Rage Across Gundam Seed

[Valles]

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Did Kira just give his DNA codes to the Atlantic Federation?

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No, he just hardcoded the Gundams to obey only whichever person was currently sitting in their cockpit, with the full awareness that changing that would require ripping the entire machine apart and rebuilding it from the ground up, since that would be the only way to completely purge the computer system. Unfortunately, he was wrong about three of them being empty.
Hey, I have to keep him and Blaze on the front lines somehow.

---

---

"Yeah," he answered, "but there wasn't supposed to be anybody in the other three! It was the simplest way to keep them from obeying anybody..."
The window changed, now showing a handsome man with curly blond hair and an impressive set of bruises. "What was?" he asked, "and who are you?"
"Kira Yamato," he answered as the communication display changed for a second type, this time giving him his first good look at the infiltrator who had given the commando team access to the prototypes.
She was surprisingly ordinary, though quite pretty, with brown hair and an a slight softness to the lines of her face that suggested that her current, entirely businesslike efficiency wasn't her usual demeanor. "He set the main passwords to alter themselves randomly ever time they were queried, then locked the secondary control condition to whichever pattern the cockpit's DNA scanner was reading at the moment the system received the command. We - and these two - are the only pilots these machines will accept now."
"Huh." The blond man was back. "I guess that means that you two kids are going to have to come with us," and if his voice was slightly regretful then there was also absolutely no give in it at all.
"We're not that young," Blaze said, with a snarl and a glare that made her eyes look even more like a big cat's than they usually did. "I hate to drag Kira into it, but there's no way I'm going to abandon the country my family helped build to some political hack in Washington, or leave any of its people open to Blue Cosmos' 'Final Solution'."
There was silence for a moment, and then Kira heard a scream of tearing metal echo into his towering alloy and composite coccoon through the catwalk holding it up against the wall. "That's your duty," said the third Federation pilot, a pretty woman with features that were somewhere between elfin and hawkish and a vicious gash down her cheek and throat that was bleeding even through its bandage. "But it's ours to make you." On the main display Kira could see the suit that had been nearest warehouse-sized hanger bay's doors standing silouetted by the outdoor sunlight, with a massive cannon nearly as long as it was held in either hand and trained straight towards the two students' suits.
The muzzle aimed at him, Kira realized, somehow seemed like the largest and darkest ring he'd ever seen.
"Dying here won't do anything for you country, Miss Attha," said the blond man. "And without training, you won't be able to manage anything else. A live Princess can do a hell of a lot more for peace than a dead martyr."
Attha?! He called Blaze... It took a moment for the absurd idea to penetrate, another to compare his friend's features to those he remembered from the pictures and telecast of the reclusive princess's last public appearance, and yet a third to force acceptance past the incongruity of that dignified, ladylike poise coming from the same person who had terrorized half of the campus's intramural sports teams and had to be physically restrained from wrecking Miriallia's room when their mutual friend had tried to persuade her into a dress for a blind date... But in the end, the structure of her face, the shade of her eyes, the vague things she'd said about her life and family, even her status as a non-expressing Coordinator - all of them fit too well to deny.
Not that that changed anything about her status as his friend, or his willingness to back her up even in something as crazy as this situation. He shook of his surprise and hoped, idly, that his parents would be all right without him.
Then the mobile suit - its silouette looked like one of the ones he'd seen in the news stories about the PLANTS home-made military - landed behind the suit that had been threatening him and everthing started to happen too quickly for even a Coordinator to do more than react on instinct.

---

---

Hmm. I'm really not sure about letting this bit of information slip this early, but Mu sort of up and decided he'd recognize her face, so I ran with it.
By the by, my computer has decided to BSOD every time I try to boot it up, so I'll probably be erratic for the few days until the parts to finish the one I was building anyway arrive.
Ja, -n
(and next time: explosions)

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[drakensis]

Y'know, I really hadn't pegged Blaze as being Cagalli. It certianly makes sense though. My, but that's a motley crew of pilots though - Mu, Murrue, Cagalli and Kira I recognise, the last I don't. Natarle? The line about duty would fit.
========================================
"It's well known that you're sympathetic to the PLANTs," spat his captor. "Perhaps you're Co-ordinator yourself?"
Thomas replied with a bark of laughter.
There was a crunch as the hammer came down on another of his toes. His fists clenched involuntary, but his voice did not betray the pain that he must be feeling as he jibed: "Does hurting me give you pleasure? You must be a very sick individual."
"Is that high pain tolerance a gift your parents bought you in a clinic?" came the question. "It won't be enough, I assure you."
Thomas shook his head. "You're an idiot," he replied. "Do you think that genetic splicing is the only way that offspring can be improved? There have been communities trying the same thing for as long as humanity has existed. Breeding their strongest children to the strongest they could find, with the goal of producing children stronger still. For generation after generation, my ancestors arranged marriages to that effect. Probably your ancestors did the same - the children that weren't picked for those marriages still had kids and interbred with everyone else. After thousands of years, almost everyone alive has ancestors from those little villages."
"What fantasy are you preaching?"
"You're one to talk about fantasys," Thomas replied. "You still labour under one."
"Oh, we will be rid of the Co-ordinators, for our blue and pure Earth," the man promised.
"Not that one. I freely admit you have a chance at success in your sick schemes of genocide."
"So what is my fantasy?" asked the man.
"You think I'm trapped in here," Thomas told him, and the muscles in his forearms bulged. He twisted as if under some amazing pressure. "The truth is, you're trapped in here with me." The restraints broke.
The screams began before the furry mass that sometimes called itself Thomas Finn stepped away from the chair.
Even in an age of scientific wonder, the age-old fears remained, after all.
Lord Djbril fell into the madness of Delirium, a madness that only death could free him from.
-/-
Natarle Badgiruel frowned as she stared at the locked doors into the compartments occupied by the Commander, his staff and the three mobile suit pilots that he'd brought with him. "Can you force it?"
The chief mechanic shrugged. "I can't do anything about the lock," he replied. "That's a specialist's job. But if you don't mind a hole in the door, I can just pull the whole locking mechanism."
"Take it out," she ordered after a moment's thought. "If nothing else, it's a hazard."
It only took five minutes for a cutting torch to be brought up and Natarle had barely reacehd the bridge when she was called back to deal with the quarters again. This tinme the problem was rather messier. If it wasn't for the fact that Natarle had had a complete list of everyone onboard it would have been impossible to determine how many people had been killed inside. It would require DNA testing to work out which parts belonged to which staff member.
Then again, she realised, looking into the medical lab. Apparently her list of people onboard hadn't been as accurate as she had thought.
"Doctor Finn?" she asked. "How in the world did you manage to get aboard my ship?"
"I received a most pressing invitation," the doctor, barefoot and bloodied, replied, not looking up from the three pilots, all of whom were secured to medical beds by heavy straps. "I really couldn't refuse, particularly since I was unconcious at the time."
"Unconcious," she echoed with a growing sense of disbelief.
"Apparently your commander wanted a subject for his experiments in manicures," Thomas said, and raised one foot illustratively. The toes were evidently ruins, crushed by some blunt instrument. "Either that or he was holding a grudge over my part in certain colleagues of his that got their necks lengthened over in Eurasia."
There was a retching sound from one of the soldiers beside Natarle.
"And you broke loose," she whispered.
"Those who would be monstrous," he replied sadly, "should not trifle with monsters."
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[Valles]

---

Y'know, I really hadn't pegged Blaze as being Cagalli. It certianly makes sense though. My, but that's a motley crew of pilots though - Mu, Murrue, Cagalli and Kira I recognise, the last I don't. Natarle? The line about duty would fit.

---

Oh, good. The 'Blaze' thing worked exactly the way I'd intended it to... though I really wish I'd been able to go for more than a single episode before I let it slip.
And, yeah, I like it. You called all five of them correctly, BTW - the two commandos got pointed at the farthest suits, which Kira and Cagalli had already commandeered. Of course, I'm looking forward to the last addition to that lineup, who won't show up until the next arc, but even that's saying too much.

