While Setsuna and Alejandro were locked in their great battle, fights were breaking out as usual in other locations.
On Gundam Kyrios's side, knowing this was the final battle, Alleluia and Hallelujah joined forces. They initially suppressed the Human Reform League's Wodom Pod unit, but when the enemy formed an encirclement, they were forced to activate Trans-Am to save themselves and begin a counterattack.
Gundam Nadleeh's situation was much like the original story. Tieria was trying his best, but the mobile suit's armaments were too poor. A single beam rifle was no match for nearly a dozen enemies.
Seeing that Gundam Nadleeh's firepower was weak, only Patrick—eager to avenge his numerous defeats at the hands of Gundam Virtue—remained with two of his AEU subordinates. The rest of the enemy forces bypassed Gundam Nadleeh entirely, heading for the mothership behind it.
These people saw the situation clearly: if the mothership was gone, they would have eliminated Celestial Being's mobile supply point and command center. Even if one or two of the Gundams escaped, they would be nothing more than scattered stragglers.
In response, Tieria immediately activated Trans-Am in an attempt to intercept them, but three enemy mobile suits still slipped past.
At this moment, Reid, who had been observing the battlefield, knew it was about time for him to make a move.
If three Wodom Pods were to surround the Ptolemy, no one on board would survive.
He remembered that in the original story, it only took one mobile suit rushing in to destroy the bridge.
Thus, Reid coordinated with Noin, maneuvering the Brau Bro—which had already lost three of its wired control type MEGA particle cannons—directly toward the Ptolemy.
The pilot of this mobile suit, the rampaging Simmons A. Bakrov, was feeling quite helpless. Gundam Artemis's funnels were pressuring him so intensely that he had no time to wonder why he hadn't been shot down yet. He could only continuously evade, flee, evade, and flee.
As a Mobile Armor, the Brau Bro's speed was still respectable. So, just as the three Wodom Pods were eyeing the Ptolemy like a naked beauty brandishing a mere fruit knife, preparing to charge forward, strip it of its final armaments, and ravage it at will...
The Brau Bro's massive frame charged onto the battlefield.
At that moment, every member of the Wodom Pod unit who witnessed this cursed inwardly, "Damn you, SDP."
There was no helping it; Reid was playing favorites far too obviously.
The firepower and accuracy the SDP had displayed against the other, clearly stronger, mobile armors from another world were on a completely different level than what they were showing now.
Moreover, this MA only had one remaining weapon emplacement, clearly having been rushed over after taking heavy damage.
The three Wodom Pod pilots hesitated for only a few seconds before deciding to bypass the MA and continue their attack on the Celestial Being mothership. In their view, the SDP, while playing favorites, wouldn't dare to shoot them down directly. That would violate the rules their organization had declared to the world.
Reid, of course, had no intention of breaking the persona he had established. He didn't need to rely on force to temporarily stop these three Wodom Pods from approaching the Ptolemy. His New Human Ability had just been sublimated, and Reid wanted to test the current limits of his power.
Upon entering the battlefield near the Ptolemy, Reid spoke directly to Nein behind him.
"Nein, push the GN Drive to its maximum output and disperse GN Particles. You take over the weapon control systems. I want to see just how much my current psychic power can amplify the GN Particles."
With that, Reid spread his consciousness, intending to use his psychic power to interfere with the three pilots and affect their controls.
At that moment, something unexpected happened. When Reid fully extended his psychic power and made contact with Gundam Artemis's GN Drive, the drive's GN Particle output efficiency instantly tripled.
Of course, this didn't mean Reid had awakened as an Innovator; his eyes didn't turn into golden discs.
The amplification of the GN Drive's particle output was a feedback response to sensing powerful brainwaves (equivalent to psychic power). This phenomenon had occurred with Setsuna and Alleluia before (in the final battle, when Alleluia's two personalities merged, Kyrios's particles had an instantaneous explosive surge).
However, Reid's psychic power was exceptionally strong, which was why the GN Drive's feedback was so intense.
A massive amount of green GN Particles instantly filled the space zone around the Ptolemy and continued to spread outward.
Since Reid hadn't expected the GN Drive to react so violently to his psychic power, he had overdone it.
Within the spiritual domain bathed in GN Particles, everyone present was pulled into a mental chatroom.
And with Reid as the nexus, because his primary intent had been aggressive, everyone suddenly felt as if their heads had been struck by a hammer, rendering them unable to perform any actions.
