Adventure of Devin Halbolt 1

Devin and Harada step out of the Queens clinic into ash-gray daylight. Above the broken avenue, Neo-Zeon suits descend like iron rain, their silhouettes swallowing the sky.

Harada snaps his head toward the carrier channel. "We cannot hold an open fight here. If that signal stays bright, they will keep coming."

Devin checks his GM III’s sensor wash as the first dropships angle lower. The path forward is clear now, protect the siblings, mask the squad’s signature, or the conditioning network pulls the next strike straight to them.

Devin’s sensors paint a clean route through the wrecked avenue, a gap between storefront rubble and a collapsed transit arch that keeps his suit line hidden from the first descending contacts.

He spots the GM III where it crouches behind a shattered billboard, still masked by smoke and broken steel, with no enemy angle on the cockpit hatch.

Toma stays inside the doorway, hollow-eyed but steady, while Rina grips the frame and watches the sky. The medical monitor inside the clinic keeps pulsing in time with the fading relay residue.

Above them, one Neo-Zeon suit breaks formation and drops toward the avenue, but the alley to Devin’s machine remains open for a fast dash and launch.

Devin has a safe lane to the GM III, and the squad’s split-second choice is whether he boards before the falling suits finish closing the gap.

Devin hooks Toma by the wrist and yanks him clear of the doorway, then catches Rina by the forearm as she steps after him. Harada shifts aside to open the lane, rifle still tracking the sky.

The three of them break into the service lane, boots and suit servos pounding over broken concrete. The hidden GM III crouches ahead, smoke curling off its shoulder armor.

Above, the low Neo-Zeon suit cuts lower over the avenue, but Devin reaches the cockpit hatch first. Toma and Rina stumble in behind him, dragged into cover by the machine's bulk.

Inside the clinic doorway, the monitor keeps pulsing, while the encrypted drives sit locked in Harada's case. Outside, the falling formation starts to spread, looking for a new angle and finding none.

Devin gets both siblings under the GM III's shadow as Harada covers the avenue. The encirclement breaks into scattered descent paths, and the squad gains a breath to move.

Devin hauls the hatch wider and shoves the siblings into the cockpit space in one smooth motion. Toma folds in first, still hollow-eyed, and Rina follows on his shoulder, both of them swallowed by the GM III’s armored shadow.

He swings the hatch down behind them, sealing out the street noise. The cockpit lights flare to life, reflecting off the monitor glow and the saved drive case back in the clinic doorway.

Outside, Harada keeps the rifle high, tracking the scattered descent paths as the formation loses its shape overhead. The avenue is no longer boxed in, only watched.

Inside the cramped cockpit, Toma stares past the glass with that same spent, distant look, while Rina braces a hand on the frame and breathes out hard. The monitor keeps pulsing in the clinic behind them, steady and unresolved.

Devin hooks two fingers under Toma’s cheek and turns his face up toward the cockpit light. The gesture is careful, almost shy, but it lands with real certainty, and the cramped cabin goes very still around it.

Her voice comes out lighter than before, but the tension in her shoulders stays. Outside the hatch, Harada keeps his rifle up, while the clinic doorway glints with the sealed case and its hard metal corners.

Toma leans into Devin’s hand instead of away from it. The cockpit monitor gives a soft, steady pulse, and the motion costs Devin a small scrape along his knuckle from the hatch rim, a thin sting under the glove.

Devin’s cheeks heat in the cockpit glow, but the readout steals his attention before he can overthink it. He sweeps his sensors across the clinic ruins and the shattered avenue, mapping heat, armor, and structural gaps around Harada’s position.

A clean corridor appears through the rubble, tucked between a collapsed kiosk and a broken transit barrier. It is wide enough for Harada’s GM II Cannon to push through without exposing its flank to the rooftop line.

Devin marks the route on his tactical display, and the feed confirms no fresh lock-ons in the lane. The scattered Neo-Zeon signatures keep drifting away, scattered and blind.

Outside the hatch, Harada shifts from cover and commits to the opening, rifle tucked in as he steps into Devin’s cleared path. The clinic doorway pulse keeps blinking behind him, steady and unreadable.

Devin’s eyes flick across the enemy table, and the retreat resolves into hard numbers. Four hostile suits are still active, a Gouf Flight Type leading a staggered Zaku pair, with a damaged Gelgoog J hanging back on the far line. All three signatures drift wide of the corridor, trying to stay out of Harada’s firing arc.

Harada keeps moving, rifle up now, while the clinic frontage behind him stays sealed and bright with that steady monitor pulse. The enemy spread is no longer an attack wedge, it is a retreating screen, stretched thin across the avenue.

Inside the cockpit, Toma’s exhausted stare stays fixed on the readout, and Rina leans in beside him, alert at the numbers. The tactical feed settles on the open corridor, and the scattered Neo-Zeon units keep falling back instead of regrouping.

The line holds, and the retreat becomes the squad’s control point, not the enemy’s.

The tactical display flickers once, then resolves into a thin cluster of off-angle vectors, all drifting wider instead of pressing the clinic front.

Outside, Harada pushes deeper into the cleared lane while the dim blue glow washes over the cockpit walls. The retreating enemy line stays broken, but a sharper return signal starts to build in the background.