---

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The GINN slid the sword from its waist and raised it high before bringing the weapon back down just a split second before the gun-wielding prototype's pilot could shove it out of the way. Both of the remaining captured suits tore themselves free from their bracing and moved to assist as it crashed to the ground, though, surprisingly, it didn't look like the sword had actually severed or crushed anything.
"No you don't!" Blaze - Cagalli - shouted, and raked a spray of cannon fire across the seams of the black suit's shoulder joints.
Kira shoved the throttles of his suit all the way open and yelled - partly in exhilaration but mostly in sheer terror - as what felt like three times his own weight sat on his chest and the seventy-ton machine ripped free of its bindings and hurtled across the room to slam into his friend's target before it could finish raising its arm to target her still-immobile machine.
If he hadn't fastened his restraints on instinct after he climbed in then the impact likely would have killed him, launching him from the control seat and into the main display with enough force to shatter even a Coordinator's sturdy skull. As it was, it took a moment to regain his breath - and his sense of balance - just in time to throw his suit off of his victim and avoid being spitted by the beam saber the magenta one was wielding. As he scrambled to pull his suit away and to its feet he could see the blue and white machine Bla-Cagalli had commandeered go after his attacker with a similar weapon in either hand.
When he glanced back at the black suit, it was completely gone. "Wha? Where...?"
When he looked back over the sensor records later, he would decide that it was the slight shimmer, almost like heated air, that had warned him, but at the time all he knew was that by the time the shadowy mobile suit's camoflage had flickered he had already launched himself out of the way. The clawed... thing it had fired slashed through the space where his own suit had been, then kept going straight towards the ZAFT machine that had been wrestling with the gun-wielding prototype
The GINN - abruptly he remembered the name - yanked its sword around and swatted the thing from the air, the brought the blade back up to sever the cable trailing behind it with the false edge. Then it dropped it, grasp loosening in a surprisingly human fashion as what looked for all the world like a sharpened steel telephone pole impaled it straight through, just above the center of mass.
When it exploded Kira decided that moving would be a good idea, since he remembered seeing three of those spear things attached to the black suit's shield.
He had about concluded that it was time to panic - with one of the enemies trying to kill him able to turn invisible and it and both of its allies piloted by trained military personel versus a pair of college students who were outnumbered besides - but then the roof came down.

---

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Heehee. Ain't I a stinker?
Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[drakensis]

> Of course, I'm looking forward to the last addition to
> that lineup, who won't show up until the next arc, but
> even that's saying too much.
Tease. Hmm... counts Gundams, frowns. Athrun? Sorta gotta wonder where he is.
> Heehee. Ain't I a stinker?
As always: "Yes."

And, as the title states, the full first chapter of RAGS is now posted to vetsin.net/fic/index.php and should shortly be on ff.net as well
As a teaser:
--------------------------------------------------
"What? Him? But how? How could he pilot a mobile suit?"
Thomas gave her a puzzled look. "I presume he puts his hands on the hand controls and his feet on the pedals. They have pedals?" he asked Mu suddenly. "They're not piloted through some sort of mind-machine interface thingy are they?"
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[Valles]

---

Tease. Hmm... counts Gundams, frowns. Athrun? Sorta gotta wonder where he is.

---

*innocent smile* ^_^
Anyway, a large part of why I handled that cliff the way I did was that it gives me an excuse for a POV shift.

---

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Cagalli Yula Attha was having a day. As though, as though having her plan to matchmake her best friend with the classmate who worked as a secretary at Morganroete ruined weren't enough. As though fighting for her life against a giant pink mobile suit, using a piece of machinery that was far more complicated than any device had a right to be, wasn't enough. As though having her homeland invaded and plunged into what would all too likely be a war to the knife weren't enough, now some inconsiderate schlub had decided to drop a roof on her!
Really. Some days it didn't pay to get out of bed.
Ah, well. At least this nightmare wasn't her fault, unlike all too many of the others.
If she'd had time she probably would have started a bit of a brood about that, but the beam saber that tried to spit her suit through the cockpit - not to mention her personal, precious, all-too-fragile body - demanded enough attention that she couldn't spare the concentration. Besides, the adrenaline kept the proper emotional state for something like that well out of reach.
Whichever of the three Federation officers was piloting the pink suit, she was fast enough and cunning enough that the distracting rain of concrete, gravel, and steel girders was a relief rather than an inconvenience. The massive armored titans they were piloting were too strong and too well-protected to be seriously inconvenienced by mere debris, but the cloud of dust blocked their optical and infrared sensors, and the tangle of shattered metal that had been the roofing girders scattered radar into uselessness.
In the narrow breathing space before the scattered... junk settled, Cagalli took a deep breath and tried to think of a plan. The her opponent and the suit Kira had... be honest, girl, stolen, seemed to be the 'generalists' of the range of designs represented by Morganroete's five secret prototypes. The brown one was obviously some sort of sniper or fire support model and her own machine was an uncompromising close-combat design. Who knew what the black one was meant for - wherever it had gotten to - but it seemed to be at just as much of a disadvantage in the very close quarters of the hanger bay as its gunnery-focused companion.
Of course, that should have given her an advantage over the pink thing, but the flexibility it lost by having its weapons fixed to its limbs like that was more than made up for by the fact that it carried a full four of them. The empty bracket along its right leg looked tailor-made to carry some sort of long-arm, and given what her own suit didn't have in the way of ranged weapons, she had no intention of finding out if that was all it had been intended to be equipped with.
She was still scrambling, and had almost run out of time, when a brilliant ray of sea-green slashed through the clearing dust and sent molten droplets spraying away from the armor protecting her opponent's shoulder joints.
It was as good an opportunity as she was going to get, and she lunged. The leading blade was parried with a sweep of the other suit's arm, but the other, damaged limb was too slow to catch her other weapon before it could follow the first's path - and carve cleanly through the stronger limb. The pink machine launched itself up and away with a flare of the... wings, she guessed... on its hips, and then alarms screamed boldly at her as a shot slammed into her suit's side and turned several sections of the damage display - the ones that equated to the left arm, and a considerable chunk of the power cell array - a brilliant, dangerous red. Forward and up and spinning as she flew was the fastest evasion she could make, and it brought her attacker into view.
The brown suit had lost one of its guns while her attention was occupied, and the wreckage still dangled from its connecting armature, but the other was fully intact and quickly coming around to track her.
She might or might not have been able to evade the shot, but a second - less blinding, since there was less dust hanging in the air now - blue-green flare saved her the trouble and traced a glowing trench across her attacker's entire torso. It pivoted towards the new threat as her machine came back to earth; with half her attention on that struggle and most of the rest tracking where the remaining potential threats were the landing was rough to say the least, but not too rough to keep the burst from the cannons in her unit's head from distracting the cannon-wielding mobile suit for the critical moment it took the ORB suit to close with it.
Her rescuer was the most common of the three designs favored by her nation's military, what was called the Phobos, an agile, relatively light machine designed for what was still called 'dogfighting' even after it had ceased to have anything to do with canines. With an optical laser that was almost unhindered by seawater and a crush depth of more than two hundred meters, it was as much a danger to shipping as to any land-based target, and capable of shrugging off many weapons that would cripple or destroy lighter suits like ZAFT's GINN and its derivatives.
It landed almost directly in front of the brown suit, too far in and over for it to bring that lethal gun around in time, and raised the blunt shape of its laser for a crippling shot. "Look out!" she shouted involuntarily, but if the pilot heard her it made no difference as the protective paneling sealing the other prototype's shoulder-mounted missile launchers snapped up and unleashed a full dozen seeking warheads.
ORB suits were tough, they had to be, but the Phobos, at least, wasn't that tough. One arm was wrecked entirely, and most of its armor was shattered. With a bit more luck, or in a more threatening environment, its pilot might have been able to escape - the machine was still mobile, after all, if only barely - but as it was the missiles provided more than enough breathing space for the gunner suit to bring its main weapon to bear and put a cluster of flachettes through its victim's center of mass.
The explosion as the breached power batteries cooked off was almost an anticlimax.
"All Black elements, White Six here. Break off and retreat to Point Baker immediately, repeat, break off and rendevous at Point Baker. White elements, provide cover. White Six out."
And then the three captured suits were running and Cagalli realized it was almost over.
"ORB prototype suits, this is Admiral Corvis, ORB Central Command," the radio said after a moment, in a voice she recognized as belonging to who it said it did. "Whoever you are, we owe you a debt of gratidude for keeping those suits out of the Federation's hands, but unfortunately they seem to be in the process of staging a full scale invasion to cover the theft - in short, there's no time to get you clear. I'm going to have to ask you to take those suits and get them aboard the carrier ZAFT's le Crueset Team is operating from. Can you do that?"
After a moment to brace herself, she hit the key to open the same channel from her side. "Aube is falling?" she read between the lines. "Isn't there anything we can do to stop that?" She grabbed hold of the part of her brain yammering that she was about to get herself killed and stuffed it into a box. It needed doing and there was no time to worry.
"Not with just the First Division against the entire Federation Pacific Fleet," he answered dryly.
"Understood," she said crisply. "We're on our way."

