Part One—The Camp
Written by Termony

Disclaimer: I do Not own any part of Gundam SEED or Gundam SEED Destiny.

"Let's go mountain climbing," Kira said few months ago and that was what changed my life.

It was a sunny day in our little town. Kira and I were both ninth graders at our local high school RockBear High. We were friends who had known each other almost since the days that we were toddlers. We had just gotten used to the high school routine. He made his statement after we had sit at our usual spots at Lunch time. It was under an evergreen tree planted by the Green Mission Team that our school had long ago. It was right beside the track field and we can see the more athletic schoolmates running up and down the field breathing in the fresh but warm air of spring time.

"What...?" I said, trying to reason my friend's randomness. "But-Why?"

My reaction might have been more dramatic than what it should have been. However, I could not recall any part of my memory relating rock climbing and Kira. I was also absolutely sure that he had not watched any television shows lately that were related to rock climbing.

"Well, a student from a higher grade asked me if I were interested from my soccer team. It seemed fun," he explained. "Besides, it's such a wonderful thing looking at the views once you are up there."

"Well..." I could not think of anything to further my questioning, so I encouraged him. "Good for you!"

"Ah, I knew you would support me," he clapped his hands together and showed a big smile on his face. "And so we must join the club together."

"Eh?" I tittered and frowned, glancing at my friend who was cleaning the junks we created. "Why!?"

"Well, in order to join that club, I would have to bring a friend with me," he said, standing up with his hands full of waste and ran to the garbage can. "I can't wait to see you after school at the club meeting today."

"But I don't want to!" I exclaimed but the bell signaling the end of lunch time covered my voice.

"Huh?" Kira questioned, coming back from the garbage can.

His eyes gazed into mine and resistance rose onto my mind and stopped me to repeat what I had said.

After a while, I spoke, "I said: sure."

"Great!" Kira showed a smile almost too big for his face, "Let's go now! We have Mr. Sand next. If we were late like last time..." he paused, "um...maybe I should shut up. Let's go."

"Sure," I replied and stood up.

With the current of people rushing into the school building, we rushed into the same destination where everyone else was going.

Looking back what happened that day made me to regret not standing up to Kira. It was always like that; I can never withstand any request of his when I looked into his eyes. I must confess he have some attraction to me. Even as friends, we might had been a bit too close, especially since we were in the opposite gender category. However, what I had confessed would not help the situation that I am now facing.

I looked at the trashed map and tried to imagine the broken pieces that were once there. It was tornd on its way escaping a giant creature along with me and a very random person: Dearka Elthman.

Actually, Dearka was no random person. Dearka was my next door neighbor and like Kira, we had known each other for a long time-in fact, our parents were close friends and we had been spending numerous times with our families for many Thanksgivings and New Years-since both of our families did not have much family members other than our own.

We did not cling well as our parents did. We treated each other like distant cousins. We neither hung out with each other on our spare time, nor really communicated with each other. However, we had been together for so long that trust was built between us. He was the person that I would choose to fall into one of those holes with if I could because of his leadership skills and survival abilities.

I felt nothing but tiredness after what we had been through at the ends of holes. I started to look around after I had settled down. As Dearka said when we first arrived here-"This is a world of its own"- it is true. It was very big-perhaps even bigger than our small town. I looked up where the sky was supposed to be. All I could see were countless holes that were connect to the ones that we saw when we were outside. This cave that we had fallen in was in the shape of an orb. The most unique-and freakiest-feature in there was the light source on the upper middle part of the isolated area. Water was released into this world from holes on the cave wall and into a lake of water where we had fallen into. To our surprise there were even clouds surrounding the light source caused by the evaporation of the water.

Outside of the body of water, all we had saw were trees that resembled the ones that I had seen on a documentary film regarding the rain forest. The incest's were twice as big as the ones that we would have seen in science non-fiction books or in our backyards-they did not seemed to be seen out side of the cage (I call it that since we had found no way out so far). They were all colorful bodies. Their brightness hurt my eyes. There were traces of pathways. We had suspected the existence of other creatures among us. However, those traces had led us to nothing but the cause of our trashed map.

This island was definately different than what we were told.

The island was borrowed by the rock climbing club from the President of Student Council. Yes-this did sound like some sort of overused fairytale-soap opera scenario; however, it was a solid fact that our president-someone whose name I forgot-was born into a millionaire-no, a billionaire-family: he was filthy rich. Since he was in the graduating class with our rock climbing president, he had asked him for a random island where he thought it would be safe for us to spend our first few weeks of our summer here. Of course we were not really alone. There were few guards and rock specialists staying in our cabin and were prepared to help us whenever they need to.

We were excited; even I was excited. I was even glad that I did not reject Kira. However, I thought of the extreme opposite when I was falling down one of the holes that we discovered hours ago when we were still with the group.

The day before we were set off to the mountains, the club had host a game and how people had played determined their group members and which mountain we would be climbing. I was felt lucky to be with ones that I knew. The mountain we were assigned to did not seem unfortunate to me at that moment because it was a medium size one albeit the furthest one away from our site. However, it did not seem so promising now.

The people in my group were Tolle, Kuzzey, Kira, Dearka (who's two years my senior), with two girls and one boy from a higher grade. Dearka was one of the pioneers of developing the club. He was also much experienced in the field. Therefore, he was the leader of our small team.

"What's this?" Kuzzey pointed to the medium size hole that we first saw when we had reached our first flat surface on the mountain.

"That," Dearka, my sarcastic next door neighbor said, "Is a hole."

"Oh," Kuzzey replied, "I was hoping for you to say why there are holes."

I looked around and had realized there was more than that particular hole. They were all of the approximate size and depth.

