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
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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"