---

---

Next on the agenda, some background and politics.
Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[drakensis]

---

Cagalli Yula Attha was having a day. As though, as though having her plan

---

Is that a deliberate repetition?

---

The her opponent and the suit Kira had... be honest, girl, stolen, seemed to be the 'generalists' of the range of designs represented by Morganroete's five secret prototypes. The brown one was obviously some sort of sniper or fire support model and her own machine was an uncompromising close-combat design. Who knew what the black one was meant for - wherever it had gotten to - but it seemed to be at just as much of a disadvantage in the very close quarters of the hanger bay as its gunnery-focused companion.

---

Not sure about how the first sentence should start, but this part confuses me. The Brown, Pink and Black suits are pretty evidently the Buster, Aegis and Blitz suits respectively (unless the canon designs have changed?). This would leave Kira and Cagalli in the Strike and the Duel, which are the generalist designs (the pre-upgraded Duel is kitted almost the exact same way as the later Strike Daggers suits). The close combat suit is the Aegis, which Cagalli is fighting... but it sounds like she thinks she's piloting a close combat machine. Is she in the Strike and making do with those bitty lil' knives or something?

---

Next on the agenda, some background and politics.

---

Oh goody! It's always nice to know who's shooting at who and why.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[DKnight54]

Hmm...
From what I understand so far,
Major changes are these:
Cagalli is a 1st gen(I assume, since she and Kira are siblings/twins?) Coordinator.
The in a flip of the Gundam SEED events, Plant has deployed Athrun's Redcoats to prevent an attempt by the Feds to capture 5 prototypes by a competing company, ie, the mobile suits in play here are *not* the five units you saw in the anime. Similar general concepts in design, but possibly different capabilities.
Also, This one I'm not 100% certain: Instead of attacking the space station, the Feds have attack Aube itself.

Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!

[Valles]

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Is that a deliberate repetition?

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Ah, no. Whupsie!

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Not sure about how the first sentence should start, but this part confuses me. The Brown, Pink and Black suits are pretty evidently the Buster, Aegis and Blitz suits respectively (unless the canon designs have changed?). This would leave Kira and Cagalli in the Strike and the Duel, which are the generalist designs (the pre-upgraded Duel is kitted almost the exact same way as the later Strike Daggers suits). The close combat suit is the Aegis, which Cagalli is fighting... but it sounds like she thinks she's piloting a close combat machine. Is she in the Strike and making do with those bitty lil' knives or something?

---

You've called the three captured suits right, but either you're confused or we just disagree about what their specialties are meant to be. Aegis' mobile suit mode might be well-suited to close combat, but no machine that's built around a weapon the size of its Scylla beam cannon is going to be meant for anything less than its best application... in short, I think the thing's a shipkiller which happens to be good at melee. The Striker packs are about as 'generalist' a concept as you can get, but the Duel's only integrated weapons are a pair of swords and the head vulcans... in short, it's the melee monster of the group.
So, for the record:
Buster: Natalie Badgiruel
Blitz: Maria Ramius
Aegis: Mu la Flaga
Strike: Kira Yamato
Duel: Cagalli Yula Attha

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Oh goody! It's always nice to know who's shooting at who and why.

---

*snicker*
DKnight:
The 'seed' change is not that Cagalli's a coordinator - like I was saying earlier, if Doctor Hibiki was any kind of scientist she'd almost have to be - but that a childhood accident caused her to recieve a gene test that revealed that fact... which never happened in canon. Since she has a genetic disorder that keeps her Coordinator traits from manifesting without supplemental medication (fairly common in the early first generation Coordinators, BTW), it never mattered in canon, but here that information got out into the wide world almost as soon as it was discovered.
The 'almost all Coordinator' nature of the PLANTS population was a fact that took generations to establish, mostly caused by Coordinators and their families fleeding Blue Cosmos and other persecution on Earth, and the last and largest wave of it would have happened in the period after this revelation. Any Coordinator who was still on the planet by that point genuinely didn't want to leave Earth, so the existence of a planetside haven friendly enough to make a Coordinator part of their royal family - even by adoption - seemed like a godsend, and they moved to ORB en masse... along with a suprising number of people who'd gone to PLANTS earlier but had preferred the planetside life.
ETA: Whups! Hit the wrong button.
Anyway, that gave ORB a far larger population than in canon, along with a higher proportion of Coordinators, which in turn gave them a larger economic base and a larger area to protect. Accordingly, the ORB military held a competition to decide on a mobile suit design. The two companies that would matter to history were Morganroete GmbH and the Electric Boat Company (yes, the same one you're thinking); EBC's design was submersible, sea-rated, and had a mobile-armor mode capable of supercavitating speeds, and was cheaper besides, so it won and Morganroete, which had gambled big developing their own entries, looked for a way to make up their losses - and the law be damned.
Which leads to a critical difference - in canon, with the ORB government on board to help hide things, Heliopolis was the most secret location available; here, though, with only their own resources, Morganroete's best option for security purposes was their main development facility off of Aube.
BTW, Aube is an island chain that doesn't exist in the real world - similar to Hawaii, basically, but smaller and one, two hundred miles to the southwest - which is, in turn, the capital and founding state of the larger ORB Coalition.
The recently ended war with the Equatorial Union that's been mentioned started when the EU was looking for a short victorious war, for the usual reasons, and, as mentioned, it backfired badly, with the East Asian Republic joining in later in a land grab. So the EU doesn't exist anymore, ORB owns everything from Java east, and the EAR owns pretty much the entire mainland.
And now, on with the show!

---

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"Well, that was a disaster," Ezalia Joule said dryly into the echoing silence that had followed the report on the 'incident' at Aube. "Four promising pilots lost, along with their equipment, a full shooting war with the Atlantic Federation - and probably the Eurasian Union and East Asian Republic by the end of the day - and not to forget that all three of them will shortly have mobile suit technology at least equal to our own..."
"The war was inevitable," one of the other councilmembers pointed out. "And, as long as we can shut down their industry with the neutron jammers, the-"
"Absolutely not," Patrick Zala interrupted. "However much strength it might cost them, that would also make our enemies desperate - especially the Republic, but the Federation also; both of them are highly dependant on fusion reactors for civil power. Forcing those off would kill thousands directly and do unimaginable things to the Republic's standard of living... along with most of our Earthside allies!"
"ORB has the same concerns we do," a fourth spoke up. "And the African Community needs our technological support desperately."
"Oceania doesn't," Joule said. "The USSA doesn't. Herman?"
Herman Gould, Ph.D., was the council representative from October City, and a highly regarded political scientist in his own right. "If we did it unilaterally they'd almost certainly declare war. But it's worth laying on the table; I can't say I disagree with Patrick's evaluation, but our duty is to PLANTS first, then our allies, and only third to the rest of the world... and it would be a great advantage in this war."
Zala was shaking his head. "Our best option at this point is a negotiated peace; at the very least it would buy time to improve our own industrial and population base, and for ORB to finish assimilating its accquisitions in the former Equatorial Union. A military victory would have worse options - status quo, and the same damn war next year, or a bloodbath that will start a vendetta to last decades. How willing do you think the three powers will be to do that if their cities are dark and cold, if their people are starving? Will they be inclined to talk peace... or drive it to a war to the knife?
"The neutron jammers will be invaluable, tactically, but deploying them as a strategic weapon would be a disaster."
"Be that as it may," Chairman Clyne noted, "they may be a neccessary last resort, and our allies should be aware they exist."
"I'm not saying they shouldn't be; but those things should be a very last resort."
"Noted. The motion is to complete the global neutron jammer array and place it in storage, and to provide basic information on it to the governments of the African Community, Oceania Union, Oceanic Resource Base Coalition, and United States of South America, but to defer deployment for the present time until an indefinite future date. Shall we vote? Very well. All in favor? Opposed?" he checked his console. "The motion carries."