The one that Kuzzey first pointed to us was possibly as wide as a medium computer sized screen and as deep as a short Stoll.

"They don't seem to be natural occurrence." I whispered to Kira.

"Of course not," Tolle, another friend from our grade exclaimed said. "They were made by aliens."

The group gasped.

"Tolle," I said. "What a lie."

"Of course it's a lie," he said, pulling his arms outward. "They were actually made by ghosts."

"Ghosts?" Kuzzey cried, "Ghosts!?"

"Of course," he slowly deepened his voice. "Don't question me; this is what I have heard from the president himself-Since I was in Student Council with him, as a grade representative-one night when he was camping out on the woods (just because he can!), he saw blue and white fires up on this mountain. At first, he didn't mind. But later on, just as he was take'n a shower, weird things happened."

"What...?" Kuzzey asked nervously.

"Well..." Tolle spoke slowly with his deepened voice. "The water stopped running from the tap. So he stepped outside and called for assistance. He walked all the way from one cabin to another,"- he squinted his eyes, and continued to speak-"The mist of the night grew stronger and he still couldn't find anyone.

"'It was weird, because it was summer.' He said: 'It was really horrifying because I've heard of something that had happened before. I've heard that there was a death on this island...But I never minded it, until then. I was walking along the pathway and unconsciously walked into the mist. When the mist became thicker and thicker, I remembered a death the previous owner mentioned.

"'Fear took over me; I was unable to move. Suddenly, (Tolle raised his voice and crouched forward. Kuzzey screamed, "AHH!") The mist was clear and I could see the surroundings again...However, the next thing I see was something that I could never forgot... I saw a pale woman in a white kimono. She was the most mistful being that I've ever seen...It was unnatural...It seemed that she was the original form of the mist...when I first saw her, she was facing me with her back, her shoulders were shivering. I called out to her: Who are you? I repeated tried to walk toward her, but there was an invisible force that pulled me back. Then-she turned,' he swallowed, 'She smiled at me-it was the most horrifying image that I've EVER SEEN! She was faceless! Her face was like a mask from one of those Japanese festivals...there was nothing but two holes that I suspected to be the eyes...and a big mouth that seemed to have cut her face in half; it was shaped like a sickle. It was even BLOODY RED! I tried to scream but couldn't. She let go of a laugh...THEN, she faded-no, she flew-away. She flew onto the mountain furthest away and when she arrived there, the mountain exploded. (A girl from the higher grade: "No!")

"'The next day when I went up there, all I can see were countless holes. What is even more frightening was that I can kinda make out her voice calling out to me at night, saying: I want you...'" Tolle reached out his hands to me.

I slapped his upcoming hands and sneered, "Trash talk. Think of something more creative next time."

"Fllay..." Kira called out to me. "Wait..."

I ignored him, carefully walking to the inner area of the flat, "Come on, people. If you just stand there, the next upcoming wind would push you down the mountain."

"Ah..." Tolle scratched his head as many others followed my lead. "Such a fun spoiler."

"Comm'on," our team leader said. "You might really get killed if you continue to stay here..."

"Ok ok," Tolle was walking further into the flat as he felt an unexpected weight on his backpack.

"Kuzzey?" he turned his head and saw him.

Kuzzey was holding onto Dearka's bag tightly and crouch onto the bag. After sometime, he had finally whispered nervously, "I'm scared..."

Tolle looked up to the sky and said, "You've gotta be kidding me."

After that little drama and much counseling we had given Kuzzey. We had finally picked up our pace again.

"Hey, Dearka," Kuzzey asked on our next stop, "Is it actually fair for the other groups to climb the bigger mountains?"

It was night time and we had just finished cleaning our dishes from the food we had eaten. We formed a circle that tighten surrounded the campfire as closely as we can without burning ourselves. With the distance to our destination shortening, the space of the flat decreased and the temperature dropped drastically.

"It's cold," I overheard same girl who made an out burst to Dearka's story talking to her friend.

I shivered and embraced myself more tighten with my blankets. I felt extremely warm with few of the cloths that kira had been sharing with me.

"Well..." Dearka said, "It is, because we are all climbing to the different points of our mountains. For us, we only need to climb to the second highest flat. For others...I don't know, but the distance should be similar..."

"How far had we climbed?"

"About enough…" Dearka said, lying onto his back with his blanket opened. "It's kinda cold."

"Yeah," that girl that I overheard said, I had just remembered that her name was Angela. "It's unexpected since it was so hot back home."

"Well...it's windier around parts of the ocean," Kira said.

"That's true," Angela said. "I wonder how my family at home is."

"Yeah, me too," a boy from her grade said. "I miss my dog."

"Beverly, just your dog?" another girl my senior said. "Wow, I can't imagine what your mom would say."

"Chill, Elsca," Beverly replied. "She's probably busy arguing which sauce is better for a certain dish with my dad: they just love foods more than me."

"That's not true," Angela commented, and then she looked at Kira. "What about you?"

"Well...I..." he blushed. "I miss my mom."

"I miss my mom's cooking," Tolle said, looking at Kuzzey who was sitting beside him. "And Kuzzey is probably missing his security blanket."

"Hey!" Kuzzey protested.

"Okay, it's your teddy then!" Tolle smirked.

"No, I don't," Kuzzey protested again as the group busted out of laughter.

"Well, it's kinda late now," Dearka rose from his sleeping posture as we clamed down. "Let's get into our tents; boys that way, girls the other way."

"Yes sir," I said along with the others and went inside while he was distinguishing the fire.

Dearka was the same as then kneeling down, but he was no longer distinguishing fire. Instead, he was trying to get fire started.

"Dearka," I whispered.

"Hmm?" he studied the fire rocks intensely.

"Tell me," I said," What created those holes."

He glared at me silently.

End of Part I