Gundam Seed AU

Divergent Path

Disclaimer: Sorry, Buster blew it up. I will say this, though: The characters are Out Of Character!

Chapter One

A young, brown haired girl of about fourteen sits at a computer at her university campus doing work for the professor she works for. The news is on in the background for noise.

(The refugee camp in South Africa has been suffering from chronic lack of food and relief supplies putting the lives of 2.1 million people at risk. We'll now bring you images from the Kaohsiung front…)

With computer on lap and notes in hand Kira Yamato taps away at her laptop.

(…the ZAFT forces have approached to within six kilometers of Kaohsiung…)

As she works her mechanical pet bird, Torii lands on the top of her computer. "Torii?" the bird asks. At the same time a call is heard at the edge of her hearing.

"Kira!"

She looks up from her work and sees two of her friends coming up the path toward her.

"So this is where you're hangin' out," said her friend Tolle Koenig. "Professor Kato was looking for you."

"What, again?" Kira asks.

Miriallia Haw nods. "He's asked us to bring you to him right away. What is it about? Are you assisting him with something else?"

The brown haired Coordinator sighs and turns, placing the laptop on the table. "Too much. I'm still not finished with the stuff he dumped on me yesterday." Her face has a tired set to it speaking of how many hours she's been putting into her work.

(It's begun! Hurry! Hurry! Run away! That way's just as dangerous!)

Tolle comes over and looks at the news window on the computer. "Huh, some development in the news, boss?" he asks quietly.

Kira nods, "Yeah, in Taiwan, apparently. The Kaohsiung area."

(I am within seven kilometers of Kaohsiung where the sounds of fierce combat continue to echo.)

Tolle gasps, "If this is footage from last week they may have already taken over Kaohsiung."

"That's what it looks like," Kira said quietly as she taps the top of her computer to close the holo screen.

"Kaohsiung isn't that far away from Orb, is it?" Mir asks. "Will the homeland be all right?"

"Torii!" Torii said, and flies off again.

"I wouldn't worry too much about it," Tolle responds. "Oh they're close by, but our nation's neutral. I can't see Orb turning into a battlefield."

"Well enough of this!" Kira said, suddenly all business. She looked at Tolle, "How's the schedule proceeding, Chief Koenig? Are we on time?"

His face sets and he nods. "Equipment stores are fully stocked. We're ready for just about anything that can be thrown at us. Equipment for the G.U.N.D.A.M.s is loaded and the catapults are ready. The only down side is the G.U.N.D.A.M.s themselves. Sad to say, ma'am, the only two functional are your Wing and the Heavyarms."

Kira sighs, "Do you have a time-table on how long it will be before the other three are ready for service?"

"The best estimate we can come up with is Altron can be ready in two days if we focus on it. Sandrock and Deathsythe in about a week after."

The brunet Coordinator nods, "Good, get Altron ready for combat ASAP." She turns to Miriallia, "How's the status of the CIC?" Kira gathers up her computer and places it in her bag before getting up and starts toward picking up their ride to work.

Mir and Tolle fall into step with their 'leader' as the other brunet Coordinator responds, "CIC is fully functional, captain. Gatherers inform me that our presence hasn't been noticed. I, too, have my own share of bad news. On our defenses we're not up to full yet. Only one Gottfried is operable. We lost the other when a power coupling blew. Best estimates we can figure it'll be another five hours before it'll be back online. We also have both Parsifal cannons and will soon have all of our PDLs; two or three are still non-functional."

"What about the Long-nines?" Kira asks.

"Both are online, ma'am. And while the missiles are all loaded we only have half our launchers for the Hammerheads and Sledgehammers and the Helldart launchers have yet to be activated. They'll be ready in an hour I'm told."

Torii lands on Kira's shoulder as they walk and she reaches up to pet the metal bird and remembers the friend who gave it to her not long ago…

(flashback)

They stood together on the lunar school campus, sakura blossoms falling all around them. Her friend, Athrun Zala stood before her a sad look on his face mirroring her own as they prepared to say goodbye.

"The PLANTs and Earth will see eye-to-eye," her assured her, "There will be no war." Athrun handed Kira Torii, the little green mecha hopping into her hands and Kira held it close. "The evacuation doesn't mean a thing. You'll join me at the PLANTs, right Kira?"

Kira nodded, "I'll try to talk my parents into letting me go. They've been talking about moving to an Orb controlled territory to get away from the war, so chances are that we won't be seeing each other for a while."

Athrun nodded in resignation and moved to hug Kira, which she gladly returned, Torii hopped to her shoulder to avoid being crushed. "Take care of yourself, Kira. Keep safe if I don't see you."