This was an indiscriminate attack. Reid had even inadvertently hindered Celestial Being; Gundam Kyrios and Gundam Nadleeh wasted a significant amount of their Trans-Am duration, as Alleluia and Tieria were both unable to control their mobile suits.
However, at this moment, everyone on the battlefield, including Reid, was in a state of bewilderment.
Reid was completely stunned that his actions had caused such a massive commotion, and now he was at a loss for how to wrap things up.
As for the others, their minds were suddenly filled with a cacophony of other people's voices. They were first bewildered, then startled.
Of course, while this state of mental communication is depicted as "Nude Floating" in the anime, in reality, there is no "seeing" of naked bodies between minds. (If Nude Floating truly allowed one to see nudity, then quite a few people in the second season would have been cuckolded. Setsuna opened a group chat, and the visuals only showed two people talking, which didn't mean it was a private conversation.)
In this situation, they could hear each other's thoughts and knew where they were coming from, but that was all.
Tieria was the first to realize Reid was behind this and, out of habit, complained mentally.
"What is this? Reid Isaac, what are you trying to do?"
Reid truly hadn't expected Tieria to blurt out his real name here. He probably didn't even realize that his inner thoughts were audible to everyone else.
And so, from the other side, Alleluia quickly warned him.
"Hey, don't think whatever you want! I can hear everything you're thinking right now."
Tieria instantly understood that the consciousness of everyone on the battlefield had been linked. For instance, the AEU officer closest to him was still muttering something about a colonel's sweet kiss, and at the same time, he and the two beside him harbored great malice toward Tieria.
Tieria's thoughts made everyone else realize what was happening. After the headache subsided, they all temporarily ceased their actions and began to carefully perceive their current state.
They then discovered that even across a certain distance, people could communicate directly in their minds and could even magically sense others' feelings toward them.
Of course, what was even more magical was that everyone could hear everyone else's conversations.
Reid more or less understood why in the original story, when two people were talking, others around them rarely spoke up. When multiple people spoke at once, it became impossible for anyone to hear the voice they wanted to listen to. The thought that it was too noisy would naturally arise.
In this situation, as long as everyone in the mental chatroom was capable of normal communication, they could understand each other's distress and allow the most emotional individuals and groups who needed to communicate the most to speak.
However, the two people in this area who most needed to communicate were, naturally, the fellow Super-Soldiers, Alleluia and Soma Peries.
One could only say that although Alleluia constantly thought about Marie Parfacy, he somehow didn't recognize her voice, so he never realized that Soma Peries was Marie Parfacy.
So, as the two fought, they conversed, with Soma Peries lashing out in fury.
"Subject E-0057, why are you with Celestial Being! Why did you kill all of our comrades and partners?"
Soma Peries was referring to Alleluia's destruction of the Human Reform League's Super-Soldier laboratory.
But the Super-Soldier experiments were part of the Human Reform League's dark side, and destroying the facility couldn't really be considered wrong.
So, with both personalities cooperating, Hallelujah's persona switched out and replied.
"Woman, do you even have to ask? Don't you know what kind of torture the Super-Soldier experiments were? I just let those kids end their suffering sooner."
As Hallelujah spoke, he used the last moments of Trans-Am to slaughter the Human Reform League's Wodom Pod squad.
Soma Peries wanted to say more, but Sergei, knowing that everyone could hear their conversation, quickly stopped her. If they kept talking, who knew how many of the Human Reform League's dark secrets would be exposed.
Thus, Sergei not only continued to fire his mobile suit's weapons in reality but also interjected mentally.
"Second Lieutenant, don't overthink it! Focus on the battle!"
Soma Peries held Sergei in very high regard. The moment he spoke, she immediately controlled herself, stopped her stray thoughts, and began to focus on the fight. However, at this point, only her and Sergei's mobile suits remained from the Human Revolutionary Alliance's forces.
Meanwhile, one person, upon realizing that everyone present could hear his innermost thoughts, went completely berserk.
This person was Daryl Dodge from the original Overflag Team. Since he hadn't participated in the battle between Dynames and Sachez this time, he had managed to survive until now and was one of the three mobile suits assaulting the Ptolemy.
At this moment, he decided to display his resolve to everyone present, roaring,
"Celestial Being! For my trampled honor! For Howard, who you killed! Die!!"