---

---

No Bloody Valentine, remember? Mrs. Zala is alive and well.
Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[Valles]

---

---

The Ichthys was a ship that, legally, shouldn't exist. Leaving aside that the Zodiac Alliance had no planetside gterritory outside its few embassies, that body had never been recognized by the United Nations as anything but a politcal party which occaisionally dabbled in what its enemies called treason, terrorism, and insurrection. Since no organisation save a government had any business owning so dangerous a device, the Ichthys construction should never have been allowed to begin.
The world was only rarely as it should be, as Kira Yamato was only too well aware. On the other hand, as he reminded himself forcibly, the universe's perverse streak ran both ways. After all, with him a student in Aube and Athrun in military uniform for ZAFT, who would have expected them to be able to renew contact so soon? So even with his world falling apart around him and his heart jumping up into his throat at every mail call for fear they would bring word of his parents' deaths, having a chance to renew that friendship was good news, indeed.
Also good news, if in a slightly different way, was that Athrun's wingman suited him perfectly; a quiet fellow who monopolized the piano installed in the cramped pilots' ready room. He'd introduced himself as Nicol Amalfi, which, with Cagalli's rank and Athrun's father on the PLANTS council and the jerk and under-aged curmudgeon who made up the remainder of the le Creuset Team being kin to Tad Elsman and Ezalia Joule of that same body, respectively, made Kira just about the only junior officer in the Ichthys' small pilot community who wasn't related to somebody important.
It was practically enough to give a fellow a complex.
Or it would have been, if he hadn't had more important things to worry about. "We're not going to be able to leave this behind, are we?" he asked wistfully as Cagalli plopped her dinner tray down beside his.
She'd found some sort of solvent or something somewhere and washed the jet-colored dye from her hair, and having a light background rather than a dark one made her eyes seem enitrely different, somber rather than laughing, though still fierce and rather too feline for a human face. "Not for at least a couple of months," she told him a little sadly. "With mobile suits needed as badly as they are there won't be time enough to pull out the computers until then. I'm afraid that... things won't be getting better until then."
"And what about you?"
She blinked, then shrugged. "This is as much my responsibility as anyone's. I can't abandon that; I'm in a postion to help, and I'd want to even if it wasn't my duty."
He stared darkly at his food for a moment, then looked up. "I can't imagine why a flag, a piece of paper should be worth dying for... but I can't ask a friend not to do something they think they need to, and I'd never want to become the sort of person who could leave them hanging rather than give my support. If fighting this war is something you have to do, if this is who you are, then who I am is going to help. It's just... I can't help wishing that that choice wasn't needed."
She smiled, sadly. "Me, too."

---

---

A little look at the kids' reasons for sticking to their guns.
Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[Norgarth]

um, question, why is Athrun in uniform?
As I recall, his reason for join ZAFT in canon was the death of his mother in the Bloody Valentine attack. But as you've shown/stated, that didn't happen and she's fine.
Also, Athrun's redcoat team also included a guy named Rusty (though perhaps he died in the Federation's attack, the guy's more of a redshirt than a redcoat. 8P )
So, I wonder how long it'll be before Kira and Cagalli discover their link. __________________
I feel like I'm diagonally parked in a parallel universe.
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

[Valles]

Edited because: Fucking IE. Fucking laptops. Grr.

---

um, question, why is Athrun in uniform?

---

Meta answer, because I want him in the thick of things and because being a pilot's... sort of who he is, y'know?
In story answer is that the Valentine War sort of exploded out of nowhere - it escalated very quickly from a relatively small beginning.
Here, though, things have been racheting up and up and up for some time; compare it to the Cuban Missile Crisis, say - no one is surprised that the shooting's started, although the Federation's audacity in targets might be worth an eyebrow or two. It's been clear for some time that the PLANTS were going to be fighting for their freedom, perhaps even their very survival, at some point in the next couple of years, and Lenore Zala didn't raise no slacker, stet?

---

Also, Athrun's redcoat team also included a guy named Rusty (though perhaps he died in the Federation's attack, the guy's more of a redshirt than a redcoat. 8P )

---

Yeah, I'm afraid that, for the sake of my convenience and peace of mind, those members of the le Creuset Team who got didn't get developed in the original series were the ones who were ready and waiting when the assault went off... and got splashed blunting it. Some of them might have bailed out in time, I won't rule that out, but they won't be showing up in this story.

---

So, I wonder how long it'll be before Kira and Cagalli discover their link.

---

It'll be a while - they did go on a date, once, then shrugged and decided that there just wasn't any chemistry, so you needn't worry about that. I'm saving that flavor of squick for the Escaflowne piece.
Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[Norgarth]

Actually, I was refering to:

---

... made Kira just about the only junior officer in the Ichthys' small pilot community who wasn't related to somebody important.
It was practically enough to give a fellow a complex.

---

Indirectly Kira is related to someone important.
Your story looks interesting and I'm looking forward to more. Actually that last bit applies to Drakensis' story as well, which I don't think I've stated yet.__________________
I feel like I'm diagonally parked in a parallel universe.
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

[Valles]

---

Indirectly Kira is related to someone important.

---

Well, yes, but he hardly knows that...
Looking forward to more? Look no farther, at least for now.

---

---

The Captain of the Ichthys was a slender woman of average height, whose ordinary-looking brown hair and rugged features made her stand out against the more striking looks of her crew. Her voice, clear as any actor or singer's, cut cleanly through the inevitable slight machine noise of any vessel her ship's size. "Commander le Creuset is currently meeting with ORB leadership regarding the details of our next mission, but the general shape of it is clear.
"The three stolen prototypes were taken aboard an Atlantic Federation light carrier after their escape, but the decision was apparently made to retain that combat asset in ORB waters and they were shortly transferred to a bulk freighter which proceeded, under escort, due east towards the American coast. An elite squad of ORB mobile suits was dispatched to sink the vessel and, hopefully, slow down their efforts to duplicate the units.
"None of that squad returned. The laser armarments of the Phobos and Ares class suits require sustained fire to inflict critical damage on something as compartmentalized as the Morganroete designs, and all five of those units are apparently fitted with a specialized form of energised armor which severely retards the effectiveness of any projectile weapons.
"Lieutenants Yamato and Attha's units are, at present, the only assets available to us which possess the high-intensity particle beam weapons neccessary to engage the stolen prototypes decisively." She touched a control on the lectern and brought up a high-angle shot of the three Federation mobile suits in flight in close formation over a dark background. "This picture and several others like it are why that fact matters. The Blitz's mirage colloid particles might have been able to conceal all three of them from conventional orbital cameras sufficiently well to render enchancement and image processing impractical, but the Broad Axis Multi-Sensor Optical Array Telescope on Aprilus Nine is an instrument that they apparently never considered might be applied to military purposes.
"Thanks to BAMSOAT and the astronomers who suggested applying it, we know that, rather than keeping the prototypes in the mass driver complex in Panama, they've placed them at a small research facility in Baja California Sur, relying on secrecy and the units themselves for most of their security.
"We'll be making a rendevous off of Hawaii tomorrow to take on a sonic colloid module and various weapons that have been put together by Morganroete's outlying facilities or sorted out of what was rescued during the pullout, then proceeding directly to hit the research facility.
"The current plan is for the le Creuset Team to engage and destroy the fixed defenses, then provide support while Yamato and Attha terminate the target units. Once those have been neutralised, the entire facility is to be leveled." She paused, and looked out at the six teenagers sitting before her with a combination of sympathy and stern resolve. "There can be no escapees, and no survivors. If even a single person can escape and carry the data this project has gathered back to their superiors, then the entire mission is wasted and thousands of ORB, ZAFT, and allied personel will die when the mass-production suits hit the battlefield."
"Understood," Kira said, sadly. "We have to slow them down at any cost."