Kira nodded into violet-haired boy's shoulder. "You too. You've been like the brother I've never had all these years. I'd hate to see something happen to you."

The two childhood friends separated and Kira watched as Athrun walked away to catch his transport home.

(end flashback)

It's been two years since she's seen Athrun and Kira often finds herself wondering how her old friend is doing. Kira stairs into the distance as her memories pass until one of her friends passes into her vision.

"Hey, Kira!" Tolle calls.

Kira stumbles back and almost falls if not for Miriallia's quick reflexes. She looks back at her friend and smiles thankfully.

"Where were you?" Tolle asks.

Kira simply walks on, a small smile on her face. After a moment she answers, "Thinking about an old friend."

The group walks down the road toward the auto-taxis zone that would take them into Morgenroete. A few minutes later they arrive and see three people standing at the stop waiting for a ride as well: Flay Allster, Misha Yamano and Jessica Simmons, all members of Kira's group here on Heliopolis. Also, there was a special relationship between Kira and Flay, who currently is being interrogated by her two friends.

"I'm telling you nothing happened!" Flay denies.

"Oh come on!" Jessica presses.

"Yeah everyone already knows about your relationship," Misha says, "And you were invited to her quarters last night."

The look on her face tells Kira that her girlfriend would rather not be having that conversation.

"All we did was have dinner last night," Flay responds, "Absolutely nothing happened!" she looks up and sees the other three coming. She almost performs the salute that the rest of them had come up with but stops when she sees the gentle smile on Kira's face. Flay stills and her smile matches Kira's own. Flay has known for over ten months that Kira was a Coordinator, bit since she'd gotten to know Kira and several other Coordinators at the colony her opinions of them as a whole changed a bit. She was introduced to Kira through her mutual friendship with Mir, who she learned was a Coordinator herself. The two quickly grew to be friends. As they worked together in the Morgenroete facility under Doctor Kato Flay found herself falling in love with the brainy, yet quiet Coordinator. Five months ago she confessed her feelings for Kira. Feelings Kira returned in full. They managed to keep their relationship quiet, the only two who knew were Mir and Sai Argyle, once Flay's Fiancee he let her go when he saw how much they were in love. Now Flay and Kira come together and greet each other with gentle kisses.

Flay remembers how she had come to be part of Kira's organization to oppose the war. In response they hacked the Earth Alliance and ZAFT databases and discovered the EAF was using their colony to develop the Archangel and its accompanying mobile suits. So they took those plans and began modifying them for their own uses. In the process of finding information one of their "Gatherers" discovered something about Patrick Zala. That he was completely insane! When Kira told her that Zala's plan was to wipe out all Naturals she joined the growing resistance to the war effort and secretly recruited people to assist. Construction of their new ship began as they diverted supplies to the hanger they sealed off. Now the ship, their Defender, is almost ready for service.

They separate and Kira asks, "So where are you guys going?"

"Oh nowhere really," Flay responds, "We're just going out to have some fun today."

Kira nods. Flay and the others had all been working hard these last few months and deserved some time off. "Well you three just be careful, okay? Something's nagging at the edge of my senses, and it's making me uncomfortable. If anything happens I want you to stick together and get back to Morgenroete. If not find a shelter to hunker down in until you can be retrieved."

Jess nods in response, "Don't worry, we'll take good care of Flay for you."

A quiet voice behind them clears it's throat. The turn and see three older individuals behind them, a woman and two men, her being the shortest of the three and also the one trying to get their attention.

"If you're not getting in mind if I do?" she asks smoothly.

Kira gives her a covert once-over and can see just from standing that she was no civilian. Her stance and bearing clearly said military to her.

"Oh, I'm sorry, please, be take it," Tolle responds and moves aside for the other group.

as Kira watches them move her cell begins to warble in the warning tone she uses for emergencies. She quickly fishes it out and sees it's Raine.

"Yes?"

"We may have a problem," she says. "A short time ago we detected a pair of ZAFT cruisers enter Heliopolis space following an EAF ship. After docking the two ZAFT ships docked behind a space rock and soon after launched a pair of personnel flyers. And we barely picked up on those."

Kira looks up and makes sure the military trio are gone, then responds. "So it's a good bet that they're here to either capture or destroy the mobile suits and ship."

"That's what it looks like," Raine says. "I've already moved up to alert status amber and informed our people watching over the EAF project to keep an eye on things."

"Good," Kira nods, "What kind of ships came to Heliopolis?"

