Editing KSGU:Volume 2 Chapter 3 (section)

===Part 14===

White smoke is rumbling, and a huge explosion happens several shrapnel away from here. The smoke that rises with the explosion expands its range, and this smoke is sucked into the exploded hole at the same time. This hole looks like it’s gathering mist, and the poison gas that’s like a phantom floats over.

“THERE’S A HOLE IN THE COLONY!’ Someone yelled. Banagher, who ran down the emergency staircase alone, sees that scene as he steps out of the entrance. The colony has a hole, and the air around the hole is gradually sucked in. The condensed steam forms mist, and the explosion from before caused the inner wall to collapse and open a hole. This wasn’t just shouted randomly.

“ARE WE REALLY AT WAR HERE!?” 

“WHERE’RE THE OXYGEN MASKS!? HURRY UP AND GET TO THE AIR-RAID SHELTER!” 

The residents of the mansion who are also running out of the house all shout as they scamper away. The mindless lights on the streets light the anxious expressions of their faces. “Don’t panic! Everyone, calm down! Each air-raid shelter is enough to fit everyone inside!” Some police officers’ growls are mixed in, but there aren’t any signs of systematic evacuation. The explosions in the air above continue to ring at times, and the phone booths are showing signs of overcrowding. Banagher heads down the buildings on the side of the street and look down at the site of the explosion far away. The area there has tilted with the inner wall, and the slanted side that’s like a hill that’s bloated doesn’t have any electrical power, only a slightly black land. The burns that are like cigarette ash are scattered, and there is mist swaying around the circle. What should be there—the school compound of Anaheim electronics is all gone. There’s only a pile of black ash covering its building, and there’s no signs of rubble or fire that can be seen at all.

''Is it because it sublimed with the explosion, or did it get sucked outside? '' On hearing this sound that’s filled with intense breathing, and one that doesn’t sound like himself, Banagher grips his trembling hands. ''Are there students in the campus—it’s the weekend today, so I believe there shouldn’t be anyone else left in school. If that’s not the case…''

His shoulder is knocked by an impact, causing his distracted attention to return. Banagher ignores the person he knocked into and only cares about looking around. There’s something more important he has to do instead of checking the damages of the college. He immediately finds what he wants, and instinctively shouts out, “THE LIMO OVER THERE, WAIT!”

The men who are about to close the limo door are shocked and look around. Banagher kicks the ground and dashes over to that black limo. He passes through the crowd and uses his hand to grab onto the car window that’s about to close. The man sitting in the driver’s seat widens his eyes, and the man sitting in the assistant seat gasps slightly.

“Let me get on too.”

Banagher pokes his head into the window of the assistant seat as he says this. These two, who are either guards of the Vist Foundation or watching over him, stare at his face for a few moments and blink a few times in shock. In this situation, they won’t care about some surveillance or guards. Banagher knows that they want to go back to the <<Snail>>. The young man sitting in the driver’s seat gives a completely different expression and growls back softly, “Don’t kid around. Why must we…” But Banagher doesn’t let him finish.

“Isn’t it your job to protect me?”

The man in the driver seat looks like he’s at a loss of words as he shuts his mouth. There’s no other way to get to the <<Snail>> beside going with these two people. Banagher knows that this is reckless, but he has no other idea of how to get there. ''I have to do this.'' This impulse continues to echo inside his heart. Banagher grabs tightly onto the door handle on the side to prevent the men from realizing that he’s trembling, and looks at the elderly man in the assistant seat. That man narrows his eyes with hard-to-determine expression, looks over behind Banagher, and points over with his chin, “Those guys too?”


Banagher looks back, and is completely speechless. Takuya and Micott are standing over there, and there’s a group of 7 to 8 people behind them, all who have appeared in the party. These people all look at Banagher with pale expressions. Micott says before Banagher can even react, “If you’re going to get to safety, bring us along too.” And steps forward, forcing Banagher to lean onto the limo.

“Why…why aren’t you going to the air-raid shelter at the mansion?”

“We don’t know which idiot went crazy and locked it from inside.” Takuya carries Haro and arrives before Micott interrupting, “The people living nearby all went home, but we can’t go back in this situation. Everyone’s locked out. There’s no place to go to either.”

“We don’t know if we can get to the air-raid shelters in other places, and there’s a hole at the school, so we can’t go near there…if we can get into the <<Snail>>…”


As she says that, Micott glances at the assistant seat of the limo. ''How did it end up like this?'' Banagher, who never intended to evacuate, watches the anxious looks on these people’s faces, and instinctively feels that it’s dangerous to go there. There’s nothing to explain this feeling, and he looks over at the sky above where the fighting’s still continuing.