---

---

Round Two! Ding ding.
Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[drakensis]

Kira looked up from the floor of the corridor he was floating along when he heard his name called. Up ahead, he saw familiar faces, but below them were... Alliance uniforms?
"Tolle? All of you?" he exclaimed.
"Hi, Kira," Tolle greeted him as the little group drifted to a halt in front of the surprised teenager. The other students were at the front: Tolle, Sai and Kuzzey wearing two-tone blue jackets and white trousers, while Mirialla wore a violet and white jacket with a surprisingly short skirt.
"What's the deal with those outfits?" Kira asked.
"We've decided to help out with tasks aboard this ship," Sai told him. "They're understaffed, after all."
"They require us to wear military uniforms if we're going to be on the bridge," Kuzzey added.
"ZAFT's military uniforms are cooler, aren't they? With no badge of rank, these look kind of silly."
"Don't be a wise guy," snorted one of the Archangel's crew from behind them, obviously having just kitted them out. Beside him, Thomas grinned toothily. He was wearing the same blue and white as the boys, but his jacket was unfastened and the sleeves rolled up past his elbows.
"We can't have just you fighting all the time," Tolle told Kira, looking serious all of a sudden.
"Given the situation we're in, we'll help," Mirialla chipped in. "However we can."
Kira looked down. What had he gotten his friends into?
"Move on, youngsters," the crewman ordered, giving them a little push. In a flurry of farewells, they coasted off down the corridor towards their new duty stations.
"Oh," the crewman called, turning to look at Kira. "And if you're taking off again, make sure you wear a pilot suit this time!"
"That's good advice," Thomas told the boy as he hung in the low gravity like a poster-boy for broken uniform regulations. Kira started, he hadn't realised that the man hadn't left with the others. "After all, it would only take one bitty little hole in your cockpit and you'll be out of air and out of luck."
"Yes," Kira agreed softly, studying the floor again.
"So," Thomas said in a leading tone. "How are you doing? Feeling stressed? Aggravated? Guilty." From Kira's flinch, the last word was probably closest. "Ah. Well, it's been a rough day or so, hasn't it? What's bothering you? Your friends? They are old enough to make their own choices, you know?"
"But if I hadn't gotten them involved..."
"Then what? They'd have been squashed when that ZAFT robot tangled with your robot back in the colony, or blown up along with this ship... What ifs aren't going to help you really," Thomas counselled. "Things have happened this way, and they want a bit of control over it. So they put on the pretty costumes and fight for their own survival, as well as your own."
"You're wearing one too."
"Yeah, but I was wearing all the clothes I had, and now they're getting washed." Thomas looked at Kira. "It's not just that though, is it? The Aegis... I was watching you fight it back inside of Heliopolis - you weren't really trying to fight it, were you?"
"No," Kira admitted, still looking at the floor. It was really much better than trying to look that knowing gaze in the eye.
The man sighed and leant against the wall, facing the boy. "And the ZAFT pilot wasn't exactly reeking of killer intent. You're presumably both smart kids, from what I've heard about Coordinators, so I guess you have good reason..."
"Athrun..." Kira began, haltingly, looking up. Thomas's eyes were weary, maybe a little sad. For a moment, the masks were down. "Athrun was... He is my best friend. I can't kill him. I don't want to fight with him!"
Thomas nodded understandingly. "And I guess he feels the same way about you. You're not his enemy, but this ship is and he has his duty?"
"I... I think so."
"Well, that's difficult," Thomas agreed, stating the obvious being one of his many skills. He scratched his chin thoughtfully. "There's an old saying that the best way to win a fight is to defeat your opponent without harming him. Tell me... about these mobile suits of yours... the cockpit's inside the chest, right?"
"Yes?" Kira replied hesitantly, wondering what Thomas had in mind.
"Well, I realise this is easier said than done, but you aren't exactly fighting this Athrun himself, are you? You're fighting his suit. So isn't there somewhere that you could hit the suit to, I don't know, disable it? Without hitting the cockpit? There's probably information on the Aegis aboard - it was built to operate off the Archangel right?"
Kira's eyes went wide. "And if the suit's disabled, I don't have to kill Athrun!"
"Don't get too confident," Thomas warned. "I respect your not wanting to harm your friend, but accidents still happen. And it will be much harder to target just a part of his suit rather than taking whatever shots you can."
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[katreus]

These snippets make so much more sense now that I've watched some episodes of Gundam Seed! O.O
Having watched straight up to 21 last night, Fllay/Frei/whatever is a scary scary girl, but I notice most people aren't quite ... on the ball ... with maybe the exception of the Archangel original military crew.

[katreus]

What -did- happen to Miri and the rest? I don't think I've seen them thus far after the attack in Valles' piece.

[drakensis]