"From what we can tell the two ZAFT ships are a Laurasia and a Nazca identified as the Gamow and, get this, the Vesalius."

Kira's face falls at hearing that name. 'No way, it can't be,' she thinks. She swears quietly. "I seriously hope it's not who I think it is, 'cause if it is we may have to launch ahead of schedual. Tell Commander Badgiruel to be ready to launch on my command. The code is Avenger."

"Roger that. Over and out."

"What is it?" Tolle asks.

Kira looks him in the eye, "We may have one hell of a complication. It seems the infamous Rau Le Creuset is here and knows about the EAF equipment being stored here at Heliopolis."

Miriallia looks mildly disturbed by this. "Do you think he'll attack the colony?"

Kira motions them toward a waiting auto-taxi as she says, "If I know that lunatic more than likely." She got into the car and input their destination. "I wouldn't be surprised if he equipped his GINNs with heavy artillery. He never was known to have much of a moral compass."

As the car starts up she leans back and sighs. This day just gets worse and worse by the second and Kira thinks it's only going to continue to get worse. They arrive at the Morgenroete facility without incident and quickly got to the lab. There they find their other two accomplices Sai Argyle and Kuzzy Buskirk. Sai looks up and greets Kira as she and the others come in the door. Kira is about to say something about the warning she received earlier, but them notices someone else in the room with them. She stood against the wall wearing a brown coat and pants with a beret on her head. Something about her struck a chord in Kira's mind, but for some reason couldn't place face to name. 'Ah well, figure it out later.' She walks over to where Tolle and Kuzzy are talking, most likely about their guest, and asks, "So where's the Prof.?"

Kuzzy shrugs, "Don't know, haven't seen him in about forty-five minutes."

"Huh, weird," Kira murmures quietly.

She moves off and talks to Sai, who hands her a disk from Dr. Kato for examination and the group settles in to get back to work. Things move along fairly well over the next hour, the group of programmers working on getting the bugs out of the program they've been working on. Occasionally Tolle would get into the human-sized frame, which looks very similar to a mobile suit cockpit, in the middle of the room to test out their modifications. They weren't all that successful. Over the hour Kira racked her brain trying to figure out who that girl by the wall is and finally places where she's seen her before. Cagalli Yula Athha, daughter of the leader of Orb Nara Yula Athha.

'What the heck! What's the 'Lioness of Orb' doing here?' Kira quickly does a mental diagnostic of the nano-comm system and is pleased when is comes back positive. She quickly connects to the mind of her second-in-command, San Badgiruel.

:Badgiruel, you read me: she calls.

:Loud and clear, boss.: she says.

:We may have another complication besides the Le Creuset team outside.:

:And what would that be:

:Cagalli Yula Athha is standing not five meters from me.:

:Oh damn, that's not good.: she is about to say more when a commotion cuts her off and she cuts to pay attention. She comes back real quick. :Kira, the ZAFT ships just launched! Prepare to get the hell out of there! We've got three incoming bogies, GINNs from the looks of it.:

:We'll get gone quickly. And I'll make sure to get Cagalli out of here in one piece.:

:You'd better! The last thing we need is to piss off the Chief Representative:

They sign off and Kira connects to the others and informs them of what they need to do. Each nods and pull hand guns from their desks and hide them on themselves. They then set to work taking information from their terminals and downloading it to the Defender's computer core. Once Kira sets her computer to automatic she gets up and heads over to Cagalli.

"Miss Athha, I'm going to have to ask you to come with us quickly." Before the bland girl can ask how she knew Kira waves it off. "No time for explanations now. I've been informed that we're about to be attacked by ZAFT ships and need to move quickly." She points to her temple, "And to answer your question we have nano-comms. Anyway, the ZAFTs are here because the EAF's constructing mobile suits here on Heliopolis."

Cagalli slumps, "So it is true… Orb is building weapons for the Alliance."

"That's not entirely true," Kira tries to comfort her, "Our sources say your father has no knowledge of this. We're fairly sure it's one or more officials that are supporting this endeavor; we're just not sure who yet. When we know, you'll know."

Cagalli seems to bounce back a bit at the knowledge that her family is in no way involved with the EAF, but it disturbs her that members of her father's council would try something like this. They are supposed to be neutral. "Who are you people anyway?"

"I'm Kira Yamato," she introduces herself, "I'm a Coordinator here at Heliopolis. Over there we have Sai Argyle and Miriallia Haw, they're the same. And our Natural friends Tolle Koenig and Kuzzy Buskirk."

