The psychotic teenager pushed the rifle's muzzle against the back of Kaiser's head, making it very clear that he was dissatisfied with his prisoner's marching speed. Unwillingly he hastened his pace, bloodshot eyes darting at his surroundings every few moments in expectation of a rescuing Harrower's appearance.

The Bavarian was having difficulty keeping from laughing out loud at his predicament, still not fully believing he had just been defeated in combat with the aid of his own commanders. That would make it only the second time he had lost a Suit, although on Mars he had still managed to return safely to friendly lines. And last time he hadn't sacrificed a quarter of their combat strength in the course of his defeat.

Laughing out loud was certainly not a thing to do with this boy, however. Once the youth had bound him with his bandoleer, Kaiser had made the mistake of smiling up at him; the result had been a rifle-butt to the skull with enough force to knock him out cold. Once he had regained consciousness, he had found the boy squatting over him with a well-used pocketknife in his hand. Not the most promising of developments. It was the look in his eyes that had worried Kaiser; the boy appeared to be slipping into a dark, ugly place.

"Oh, so you are alive ..."

And that had been the last time the boy had spoken to him.

From that moment onwards, Kaiser had opted in favor of complete cooperation as his surest survival strategy, not feeling confident enough to have to wrestle him, bad wing or no.

The root source of his lack of self-confidence stemmed from the fact that Kaiser was also a quite impressed with his captor. Already, the red sun's merciless rays were murdering his own skin, and the gravity sucked the energy out of his body with every step he took. He was also certain that the carbon dioxide that had almost asphyxiated him during his attempted escape would certainly do the same if he were to try again.

Yet despite the slim pilot having suffered enough damage to drop a special ops trooper, he had still managed to course the uneven terrain like a gazelle in the course of the foot-pursuit. More impressively, the boy seemed completely oblivious to the sun's effects as he loped along, his bandaged arm regularly dripping blood, carrying that enormous mutilated backpack of his with remarkably little effort. Perhaps it was the reddish light, but his eyes were a strange golden color he had only ever seen in the more engineered canine breeds. His captor was probably far more adapted to that planet than he was, which meant there were only three ways he would be able to secure his freedom: outside assistance, subtle deception or dumb luck.

"Kinder, it would be unwise for us to keep approaching those clouds. Surely you know what radioactivity is, no?" he spoke over his shoulder, slackening his pace.

The boy's answer was simply another jab at his skull. Kaiser picked up his pace again, thinking hard. The quickly dissipating mushroom clouds were of no concern to him, of course, the aneutronic fusion devices that had birthed them having been designed to minimize fallout. Indeed he was probably at greater risk from his mobile Suit's continuous low-level radioactivity than from what he was seeing up ahead. But Kaiser would be hard put to work his magic if the boy were to somehow hook up with his comrades-in-arms. He stared ahead, cursing those clouds and the cowards who had chosen to put them there.

If his Suit had been in good working order, a nearby thermonuclear event would have been of no consequence to him; like all front-line equipment and armament, the Harrowers had been hardened against electromagnetic pulses of nuke origin or otherwise. The problem was that the electronics itself was far too sensitive to be impervious to such interference, which was why EMP hardening depended almost exclusively on the set of faraday cages that encased the sensitive parts of his Suit.

He refused to believe the impacts against his unit had breached the CPU's robust encasement itself. But the CPU was connected by cable to other sensitive components, and any failure to those cages, or to any of the armored cables themselves, would probably have been enough to compromise the entire system. Considering the intense magnetic fields inherent to charge separation-type EMPs, the collection of circuit breakers protecting the CPU would simply not have been able to open fast enough once cage integrity was spoiled.

But the nukes hadn't destroyed the Suit. Kaiser had.

Or to be more exact, Kaiser had neglected to close the hatch after exiting his Suit, hoping that the boy would simply presume he was still sheltering inside. And then he had made it worse by sealing the uncompromised hatch by remote in the hope of retrieving the platform later. How was he to know that the boy had tossed a grenade inside? A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth, and he wondered whether his captor knew just how much disruption he had caused to their plans.