"Hey, come on Doc!" called the chief flight engineer as Mu floated through the hanger towards the Strike. Chief Petty Officer Murdoch was one of the few survivors of the Earth Alliance contingent at Morgenroete's Heliopolis facility. The stocky NCO was floating next to the Strike's open hatch.
"What's wrong?" Mu asked as he caught himself against the hatch.
"Well the kid's still in there," Murdoch explained. "The doctor's gone in and now he's blocking the hatch."
"Oh?" The pilot stuck his head into the tunnel-like entrance to the cockpit. "What's happening in there?" he called, unable to see much past Thomas' shoulders, although hints of aquamarine in the poorly lit compartment made it clear that Kira was still in the pilot's seat.
"We're just admiring the dancing girls," Thomas shot back sarcastically. "You should make this scene sometime, it's really something."
Murdoch choked back a laugh at the surprised look on Mu's face and there was a nervouc giggle from inside that suggested that Kira was probably less restrained. A moment later, the helmet of Kira's flight suit was thrust back past the doctor's shoulder and Mu caught it.
"Make yourself useful," Thomas advised. "Put that away for him, would you?"
Mu backed up a moment and Thomas followed him out of the Strike a moment later, towing a subdued looking Kira. The boy's violet eyes looked dull and he appeared exhausted. "Hey, kid," Murdoch asked in a worried voice. "Are you alright?"
"Hm," Kira nodded, his own voice faint.
"I'm presribing some food and a bit of rest," Thomas advised drily. "Fortunately, nothing that should require raiding the pharmaceutical cabinet in the medical bay." He patted Kira's shoulder with one scarred hand. "Unfortunately, the food'll have to come from the military rations aboard - if you can call that food."
"It's... not bad..." Kira objected mildly.
Thomas sniffed derisively, hiding a smirk at having directed Kira's attention away from the scarcely completed battle.
January 27th, C.E. 71
Artemis, LaGrange Point Three
The Archangel backed slowly into Artemis, passing through a deactivated pannel of the fabled 'Umbrella' - actually a lightwave belt believed to be proof against anything short of nuclear weapons. Or human stupidity, Thoams mused as he glanced out of a porthole at the defenses and spared a moment to consider the history of 'impregnable' fortresses.
Artemis itself was an asteroid several miles long, with the base buried inside and a quite astonishing array of devices mounted on the outside. The 'harbour', so to speak, was a cylindrical hole lined with metal, large enough for even the broad-winged Archangel to fit easily within, despite the shape of another warship berthed ahead of it.
No sooner had clamps fixed onto the white-hulled ship, anchoring it in place, than other shapes began to move out from hatches and behind fortuitously placed cover. Within instants, Thomas could see armed men in space suits and craft that evidently filled a similar role to Mu's Mobile Armor, all not so discreetly aiming their weapons at the Archangel.
With a grimace, he pushed away from the porthole. Evidently matters would not go as smoothly here as had been hoped for.
Only moments later, spacesuited soldiers entered the ship through several airlocks, much to the surprise of the crew and civilians aboard.
"What is this?" Flay asked, as she and dozens of others watched scenes of outside the ship on a screen in the mess hall. "What's going on, Sai?" Behind the couple, Kira stared wide-eyed at the screen.
"Okay!" came a shout from the door. "Freeze!"
Everyone looked around and saw a squad of soldiers aiming automatic rifles in their direction. "Don't move!" the apparent leader shouted through his open visor.
A similar scene played out on the bridge, with spacesuited soldiers pointing their guns at the half-strength bridgecrew.
"What are you doing?" Maria demanded, only to have a rifle muzzle directed uncompromisingly towards her face.
"Commander Biddulph," Natarle protested. "I request that you give us an explanation for this! We've..."
"I'm just blockading the ship's controls and fire control systems as a security measure," the Eurasian officer replied. He'd first boarded the Archangel to verify her identity and then to direct her into Artemis's waiting arms... arms that now seemed rather less welcoming. In all that time, he'd never shown himself to be other than a stuffed shirt.
"Blockading?" Natarle exclaimed. "But the way you're...!" She looked utterly shocked as her step forward provoked one of the soldiers to move closer, his rifle close enough that if he fired she'd probably be killed just by the muzzle flash, never mind the bullet.
"Your ship is not registered, and so naturally we have no identification code for it," Biddulph told her. "Given the circumstances, we did permit you to enter port but unfortunately we have not yet recognised you as an ally."
"But...!" Under the cover of Natarle's protest, Maria eyed Biddulph's smug expression warily. The Atlantic Federation, who had constructed the Archangel and the G-series, had been rivals of the Eurasian Federation for decades, until the conflict against the PLANTs had brought them together under the banner of the Earth Alliance. Doubtless, the commandr of the station was drooling at the thought of obtaining the cutting-edge military technology aboard the Archangel... and since no one on Earth knew where they were, it was only too possible that the ship - and crew - could convienently vanish to hide the theft.
"This is a military facility," Biddulph continued. "I'd like you to at least understand that. Now, I would like the officers to come with me. You shall explain the situation to us."
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[drakensis]

Sometimes I just want to blow things up. If anyone was looking for the Rage in the title, I've got a bit of a fight for you. Obviously, Kira, Mu and the others will all need their own scenes written in at some point.

---

The Battle of Orb

---

June 15th, C.E. 71
ORB Union waters, Earth
Thomas looked at the screens, the ships flanking them bustling as side hatches opened to reveal rank after rank of Strike Daggers. And this was only the second wave. Ahead of them another line of warships was already duelling with the gallant but badly outnumbered ships of the ORB military.
He took a deep breath and forced himself to sit back. This would be unlike any battle he'd ever fought. For once he was forced to command from a chair rather than leading from the front, or better yet, merely fighting, without responsibility save for the flanks of those stood with him.
"Ready Igelstellung for incoming missiles," he ordered, running through a mental checklist of the Black Pearl's weapons. Fortunately, they were identical to those of the Archangel. "Helldarts prepare to engage Mobile Suits. Load anti-shipping missiles in tubes thirteen through twenty-four. Make Gottfrieds and Valiants ready to fire along our aft axis."
"All weapons ready," Natarle reported from her seat in CIC.
Thomas nodded. "Power up the Lohengrin's," he ordered, beginning the sequence of orders that would start their part in the fight. From his postion he could not see the powerful weapons push out from behind their covers. "Helm, bring us around ninety degrees to the left."
"Port, sir," Natarle corrected.
"Who gives a fuck?" Thomas growled as the big ship slewed around, perpendicular to it's previous line of travel and with the ships on their left now lined up in front of them like ducks. "Fire at will!"
Almost instantly the massive positron blast of the Lohengrins slashed out in front of the Black Pearl and the Gottfrieds began to hurl energy beams back towards the Alliance Navy's right flank, now in the renegade warship's aft quarter.
Most of the ships were assault carriers of the Powell-class , lacking the heavier armour of the missile cruisers in the first wave. Even worse, their hatches were open and clogged with relatively inexperienced mobile suit pilots carrying tonnes of ammunition and reaction mass. A trail of burning ships formed immediately, with the black-hulled spaceship squarely in the middle. Almost instantly the line began to break up as the vessels gave up on burning and took up sinking instead. Not all the ships had been hit of course, and even those hit first often managed to launch at least one mobile suit before they died. To the rear, where even the combination of linear cannon, high energy beams and missiles had failed to match the impact of the Lohengrins, entire squadrons managed to survive and began to launch themselves at the Black Pearl, hoping to avenge their motherships.

---

Ahead of the second wave, the leading elements of the Earth Alliance's Fourth Naval Fleet weren't having a good day either. Their Strike Daggers had managed to land on Onogoro Island, but weren't making any headway against the M-1 Astrays deployed in defense. Where the lines were stiffened by the Buster and the rebuilt Strike, the Alliance Mobile Suits were taking terrible casualties and that entire flank looked like it might be pushed back into the sea.
To make it worse, the missile cruisers were finding it almost impossible to support the suits with long range fire. That mysterious mobile suit piloted by the never-to-be-sufficently damned Yamato brat was shooting down their missiles almost as fast as they could be launched. Now that he saw it in action, Captain William Sutherland was beginning to believe the reports from Alaska, of how entire teams of ZAFT mobile suits had failed to break past the suit's defense of the fleeing ships. And there was another suit with the so-called 'Freedom', this one busily sinking the cruisers. The only mercy was that the pilot was apparently arrogant enough that he was only doing enough damage to sink the ships, rather than blasting them apart along with their crews. Casualties would be serious... but most of the crews should be able to escape.
"Djibril!" he snarled into a radio. "What are you waiting for? Send in the next wave! We need support now!"
"Ach, du liebe gott," came a harsh voice in reply. "Is that Starchy Bill Sutherland I hear out there?"
"Who the hell are you?" Sutherland demanded. "Where's Djbril."
"DJ Brill has taken a little step or two off the gangplank, matey," the voice replied, gloating almost visibly. "I'm afraid he's in Davy Jones' locker now."
"Captain!" shouted an officer, dashing across the bridge towards Sutherland. "Signal from the Bellerophon! The Dominion is firing on the rest of the second wave. They report heavy losses among both the carriers and the mobile suits."
"What!" Sutherland cried, turning to look out a window to the rear of the bridge. Sure enough, the first signs of smoke could be seen from just over the horizon, where the second wave should be. "Has -?"
The nature of Captain William Sutherland's question would forever be unknown. Even as he turned back to the radio, a beam of energy cut through the bridge, decapitating the command structure of the Fourth Naval Fleet's lead squadrons. Following this, Athrun Zala dipped low enough to cut a long slice through the side of the cruiser, opening half a dozen usually water-tight compartments, and flew off, leaving the cruiser to roll slowly to one side as it's crew began to hastily evacuate.