He then charged straight for the Ptolemy.
However, the perception of malice was now far more effective than radar. As the three Wodom Pods charged again, Sumeragi and Ian Vashti in the Assault Container opened fire the moment they began their advance.
The Wodom Pods to Daryl Dodge's left and right were unable to evade in time during their charge and were instantly destroyed by the beams.
Seeing that events had returned to the original storyline, Reid shut down the chatroom without a second thought. All he had to do now was let the original story play out and wait to reap the rewards.
Without the ability to sense hostility, Sumeragi and Ian Vashti's accuracy plummeted, and they couldn't hit Daryl Dodge's Wodom Pod at all.
This was a moment of extreme crisis for the Ptolemy. On either side, Gundam Kyrios and Gundam Nadleeh had heavily damaged their enemies in the final seconds of Trans-Am, but they themselves were severely damaged by the enemy's final counterattacks during their post-system shutdown period of weakness.
Just like in the original story, the mobile suits on both sides had essentially taken each other out.
Daryl Dodge's Wodom Pod was the last one left on this battlefield.
Seeing all his teammates wiped out (in reality, many pilots were still alive, their mobile suits just heavily damaged), Daryl Dodge steeled himself and, without another word, began a death charge toward the Ptolemy.
At this time, inside the Ptolemy, the naive Feldt had been coaxed by her friend Christina into going to the Assault Container.
Daryl Dodge's Wodom Pod, after its arms were completely destroyed by taking the full brunt of the Assault Container's GN Missiles, chose to ram directly into the Ptolemy's bridge and self-destruct.
At this point, everything had returned to the original story. If Reid were to check the World Change Fluctuation Value, he would see it plummeting. Even with two of the large UC mobile armors still being toyed with by Reid, the value had dropped directly to 20%.
Clearly, the system determined that if nothing unexpected happened, the world would return to its original trajectory for the next four years. Reid would fade into obscurity, and many people would slowly forget about the SDP.
Once Reid dealt with all the MAs, the World Change Fluctuation Value might even drop below 10%.
However, Reid was now preparing to take advantage of the chaos.
The moment Reid sensed Daryl Dodge's death wish, he stopped holding back and, in the next second, blew up the Brau Bro he had been toying with for so long.
Then, controlling the intensity of his psychic power, he established a private link with the minds of Christina Sierra and Lichtendahl Tsery on the Ptolemy's bridge.
The situation that followed was the same as in the original story. Lichtendahl Tsery used his semi-cyborg body to shield Christina Sierra from the explosion, but while he blocked the front, he couldn't block the back. A piece of shrapnel still impaled Christina Sierra's back.
But just as Lichtendahl and Christina were exchanging their final feelings before death, Reid's voice cut into their minds.
"I'm sorry to interrupt your confession, but I think there's still a chance to save you both. Are you sure you don't want to be saved?"
Upon hearing this, Lichtendahl had a final surge of life and took a breath to respond.
"Mr. Reid, I don't matter. Save Christina."
Christina replied in kind.
"Don't worry about me, Mr. Reid. Save Lichtendahl first."
Hearing this, Reid was a bit speechless at this pair of lovebirds who only understood their own feelings at death's door. He spoke in their minds again.
"If I save you, you'll have to join my organization. You will be under my authority, and Celestial Being will have nothing to do with you anymore. Is that acceptable? If you agree, confirm the choice I'm sending you in your minds."
With that, Reid sent them the recruitment offer.
Reid's demand was a classic case of taking advantage of a disaster, but the two had no other choice. As the saying goes, a bad life is better than a good death. Who would choose death if they could live? Besides, they believed that the miraculous SDP had the means to save them.
In truth, the actual cause of death for Lichtendahl and Christina wasn't their severe injuries. Although their wounds were grave, one was a semi-cyborg and the other just had a large foreign object lodged in her back. In a normal environment, they could have survived for a few more minutes, not died after just a few words.
What truly caused their rapid deaths was the rupture of their space suits, exposing their bodies directly to the vacuum of space. The cold and the vacuum drawing out their blood were things that could kill in a short amount of time.
Therefore, as soon as the two accepted his recruitment, Reid immediately used the Lambda Driver to protect them from the ravages of space and rushed back to the Gran Chaos at top speed.
Just like with Lockon, he was once again racing against the Reaper. Only by getting them into medical pods before they died could he save their lives.
(End of Chapter)