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One breath in Guyana is worth a thousand in Siberia.
Argo inhales, and the everpresent mist that clings to the nearby cluster of waterfalls soothes his calloused, cracked skin. He exhales; sighs in harmony with bird calls, humming insects, rustling leaves. With no snow to dampen sound, no midnight sun to exhaust life, the flora and fauna bathe in Guyana’s humid air; caramelize in the sweet scent of dawn.
He’s always known he’d find paradise — were it real — opposite Siberia.
The Earth has done her best, here, to keep the Fight out — raised a Shield against their Gundams’ Sabres; cast a limestone barrier to ward off the Devil — but if anything holds tighter to life than the Guyana Highlands, it is the Fight itself. Even the vacuum of space cannot suffocate the Fight; in a land so oxygen-rich, it flourishes with everything else.
Still, Argo respects the effort. He will honor the Earth, and her fight, in his own.
His first Gaia Crusher is small. Argo thinks of his friends — not his pirate comrades, but the fellow prisoners he left behind, with whom he’d wordlessly swap gruel, when they wanted, and whose eyes had held respect when they saw the bomb on his chest — and thinks he could crack the ground beneath him in two. Split the planet into new hemispheres; open a path for those friends to crawl through.
But he holds back.
It’s impressive nonetheless, with that thought in his head. Nastasha tilts her head for a moment — a curt nod — before she steps forward to inspect the debris. Argo leaves the Bolt Gundam to do the same, until, near his foot — a quiet croak.
Argo looks down, and his eyes meet those of a tiny frog.
His Gaia Crusher has met the water table and drawn a small spring, a frog-sized geyser. Argo takes a knee beside it, bows his head, reaches out his hand. The frog leaps onto his thumb and he lifts it, making them equals.
The frog’s skin is translucent, like Argo’s trace suit, but a livelier green, and covered in small bumps. Argo relates — his frostbitten gooseflesh was constant in Siberia, though Guyana’s temperate climate has smoothed it over with the rest of him. The frog’s body expands with each breath; it soaks in the nearby spray of water, clings to Argo with webbed feet. It stares at him with critical pupils framed by wide, circular rings.
Kind of like Nastasha.
Argo smiles as he sets the frog down near its new home. Once he gets the go-ahead, he boards the Bolt Gundam and readies himself for another Gaia Crusher.
This time, he doesn’t think of his friends across the globe, and the seismic event he’d cause to reach them. Instead, he looks at the frog through Bolt’s viewscreens — and tries a new approach.
The Earth is more than her land, water, air. She is this frog, and all the other creatures whose homes Argo has disturbed. Still, Argo will honor her: as he strikes the ground, he listens for breaks in the reverb — bugs, plants, snakes, dens — and directs his Gaia Crusher around them. They are his friends, now.
And Argo would move the world for his friends.