---

The Strike Dagger was a remarkable piece of engineering. Simplifying the design of the expensive and complicated Strike down to the level that the Atlantic Federation could mass produce it and quickly train Natural pilots to use it was a non-trivial achievement. To do so in the limited timeframe available was incredible.
The machine itself, however, was not the equal of it's illustrious forebear (which was currently being demonstrated ashore by Mu La Flaga). Nor was it the equal of the other G-series machines that had harried the Archangel for much of its career. As a result, the disorganised attack of almost eighty Strike Daggers upon the Black Pearl, its crew honed to a fine edge by Natarle Badgiruel, was considerably less effective than the Earth Alliance could have hoped.
It was, in fact, almost impossible to miss the suits as they brought their beam rifles to bear, attempting to overload the renegade vessel's laminate armour, and unlike their forebears, they did not benefit from phase-shift armour and were far more vulnerable to the Black Pearl's missiles than the pilots had been led to believe. For that matter, even the Igelstellung were capable of inflicting some damage if they happened to track across the suits while reaching out for the handful of missiles being directed at the Black Pearl by the surviving ships of the second wave.
Veteran Coordinator pilots in DINN suits could have made the attack work... Naturals with only a few weeks of training and zero combat experience with their machines didn't stand a chance. Well before the massed beam rifles could inflict sufficient damage to impede the Black Pearl's hull, the attack had been cut to pieces, the Strike Daggers brought down in almost equal numbers by rapid fire from the Gottfrieds and Valiants and by the surface-to-air missiles that the Archangel-class ship could fire in such numbers.
Thomas leaned forward in his chair, eyes intent. "Right then," he growled. "Time for phase two, I believe. Open the hatch."
It had not been possible, in the limited time available, to come up with a proper solution to losing the use of the Alliance's 'enhanced' pilots. Since they were apparently commited members of Blue Cosmos, no one would have trusted them even if Thomas hadn't gone to the trouble of disabling most of their implants for future removal. In the end, Natarle had simply had their machines' operating systems wiped and replaced with copies of the Strike Dagger system. It was a hopeless kludge, but the three advanced suits could move and fire after a fashion, although not at the same time.
For this purpose, that would suffice and down in the hanger, technican Bill Morgan was getting to try out the Calamity.
By the time the huge starboard hatch was open, the blue Gundam was already walking along the catapult towards the opening. Two Strike Daggers that were late to the party tried to rush the hatch - suicidal as it seemed, getting inside the Black Pearl would probably be their best bet for a successful attack. However, commiting themselves to trying to enter a confined passage doomed the unlucky pair as Bill paused a moment to brace the heavy mobile suit and then opened up with the Calamity's full and formidable armament, blasting both suits apart as they made themselves easy targets. A carrier that happened to be crossing the Black Pearl's path began to sink at the bow after the shot from the Calamity's huge bazooka missed the suits entirely and exploded against the ship's prow.
"Take us around in a slow arc," Thomas ordered, once Bill was settled at the open hatch, the power cord still linking him to the ship's powerplant. "Engage targets of opportunity with Gottfrieds and Valiants, otherwise spare the ammunition... we may need it. Let Bill enjoy himself with any suits that are left out there..."
There was an explosion outside that suggested that the technican was very much enjoying himself playing gunner with one of the suits he'd put so many hours of maintenance into.
"We may be needed closer to the shore," Thomas finished with aplomb. "See if you can make contact with ORB's military - it would be entirely too easy to get into a shooting match with them right now."

---

Less than a mile from the military factorys, the small civilian population of Onogoro was boarding a transport ship that would carry them to safety on the main island.
"Wait, my phone!" protested one girl as the pink handset slipped out of her satchel and bounded down the slope and away from the switchback path to the ship.
"I'll get it," her brother promised, jumping down from the path while his family continued to follow it. The dock was just below, he was sure he could make it down the rest of the slope as fast as the rest of the family could reach the docks by the path.
There was a cry of alarm from the docks and Shinn Asuka looked up, fingers barely touching his sister's phone. Surface-to-surface missiles were arcing up and over the ridge seperating the little bay from the main port. Although he couldn't know their source, one of the Earth Alliance cruisers had been firing a volley when the Justice had torn it open. The warship had slewed wildly under the impact, the missiles losing their targeting data moments after leaving the vertical launcher and flying wild on ballistic trajectorys.
There was no time to do anything but watch as the missiles slashed towards the docks. Lances of light reached up and obliterated most of them in globes of fire as the Freedom interceded, but even Kira Yamato was not infalliable and the first pair of missiles was below the ridgeline before he could target them.
The refugee ship broke in half as missiles designed to break open armoured bunkers exploded against the thin hull and fire consumed the crowded decks. The handful of people still on the docks dived for cover as a second explosion reported that the fires had reached the fuel bunkers.
A hundred yards inland, Shinn clutched the phone and hugged the ground, tears running down his face. Only a short distance above him, his father held wife and daughter behind a rock outcropping so that neither would have to see the pyre that held so many of their neighbours.

---

On the bridge of the Archangel, Mirialla paused and checked the transmission that was being received. Since Kuzzey had left the ship, she had started running the flight operations through his communications station so that she could double up the roles.
"Captain," she said hesitantly. "I think I'm receiving a transmission from Lieutenant Badgiruel."
"What?" Maria exlaimed, turning in her seat. "Natarle."
"She says..." Miriala halted. "She says she's in command of... the pirate ship Black Pearl?"
Maria frowned. "Natarle's gone pirate? That's insane... it's the sort of thing that,,," The two women looked at each other and then Mirialla adjusted her controls.
"Lieutenant, this is the Archangel. Did you say that you were aboard a 'pirate ship'?"
Badgiruel's embarassed voice came crackling over the speakers. "Ah... Doctor Finn wants to know what else it should be called when we stole the ship. The Do.. Black Pearl is a black Archangel-class ship. We've engaged the second wave of the invasion force, but we're now closing in on the rear of the first wave."
"Thomas!" Maria gasped. "He's alive!"
Natarle paused. "Yes... Blue Cosmos found him on the edge of the JOSH-A blast zone. Commander Djbirl brought him aboard so he could continue to interrogate him while we travelled."
A chill went down Maria's spine. "Interrogate him?"
"I'll put him on the line. Doctor," she called, obviously not to them
"Maria!" Thomas called. "How are you?"
She wiped at a tear that had formed at the corner of one eye. "Thomas, what happened, are you alright?"
"I took a bit of a knock in Alaska," he replied laconically, "But I'm feeling much better now."

---

"There's something familiar about this," Thomas noted as he looked out of the open hatch at the little cluster of ORB civilians gathered at the headland. Behind them he could see the smoking ruin of the transport that should have taken them to safety.
"It's almost as if the Archangel-class are destined to have civilians aboard," Natarle agreed in a serious voice.
Thomas looked at her sideways. "Well, there are archangels and archangels, I suppose. Those of war and those of mercy."
"And some who are a little of both?" she asked him. "We certainly brought death to enough people out there."
"Perhaps this will balance the scales a little," Thomas agreed.
The hatch drew level with the headland and as the ship came to a halt, he manhandled a short ramp to drop down to the shore from the edge of the hatch. A moment later, the ramp boomed under his feet as he bounded down it. "Anyone injured?" he asked the nearest man. "I'm a paramedic."
The man gestured worldessly towards the back of the group, where those seated against the rocks bore marks of blood and burns. He glared up at Natarle where she still stood at the hatch. "You're with the Alliance?"
"Bless you, no," Thomas answered, pushing towards the wounded. "We're pirates - a renegade ship just like the Archangel over at the military base. The Alliance are pulling back - for now at least." He knelt by the side of a woman with a bloody arm and pulled a roll of bandage out of his bag. "Now then, this is going to hurt for a minute, but I need to see how bad it is before I treat it," he advised, biting off a short length of bandage to use as a wipe.