They eventually intruded on the outskirts of the nearest site.

The tactical nuke had detonated over a broad valley, setting fire to an area three hundred meters wide and uprooting all but the strongest trees for more than half a kilometer. As they moved into the clearing of upturned trees, the wind blowing strongly against their backs and towards the inferno, his captor motioned for him to stop. Grateful for the pause, Kaiser sat with his back against a fallen tree, breathing fast and shallow as perspiration dripped from his nose and chin.

Sitting on an unearthed root, the boy stared expressionlessly at the forest fire as if mesmerized by its flames. Despite his agony, a couple of quips jumped into Kaiser's mind, but he decided to remain silent instead. The events had taken a heavy toll on the pilot. It was never wise to poke at a wounded creature, and this one was certainly wounded in more ways than one. Slowly but surely, the fire began to close the distance towards them.

"Who are you?"

Kaiser turned towards the boy.

"Hello, how do you do? I am Kaiser."

"I don't give a shit for your name, asshole. Who are you?"

"Ah. I am Major Tommi Von Beulwitz, Mobile Suit commander of the Earth Federation Forces."

The boy stared at him for a long while. Soon the increasing warmth to the side of Kaiser's face was warning him of the encroaching danger.

"If I may, kinder, I would advise we not remain here much longer."

"My name is not kinder! You'll be calling me Sergeant Muira from now on. I'll make this very clear: If you try to escape, disobey or generally piss me off, I'll snuff you out, whatever your rank. On your feet."

They skirted the forest fire by moving south, weaving their way with difficulty among the collapsed plantation trees due to the angle at which they had fallen. Gradually the terrain's inclination began to steepen and before long Kaiser began to have difficulties.

After several pushes and one violent shove, Kaiser realized he needed to be more obvious about his breathing difficulties. He collapsed to the ground and began to hyperventilate.

"Get up!" Miura ordered.

Kaiser tucked his chin in defensively as the boy made ready with his rifle-butt.

"Please, Sergeant, I need only a moment – this air is poison to me, verdammte!" he shouted just as the butt collided against his skull.

He had already been suffering from tunnel vision. Double vision arrived and then he finally blacked out. By the time he returned to a world swimming in starbursts, the boy was staring at him speculatively.

"Poison?" he repeated.

"Yes, boy ... Sergeant, I mean. Poison."

"You're a natural?"

Kaiser disliked the way in which the boy had said the word, and he made an effort to find an acceptable answer, his numbed mind struggling to think.

"Oh, no I am not. But I am not adapted to the air of this planet as you certainly are."

"Then you're a natural."

"Nein, nein. I am not, I tell you! I am genetically engineered like you are, except to be a better mobile Suit pilot!" he insisted, disliking where the conversation was headed.

"Then you're a natural!" the boy repeated. "You weren't made for this world, but only to be a Suit driver. Your Suit is your world, then, not Capicua. What are you doing here?" he demanded.

The boy's words shocked Kaiser more than he would ever dare admit. The very thought had passed through his mind in his darker moments, although he had never dared put it into words, not even to Lippard, with whom he could be so candid about so many things. Carefully he put it all out of his mind, along with the fleeting thought of Lippard.

He prepared to gamble.

"I am your enemy. Your enemy in this world. The whole universe is filled with mankind, and there are many planets out there where men forget they are a part of something larger, greater. And I am only one among many who have come to remind you planetary retrogrades of precisely that. You are not some indigenous species of this world. You are only one outreaching hand of mankind."

"Sorry Major, but Earth is very, very far away, and I'm not gonna get into a debate about who belongs where. The plain fact is you pissed off the wrong people when you attacked Leiben."

"Lieben?"

"Leiben! The city you dropped a few of those on, remember?" The boy gestured angrily towards the black clouds persisting over the valley.

