountains: the longest distance for wood transport to be accomplished is about half a day of walking and singing songs: Yak song, Yak song…”

When Yolinda start singing that yak’s “lullaby”, Flash and his friends frowned. In contrast to in flesh-and-bones meetings where you can cover your ears, telepathic communication can’t allow doing that.

“Okay… okay… Luster, can you tell her…”

But the alarm comes up again, this time it’s the main control monitor signaled him to turn around. He has reached the end of the bat, and he has to turn over and go back to the ship.

“How about that door you guys discovered? Are there any new interests you found?”

“Currently… nah!” Butter Burger said in an oddly cheerful manner “But we’ll still look into it!”

“Seems like there is some kind of lock on this…” Luster Dawn mumbled. She almost immediately turned to Flash and asked “Flash, can you search on the OS to find any anomaly? This thing has more than just those beeping cardiograph-thing-y!”

The blue-eyed pilot immediately started to search on his main control monitor. “Remember, I have NOT know what are those ‘verification levels’ mean. That’s a secret Black Wine wanted to keep from us!”

“At least for now! He’ll eventually give you and us what it is. Why do you think he will NOT let you know what it is when he gives you this thing, right?”

Flash continued to silently search the OS. From the weapon’s monitor system to the gyro management system, from the camera system diagnosis program to the control stick’s adaptation program, almost none of them fitted his suspicious program. He can’t even find where are those “verification levels” located.

“Luster… Luster Dawn…” a voice comes up desperately.

“Wait… isn’t it sound like…” Luster Dawn startled.

“Hey Brandon, is everything still going smoothly?”

The ship’s combat operator, Skylar asked once his suit came near enough to catch the communication signal of the ship.

“Yes. The OS doesn’t seem to have any problem, besides it doesn’t run as smoothly as other MS’s OS, plus some vital programs being locked to the pilots…”

“Such as…”

“Such as those verification levels” Flash answered with a stone-cold voice.

“Didn’t Eddy just explain to you what it is?” Skylar answered “Pumps priority!”

“He said I will know when it was done. I did not feel anything.” Flash answered, still with a bored voice.

“What a shame.” He answered with a voice just as curtly as Flash.

…

Right after touching down the hangar, Flash requested to inspect his MS along with Aki, his MS’s lead engineer. He has to ask him whether there are “living creatures” in the Psycho MkII, like the “cardiographs” that Black Wine described when he saw the Alicorn’s cockpit.

“Hey!” he shouted. The white suit pilot struggled to walk out of the cockpit due to his heavy white pilot suit, but he soon ignored the articulation-less suit and sprinted towards Aki. And with all the strength of a human still in recovered, he lifted his engineer up. Aki let out a nervous smile and waved both of his hands in front of Flash.

“Hey, hey, cool guy… I can’t say anything when you are holding me like this!”

“I don’t care!” Flash barked as if he don’t care what Aki said “You will tell me everything I know about this cursed thing!”

“Wh… What do… do you mean ‘cursed thing’?” Aki stuttering.

“There must be some souls trapped in here, you jerk!”

He pulled the scared Aki right in front of his face, eye to eye. He tries to replicate the look of an angry man trying to stare into the opposite side’s soul. His white teeth were exposed to show the grinds they are making in his mouth, all was done while he continue asking:

“I ask you again: what… is… in… that… thing?”

“Didn’t I have to tell you those are pumps priority, god damn it!” Aki yelled back “What do you mean by trapped souls?”

“Those cardiograph-thingy are literally cardiograph. There are heartbeats inside that thing!” Flash yelled.

“Hey, hey! What’s going on here?” Black Wine ran towards the fighting duo. His telekinesis ability to separate the two from each other:

“No… Nothing Sir!” Aki quickly got up, but still, have some coughs. He adjusted his shirt and looked towards Flash.

“And you too, Black Wine!” Flash also quickly got up and attempted to attack Black Wine. But he was quickly stopped when the dark blue unicorn uses his magic to tackle him down the metallic floor, only allowing Flash to breathe.

The securities only responded to the situation after that. Black Wine handed his tacking job to them and told the guards “Handed him to the engineer for them to take out his suit. He still wearing that helmet.”

“Flash, stop. We’re gonna investigate it together later!” Luster Dawn calm him down with her urgent voice “It's no use just messing up right now…”

…

“Sheesh… I have told him about those cardiographs on the Alicorn… I have no idea they will be that similar…” Black Wine said, walking nervously inside his cabin.

“What do you mean by ‘similar’?” Red Velvet questioned.

“Well… the Alicorn Gundam and the Psycho Gundam MkII, you know? I don’t know why Alicorn has those cardiographs. The ones on the Psycho MkII are done and installed by us…”

But the dark blue unicorn suddenly realized something and turned to his assistant:

“Maybe those ‘souls’ make it themselves?”

“Huh? How can you tell? How about there is a mysterious organization who also trapped souls into that mobile suit like us?” Red Velvet shrugged.

“Ah, that’s sound legit... But wait, how did they get the technology for that to happen?” Black Wine questioned.

“Hmm… I don’t know. I’ve even done some deep research into the AE’s database and found out that they have some incident of… human souls get trapped in those machines…”

“That borderline insane!” he exclaimed.

“And the best thing about this is that none of the humans know how can that happen! Perhaps we can be the ones giving them an answer through this project…” she then slowly walked over to his boss and whispered, “…only magic can make such a miracle happen!”

Meanwhile, in his cell, Flash just lying on his bed with his arms on his forehead as usual. But he didn’t sleep this time. His mind is linking the events of that morning, questioning himself about the cardiographs.