Just as the information dump is finished the ground under them shakes sending both girls to the floor. "Looks like it's begun," Kira says as she picks herself up. She turns to the others. "Evac to the Defender, now!" she turns back to Cagalli, only to see her heading out the door. "Wha…? Where are you going! Damn!" back to the others she says, "I'll be back! Get to the ship!" before the others could argue she's out the door in the direction she is sure Cagalli went in. putting on a burst of speed she quickly catches up to her charge and grabs her by the wrist.

"Let me go!" Cagalli yells.

"Forget it! I have to get you out of here," Kira argues.

"I can't go, not until I see them for myself!"

Cagalli looks the taller girl in the eye until Kira caves in and nods. She is exactly what she'd been told; hot headed and impulsive. But even so, she's only looking out for the best interests of her country. She releases Cagalli's wrist and wraps her arm around her shoulders. "Come on, this way." She led Cagalli down another corridor toward the factory district where she knew the MSs would be kept. Another blast sends them off their feet to the ground again and Kira looks back to see the path back is nothing but rubble. 'Well guess we have no choice now but to go forward.' Kira pick the both of them up and starts down the corridor again, keeping Cagalli close. At the same time she activates her comm. again.

:Code Avenger! I repeat, code Avenger! San, we're gonna need pickup.:

:What happened:

:The path behind us got blasted and we're cut off from the others. Cagalli and I will get out through the factory district. I want you to launch, now:

:Roger that! We can be there in twenty minutes:

They cut connection and Kira kept running with Cagalli, for fear that another section would collapse. Eventually they made it to an open door and into the sunlight. Gunfire could be heard as they came to the guard rail and look down into the factory area. They see EAF soldiers and ZAFT infiltrators having a fire fight below. Cagalli falls to her knees, her hands griping the railing as she thinks of how far her country's fallen. Out the corner of her eye Kira notices movement. Looking over she sees a ZAFT soldier aiming down at the woman firing from one of the mobile suits. She quickly whips out her gun from behind her and fires at the person, hitting him in the helmet and killing him.

'Good thing I thought to load the armor piercing rounds,' she thinks. She begins laying down suppression fire from above and forces the ZAFT soldiers to keep their heads down for a bit. When her clip runs dry she ejects it and reloads with one of the two she stashed in her pocket earlier. Coming to a quick decision she puts her gun away and grabs Cagalli.

"Hey, what are you doing!" she exclaims.

"Hang on tight!" Kira says and gathers the other girl up in her arms. She backs up and getting a running start, jumps the railing. Cagalli holds on and tries not to yell as they fall and they come to a jarring halt as they land on one of the suits, the same one the older woman is firing from. Keeping Cagalli behind her Kira got out her gun again and fired at several ZAFT infiltrators, forcing them to take cover.

"Who're you?" the older woman asks.

"Introductions later," Kira responds. She again empties her clip and reloads while the EAF woman fires her machine gun into the crowd. The other woman's gun ran out of ammo right about the same time as Kira's. Kira tosses her weapon and wonders what to do next. Unfortunately she hadn't planned for this. She watches the other woman pull out a semi-auto and shoot a ZAFT wearing red in the face. Another in red dashes out of cover toward them. He tosses his weapon as it seems he, too has run out of ammunition. Kira pulls a knife from her vest as the ZAFT red charges in with one of his own. With his jetpack he leaps up on the leg of the MS and comes at them. Kira puts herself in front and waits for the other, but freezes when she sees the face.

"Athrun!" she calls.

Her old friend, Athrun Zala, freezes in his tracks as he stairs at her. "Kira?"

The two friends stand stock still as they stair each other down. An explosion pulls them out and Athrun jumps to the other mobile suit and jumps in the cockpit.

"Hey!" Kira looks behind and looks at the EA woman. "Get in!" she pushes Cagalli in and leaps in after. Kira follows after a moment of staring in the direction Athrun took. 'I can't believe it. How can Athrun be fighting?' it perplexes her. She then follows the other two into the cockpit and goes to one side to stay out of the way. 'These things really weren't made for passengers,' she thinks.

The G.U.N.D.A.M. starts up and breaks free of its cradle, standing tall, even as the facility around it crumbles….

Murrue: Peace has ended for Kira and her friends. They must now fight for what they believe in against impossible odds at a time when they are not yet ready. At the same time Rau Le Creuset fights against his long-time enemy and rival Mu La Flaga for power over the top-secret weapons. Next on Mobile Suit Gundam Seed; "Its name is Gundam"

To the land of wars, come back to life, Gundam!

My first real attempt at a Gundam fic. How'd I do for this first time. Inspired by Dragoon Swordsman's "Valkyrie's Run". A good fic that people should go read.