"Ah, my apologies, then. I did not agree with that decision. There are better ways to greet the locals, I said. You must understand there are many on my side who get nervous when they see so much armament skirting a city like that. But please do not forget we are here to pacify you –"

Kaiser was expecting what came next, having spent the previous minutes working to loosen the bandoleer that bound his arms. The sergeant kicked out viciously and his boot connected with his captive's head. Taking advantage, Kaiser caught the boot with his newly untied hands as it retracted, knowing that the boy's legs were strong enough to help him up in the process. Twisting around so his back collided against his adversary's slung arm, he hugged the rifle with both arms and sprung upwards, rolling in mid-air over his shoulder as he did so. The weapon twisted into his hands more easily than he would have dared hope, but then his back collided hard against the uneven ground. It was somewhat more difficult to perform such acrobatics under the intense gravity of that planet.

Before a split-second had passed, the young sergeant's elbow came crashing down on his face, breaking his nose. Eyes watering badly, Kaiser felt his adversary shake the weapon out of his grasp. One deafening gunshot later, Kaiser was cradling the side of his face where a projectile had torn a ragged path. Cursing his idiocy, he waited for the finishing shot.

Instead the seconds kept ticking by, and as Kaiser began to wipe the tears from his eyes there was a second shot from a distance away. It was not an echo. The young sergeant's strange eyes became wide and hopeful as he searched the summit, rifle still trained on his prisoner.

"Up! Now!" he ordered, having apparently forgotten that they had been fighting only moments before.

Kaiser obeyed, cradling his face as blood dripped through his fingers. He renewed his ascent, crossing what remained of the jumbled landscape until they reached the summit of the hill.

On the opposing side, they came upon a second Harrower, lying on its side amidst a carpet of fallen leaves.

"Tonesy! Over here, mate!" Kaiser heard to his dismay.

Standing beside the giant like victorious Lilliputians, several locals were gathered. One of them crossed the distance at a run, a tall and lean fellow with wild hair a little too long to be allowed. By the way they greeted one another it was clear they were friends.

"This guy's an Unmil. He's from Earth," Miura said after a moment of shoulder-slapping, gesturing to Kaiser with a wave of his hand.

The local approached and stared at him with an unfriendly expression. Kaiser decided to make a good impression.

"Hello there, kinder. I am Kai– UMPH!"

Without warning, the local had buried a boot into his gut, putting enough force into it to rupture something were it not for the shock-absorbing qualities of his suit. Kaiser's legs gave in and his knees hit the hard ground percussively as pain radiated from his abdomen.

Fucking sadist, he cursed silently. The pair apparently had that much in common. An explosive laugh left his lips before his lungs seized on him.

"Now this doesn't make any sense! You gotta see the one we've caught, he'll blow your mind ..."

They half-escorted, half-dragged him towards the remainder of the group. There he found three equally young locals standing near the Harrower's helm, two of them women, and a fourth person sitting cross-legged on the ground amongst them.

It was Deadhand.

As Kaiser was made to sit down, he evaluated the state of his subordinate, and was appalled by what he saw; Deadhand had taken a beating against which his own injuries paled by comparison. His ebony face had ballooned, especially around the eyes, and his lips were torn and uneven. His skull appeared to have been scraped over by a blade several times, leaving him almost scalped. The same blade had probably been used to gouge at the side of his muscular neck, having probably stopped short of his carotid by mere millimeters. His right ear was only half-attached, and it protruded from the side of his head as if it had been viciously yanked at.

Kaiser raised his eyebrows questioningly. The African simply shook his head, his battered face too deformed for the Bavarian to be able to read the expression there.

The excited conversation among the locals died down as the Miura boy squatted to take a good look at the other prisoner. He kept the stare up for quite a while.

"What's wrong with him?" he asked to no one in particular.

"That's his natural color, he calls himself a 'colored man'! Think he's an African like in the books?"

"No, that's not what I meant ... I mean, how did this happen to him?"

The friend became fidgety, and one of the women replied instead, her eyes an impossibly light shade of blue.

"Ray lost it when we got a hold of him. Our Suits collapsed close together as Davos here was about to kill us. The sarge died trying to defend us ..."

"Jorren's dead?"

"Yes. The driver killed him when this was still a battle with Suits. Then the nuke detonated, and we managed to reach Davos as he was trying to get out of his hatch. He wasn't armed but he attacked Ray anyway. And Ray lost it ..."