“Uh… Flash… I think we should definitely investigate that thing. Really!” Griselda tries to urge Flash “… there are souls trapped behind that door I show you! You must get out of the bed, now!”

“No. Not now.”

“Arrgh!” Griselda growled “Dude, there are some creatures that might be stuck there! You should … I mean you must not let them suffer!”

“Griselda, listen. We are in a circumstance that is impossible for us to do that. If we keep urging Flash, he can let himself and us into a difficult situation!” Luster Dawn tries to explain “Maybe just wait for the other day. He passed Black Wine’s test, he must be allowed him to pilot the Psycho MkII again!”

…

Allowed again, he is.

Right in the next day, Toby, his personal engineer that have helped Flash in the last flight, announced to him that they will test some weapon systems on board. Reading the long list of actions to do, mostly related to the head-mounted 60 mm Vulcan guns and the beam saber, the weapon that he has matured from his past battles. “Easy like eating a cake! You mastered them before, right?” Griselda commented upon seeing the list.

But before that, he was forced to enjoy his breakfast in the ship’s main cafeteria. As always, it is a tense atmosphere for both him and the crew of the ship.

Especially Nikita and Mark, the two of the ship’s star pilots.

Little did Flash know, the morale on board the ship is at an all-time low, despite the recent victories. They have been undersupplied, and the entirety of the human crew hasn’t been replaced for more than a year. They can’t leave at all until the war ended. This leaves Flash an uncomfortable feeling that both sides, while certainly having many differences, can still relate to each other on a personal level. He remembers his friends back in the Canterlot have to leave home and to his knowledge, they also haven’t returned to their home even before the hunt for the Alicorn Gundam.

So it is understandable that the crew of the ship gave him the most unpleasant face as much as possible. Coupled with the fact that several of the crew members have died, of course, they will do that.

Some of the eyes he saw have thrown a level of hatred to him he have never seen before, maybe even comparable to the eyes of his shipmates after the battle above Halflinger Groove. Flash guess they might be the friends or the partners of the lost crew member.

His assigned bodyguard pony has to order the food for Flash, since he doesn’t think the blue-headed pilot will be safe near his angered shipmates, as Flash has to sit at a completely separate table with another bodyguard.

“Hmm… I honestly feel sorry when you have to sit near these snowflakes. How pathetic!” Griselda exclaimed “They killed the innocent creatures and threaten harmony for our entire realm. How on Earth are we going to shed a tear for those murderers?”

“Yeah, Flash. You must remember the time they blew up my villages in Kirin Groove, the…”

“Guys, I don’t think that should be an appropriate reaction!” Yolinda cut them off “I know a lot of them have done no good to our kingdoms, but they also lost loved ones too. I mean… do you see any faces that involve in those crimes?”

“Oh… what a pure soul you are!” Griselda exclaimed sarcastically. “Now let's say some of them suddenly decided to murder your parents brutally, can you tell people not to hate their friends because they denied the murderer's crimes?”

“Totally!” Yolinda answered. “Maybe they don’t know?”

“Guys, silence!” Luster Dawn raised her voice “Do not provoke Flash. I can feel the heat in him.”

That heat comes from Flash’s furious eyes as he eats the food the bodyguard just gave him in an unfriendly manner. Griselda did provoke some hatred within Flash, as they brought back the images of burning corpses and the sorrow of the creatures who lost their friends, or even their loved ones during the crossfire. Luster Dawn has to constantly remind Flash to sit still, “or there will be blood spill!”

That line did make Flash surprised at how mature his friends are, even though they are somewhat middle school ages. Trauma tends to mature creatures very fast, and it could leave them scars for the rest of their lives. Flash has overheard some pony told to his shipmates upon hearing him telling stories of foals and baby creatures he met along the journey. But what he can’t fathom is how can they still maintain their cheery and happy personality. He has gone to a totally crazy conclusion that they have kept him from going insane when he was detained and used like a living weapon on the Cloudsdale, something he won’t even think of in his wildest dream just half a year ago!

Those thoughts have calmed him down effectively, allowing Flash to ignore the angry looks of the crew and peacefully finish his breakfast.

…

When he arrived at the MS, the cockpit hatch is already opened, along with kilometers of wires detached from the machine. It’s ready to flex its wing on the Equestrian sky.

“However, you should take this thing along.” Aki gave him a specially made helmet with multiple joints that are really heavy, along with a carbon fiber neck supporter.

“What are these?”

“They are the necessary hardware to connect your mind to the suit’s AI. The AI will read your mind and use some of your senses, allowing it helps you control the suit more effectively.” Toby explained. “Sorry for making you the lab rat for today, but I think you will go through this just fine: they just extracted and analyze your brain waves. There will be no data exchange or some sort of that!”

“Why do you mention data exchange?” Flash asked with an annoyed attitude.

“Data overload is a well-known phenomenon within the engineering sector like me. Basically, when it happened, you will experience severe headaches, stroke, and sometimes, nose and eye bleeding. You will want to die if that happened, my friend!”

“He mentioned those things specifically. Sound kinda sus! But trust me, he’s honest!” Griselda suddenly said, making Flash flinch a little. He never expected such a naughty attitude griffon like her can see whether people are honest or not.

“Really? How do you know?”

“Don’t you see he kept a straight face and talk about it almost enthusiastically?”

When Flash looks back at Aiki’s face, he realized that he is smiling at the MkII. “He probably really doesn’t know every secret this thing has!” Luster Dawn said.

But little did both Flash and Aki know, there is a terrific truth behind the MS that they are working on.