In the layers of clouds where it’s impossible to tell whether these are clouds of smokes of explosions, the thruster jet lights are flickering away, and there are fires of beams flying all over the place from time to time. ''There’re probably many people fighting there, are there? From the way things look here, the inner wall on the other side is showing flashes as well. Even an amateur can understand that the battlefield is being expanded. Those may be the enemy unit from Neo Zeon and the Federation mobile suits chasing after it…to us who just saw the streets wrecked and have to watch for stray shots, there’s no point determining who’s friend or foe here. Everything will just put us in danger, and may even land in front of us in the next instant. Since the explosion was strong enough to create a hole in the colony, we won’t survive if we stay in the air-raid shelters.'' 

''No matter where we are, the danger present will never change.'' Banagher convinces himself and puts his head into the assistant’s seat window again. “Please let everyone get in.” He said, and the elderly man looks back wordlessly.

“Or else I’ll shout that you guys are the ones who started this battle.”

Banagher whispers and exerts more force on the hand gripping onto the door handle. At this moment, the facts don’t matter. The most important thing is that they won’t be able to get away if the evacuees with killing intent surround them. “This guy…” Banagher ignores the groan of the man in the driver’s seat and looks over the elderly man. Both of them look at each other for several  seconds, and the elderly man then looks over at the man on the driver’s seat, indicating with his expression to open the passenger seat.

“EVERYONE, GET ON!” 

Banagher yells as he opens the back seat. He nods at the unmoving elderly man appreciatively, and pushes Micott and the rest inside.

No matter how wide this high class limo is, the place is as packed as sardines with 9 people in there. Banagher pokes his upper body out from the back seat and puts himself the car like he’s sitting on a box to allow him to put himself in the car. He knocks his still trembling hand onto the roof of the car, indicating that everyone’s on board. The limo seems to give up as it honks and starts to move forward. They avoid the evacuees that ran onto the road and head towards the airtight wall facing the moon. There’s wind blowing because the car’s moving forward and the air’s flowing to the hole. This wind whips up dust and litter, and the slowly-blowing wind become a whirlwind and is sucked into the vacuum. The air inside the colony shouldn’t be sucked out that easily, but in this situation, it seem that an emergency repair can’t repair that hole that’s created from an explosion. Some people amongst the evacuees have already put on their oxygen masks.

The airtight walls of the air-raid shelters under the Community Center and the artificial hills are closed up one after another. The people who can’ evacuate in time run off to the next air-raid shelter, and a beam that looks like thunder echoes through the sky. Banagher looks inside the car, and Micott are the other girls are clinging onto each other. Takuya doesn’t have anything to comfort them about and remains silent. The abnormal air that fills the colony and the sounds and lights of violence overwhelm this place, causing everyone to be numb about this.

What in the world is this? Banagher doesn’t have the strength to meet anyone in the eyes and mutters to himself. It’s been less than 20 minutes since he first witnessed the flames of the battle, but there wasn’t anything before. They’re in an ordinary daily life that nobody can change, but why is it that the lives of many are overturned in just 10 minutes? The daily life that made him so ‘disjointed’, and the sturdy walls that surround them are all so weak.

Even if he doesn’t feel that he’s able to blend into his surroundings, he doesn’t want everything to be overturned just like that. He doesn’t know what caused the war, but he can’t allow those people to die without even knowing why or what happened before they were vaporized inside the explosion. It can’t be helped if it was a war, but this unreasonable sudden attack is just like a terrorist attack. This overly extreme circumstance doesn’t allow for anyone to vent their emotions.

But—just as he’s thinking about this, his body and mind is starting to get used to this. Banagher notices that he’s already starting to be able to react calmly and accordingly rather than being drowned in the dissipated of the part. There’s no ‘disjointedness’ there, and no suffocation. It’s like he’s awakened, or like a blindfold’s removed.

''Maybe my mind is really wrong somewhere.'' Banagher presses onto his pulsating forehead. He notices that he also has an impulse to let his head knock into the roof of the car to spill out whatever’s inside, but realizes that it’s better to follow this unknown instinct. If not, he won’t be able to survive and save ‘her’. Such rational thoughts are telling him off inside his mind.

“Audrey…!”

Banagher looks over at the airtight wall facing the moon in front of him, and subconsciously yells out. An explosion appears in the sky again, immediately lighting the airtight wall that’s covered in darkness silently.