"Lost it, my ass ..." Ray interrupted hotly, blood vessels protruding from his neck, "It was self-defense!"

"Not a problem, Ray ..." Miura said calmly. "I was just curious as to how it happened ..."

"Where's the rest of your section?" the third boy, a sullen blonde, asked.

"Hirum's dead. The rest evacuated while I was trying to pull him out. Hirum was done in by Kaiser here."

The group turned towards him, as if seeing him anew. Alarm bells began to ring in Kaiser's head. As usual, his instincts were right on the mark.

"You sonufa ... BITCH!" Ray screamed, launching himself towards the prisoner before anyone could stop him.

Ray kicked Kaiser hard and the Bavarian's back smacked against the dirt. The local straddled his chest and pulled a knife from his vest, but before he could make any use of the weapon, his arm was expertly gripped by the blonde boy, the remaining soldiers wrenching the knife from his grip. Ray began to howl in rage and nearly managed to shake them off, but before long both of his wrists found themselves in a firm lock.

"Ian, don't hurt him, you'll only make it worse!" the pale-eyed girl shouted as she struggled to hold on.

Gradually the soldier began to calm down, but suddenly a scuffle broke out between Miura and the blonde boy.

"You trying to bind your own mate?! Get your hands off him!" Miura roared.

"That's enough, you two! No one's going to bind anyone. Right, Ian?"

"Yeah ... that's right. And when he loses it again, you can hold him down yourself, Tonesy. He's freaking out and he's not going to calm down until the patch wears off."

Miura touched something behind his ear, a fleeting act that nevertheless alarmed the pale-eyed girl.

"Don't take it off, you'll stroke out!"

He removed his hand as if he'd just received an electric shock, nodding instead to her in thanks. Turning to Ray, he spoke reassuringly.

"Listen, Ray. We've managed to capture these two alive, right? And my prisoner here, Major what's-his-name, has already told me that our enemy is the Earth Federation Forces, and that they're here to annex us to Earth's authority, or something along those lines. They can tell us a lot more, too, but we gotta get them back to friendly forces, right? And that gets a little difficult if they can't walk for themselves ... You need to lay off the kindness, OK?"

Their shocked expressions at his revelation were not entirely unexpected. What was unexpected was the one that momentarily played across the blonde soldier's face before he smothered it. Kaiser was an expert at reading micro-expressions; he quickly tucked the information away in a corner of his mind for future use.

He then noticed that Deadhand was staring at him with raised eyebrows.

"So we're allowed to pass on intelligence to the locals now, Major?" he whispered.

"Do not worry yourself, my friend. In due time these children will be dealt with. There is dissension among them, as you may have noticed," he whispered back, marveling at how easily they were able to hold that conversation as the soldiers talked excitedly among themselves.

"Toni, who patched up your arm?" Pale-eyes asked.

"I did, I guess ..."

"Sueli, I'm taking your kit, if you don't mind. I have feeling I'll need more than mine to treat that."

They settled in comfortably beside the felled Harrower, no one seeming to realize that Ebony Tower's first objective would be to locate their fallen combat assets. Kaiser blessed them for their ignorance. Miura and the young woman removed the bandages from his arm and gasped at the level of tissue damage. Even Kaiser felt his stomach go queasy at the sight; the triceps muscle above his elbow was deeply torn, a ragged layer of yellow fat on display there. His brachial artery or some ramification thereof had probably been affected, and the wound began to bleed again as soon as the bottom-most bandage was removed. The entire remainder of his arm was heavily cratered. A jagged bone poked out from a wound on his forearm.

"The break looks clean enough ..." Pale-eyes remarked, a smile playing on her face. A moment later she became somber.

"We need to align the bone. If we can, I mean. I'm not sure if there are any fragments in the way. We'll have to clean the wounds first, of course. Toni?"

"What is it, Hannah?"

"This is going to hurt like a mouse in a blender. I'm going to spike you with flupirtine first, of course, but you're still gonna have to help me here. You too, Ray."