---

The Asuka family were among the last to board the Black Pearl, followed only by Thomas, who was rolling up what was left of the bandages he'd brought as he walked up the ramp.
"Why did this happen?" muttered Shinn, looking back at the destroyed ship.
Thomas caught his eye. "That's a question with a lot of answers, kid. Give me a hand with this and I'll tell you what I can."
Shinn looked appealingly at his father, who nodded reluctantly. Thomas promptly handed over his bag, freeing his arm to more efficiently wind the bandages into a neat coil. "The outer layer of the onion, so to speak," he explained, "is that there was a big fight. But you know about that. The why of the fight is that the Earth Alliance - to be more precise, the Atlantic Federation, whose government works for Blue Cosmos these days - want to kill the Coordinators. Most of whom live on the PLANTs, which are in space. In order to get into space, they need a massdriver, of which they had three until ZAFT, very sensibly, captured two of and destroyed a third. This means that Blue Cosmos don't have access to a massdriver unless they take one back from ZAFT or..."
"Or take ORB's," Shinn replied in realisation. "That's what this was all about?"
"Yep," Thomas nodded. "Stupid of them, really. I met Uzumi once and there isn't a chance in hell that he'd let them take over the mass driver. He'd blow it all straight to hell first. The trouble is, fanatics like the one's running Blue Cosmos believe that theirs is the only real cause, so they can't believe that anyone would make sacrifices for their own, less important goals. They, of course, tend to lurk at the back, well out of any personal danger while they sacrifice thousands of their own soldiers. Bastards."
The little group walked into the gravity deck and Thomas pointed them towards the suite that had previously been occupied by Djbril. Over the last two days, they had been rearranged into a medical ward larger and better equipped than the old medical room, which was now being used to confine those of the crew that Natarle and Thomas didn't trust. Among those confined there was the Dominion's medical officer, so Thomas was now filling that role for the Black Pearl.
Now that space was filled by the more seriously injured civilians and Thomas could feel the slight vibration through the deck of the engines as the Black Pearl made best speed towards ORB's hospitals. "Thanks for the help, lad," he told Shinn. "You probably don't want to see the next bit though. Once you see what's inside of another human being, you'll never really look at one the same way."
"I'll be alright," Shinn said, but his father put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him back.
"Besides," Thomas added, "You could do with cleaning yourself up. There's a washroom next to the mess hall - that's probably the best place to wait until we drop you off."
"What will you do then?" asked Mrs Asuka.
Thomas shrugged. "In the short term? Make sure the Alliance have really backed off and that they're not just regrouping for another try. After that? Try to stop the war, I guess."

---

D for Drakensis
Contagious, rampant insanity isnt against the rules.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[DKnight54]

Ya know, this guy has got to have the most peusdonyms that sound the same
I mean,

---

"Djibril!" he snarled into a radio. "What are you waiting for? Send in the next wave! We need support now!"

---

---

"Who the hell are you?" Sutherland demanded. "Where's Djbril."

---

---

Natarle paused. "Yes... Blue Cosmos found him on the edge of the JOSH-A blast zone. Commander Djbirl brought him aboard so he could continue to interrogate him while we travelled."

---

Three variations!
BTW, IIRC, Djibril appeared in the second season right? Are you pulling him in early?

Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!

[drakensis]

Damn, you're right. The spelling appears to be Djibril according to NewType USA magazine, so that's what I'm trying to use, but I obviously haven't been checking my writing closely enough. Thanks for pointing that out. The DJ Brill is just Thomas being a sarky bastard, of course.
It is the fellow from Seed Destiny, although I suppose I may need to replace him with someone else if he looks more interesting, or I uncover useful plot elements, once I've watched more episodes of that. At the moment Azreal comes to a messy end shortly after JOSH-A and Djibril steps in to take over Blue Cosmos - briefly.
The events of Gundam Seed Destiny won't be happening quite the same way anyway, since there are going to be some very significant changes going on in the background of the story.
Edit: now that I listen to it, maybe I should just translate Djibril as Gabriel and keep the 'angel' motif of Azreal going. That way I can just pull more theme-named Blue Cosmos leaders out to kill later.
Not that it will matter too much at first, now that I've typed out the first few parts of the GSD arc - getting badly ahead of myself, but since the muse was poking me with ideas...D for Drakensis
Contagious, rampant insanity isnt against the rules.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[Norgarth]

umm, Drakensis? I thought the Gottfrieds were the supercannons at the front and the Lohengrins were the (relatively) smaller guns on the sides.__________________
I feel like I'm diagonally parked in a parallel universe.
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

[Valles]

---

umm, Drakensis? I thought the Gottfrieds were the supercannons at the front and the Lohengrins were the (relatively) smaller guns on the sides.

---

Nope. Gottfried doesn't ring a bell for me, but a Lohengrin is definitely a fuck ass huge positron projector.
Ja, -n
(lost his fansubs of the series, which he wasn't finished watching, dammit, and is duly annoyed)

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[Valles]

Cagalli's expression was quietly horrified, and she cast about for a moment. "Wouldn't capturing those personelle be just as good?" she asked. "Or better, for what we might learn from them?"
The Captain shrugged, slightly. "Yes, it would be, if Ichthys had the room for that many prisoners, or there were time to wait for a ship that did."
"ORB," the princess said carefully, "has a few high-speed troop transports that could probably make it in time. They're not that large, too, so sparing one or two from the Aube operation shouldn't be impossible... I'll follow whatever gets decided," she finished hurridly, "but it seems like it might be worth trying."
"I like it," said Nicol.
"You would," Yitzhak sneered. "But yeah, it beats killing a bunch of secretarial types who wouldn't know any more about mobile suits than they would real fighting."
The Captain, having been part of the Kingdom of Scandanavia's regular navy before emigrating to the PLANTS and joining their relatively frewheeling militia, was not so sanguine about either the idea itself or its chances of success, but the girl had a point about its potential benefits, and it'd be a lot better for the kids' morale than the original plan. And, like they were thinking, it'd definitely be better on moral grounds, which bore thinking on since there were very good odds that the data was being backed up someplace else. "I'll pass the idea up the chain of command. In the meantime, we have a representation of the area's geography loaded into the simulators. Familiarize yourselves with it."
"Yes, ma'am!" the young people chorused, and then the meeting was over.
======================================
The siren's wail snatched Natalie Badgiruel out of a nightmare of being trapped on a surgical table as sneering figures in ZAFT space suits and masks patterned after the X103's cranial facade loomed over her and fed rank after rank of tiny mechanical ants into her body through the cut on her cheek. For the first couple of seconds she was actually thankful for that, then the meaning of the warning penetrated, and with it, the awareness that she'd have to be engaging in heavy activity despite the still-healing wounds she'd taken when the after third of her assault shuttle had exploded around her.
"Shit," she hissed, and hauled herself out of bed.
By the time she'd gotten herself and her bandages stuffed into her pilot's suit and hauled the entire pained mess into the Buster, the small base's entirely-too-excitable airboss had managed to calm down enough to provide her three impromptu test pilots with some useful information. "Attackers are Strike, Duel, four ZAFT GINN series - model unknown - one CGUE command suit and a single Vosgulov class submarine."
"Understood," she heard Lieutenant la Flaga reply. "Dispositions?"
"The suits are coming in as a group; the Vosgulov resubmerged as soon as they were all in the air. Reinforcements are some hours out - ZAFT isn't alone on this one; there are several raids underway all across central America's western seaboard, using more force than anyone expected ORB to shake free this quickly."
"Right," he said, grimly. "Well, ladies, it looks like we're it. Buster, I want you to take on Strike again. Blitz, Duel. Don't take any stupid risks, either of you; I'll handle the ZAFT units then come back to tip the scales.

---

Not as far as I'd meant to get. Mrg.
Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[drakensis]

---

---

umm, Drakensis? I thought the Gottfrieds were the supercannons at the front and the Lohengrins were the (relatively) smaller guns on th

---

---

Nope. Gottfried doesn't ring a bell for me, but a Lohengrin is definitely a fuck ass huge positron projector.

---

The Lohengrin are located below the catapults and are the beamy things of death. The Gottfrieds are the turrets above the catapults and are beam cannon essentially the same as the 'main gun' on most of the other ships we see. The smaller guns on the side are railguns and refered to as V

---

D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[katreus]

The pirate ship Black Pearl had me giggling -- esp. with Natarle over there!
I'm glad you decided to do something about Shin. Shin as canon has been really irritating thus far. Please tell me you're going to do something about Cagalli too right? *hopeful* I'm still reeling from the WHAT DID YOU DO TO CAGALLI??!! to GS producers in the second season.