Fafner/SEED crossover, set before Fafner and after Destiny. Series belong to XEBEC and Sunrise.
Watercolors.
The afternoon sky is gray above them, the clouds shifting from charcoal gray to off-white as abruptly as a child's watercolor. Hino Michio watches the NUN's forces train. They are mediocre at best, equipped with mediocre Fafners that fit their mediocre talents and mediocre understanding of what they're up against and, perhaps, the mediocre world around them, all military and colorless compared to his fading memories of Tatsumiya.
Nothing, he thinks, turning away, out of the ordinary.
"Get out of there, idiot!" he shouts across the battlefield, following the blur of one of the NUN's grunt suits zipping across the open plain, darting lighting-quick to avoid bursts of perfect black. The platoon's been told to wait; there are reinforcements in the city behind them that can take out this batch of Festums, but this unit—
"Like hell!" crackles the voice over the pilots' static-laced intercom. His suit skids to a halt – just, Michio thinks, where he needs to be, yes – and the gun in the Fafner's hand swings out, scattering a haze of crimson and gold through the grey and darkness.
The target vanishes in a blast of ink, and the colors fade.
Michio pummels the boy afterwards, punching until a thin trail of blood stains the boy's faded uniform red.
The boy sulks into Micho's assigned quarters on the carrier the next day, the bruises bright against his pale skin and his expression as sullen as ever. "Sent in," he grumbles, "for an official apology… sir."
"You got off light," notes Michio, not bothering to sit up on the creaky old cot, "considering that you disobeyed a battle plan and a commander's orders."
Something clicks; the boy's head jerks up like a puppet on strings. "You were going to blow it up in Berlin! You were going to kill those people inside—"
"Calm down," he says. "It's what we do, since we don't encourage idiotic formation-breaking like yours—"
"They were going to die!"
"Everyone will, eventually. The NUN can't protect them all."
"Then I will," he says, gritting his teeth. "Soldiers are here to protect innocent people—"
"You'd know all about that, rookie."
His eyes flash dangerously, bright and crimson. "More than you, at any rate!"
Michio is glad that the bureaucracy has never asked him to give any "official apologies" to the brats he beats into place.
"Learned a lesson, rookie?"
"I'm not a rookie," he says, gazing moodily out at the pocked battlefield.
"Is that so?" He leans back against the wall, staring as much at the boy as the lonely, empty space. "You weren't any better than the rest in training—"
"I just needed to learn to move it!" he snaps. "I was expecting something harder."
"Fighting Festums isn't hard enough?"
"No," he says, not looking up. "I can handle them fine – I could probably do itbetter without you and your stupid plans—" Michio gives him a warning cuff "—and then none of these people will keep dying in battles they shouldn't be part of."
"Orphan?"
"What?"
"Are you an orphan?"
The boy finally stands straight, flushing pink against the ash-filled sunset. "I don't see why it's any of your business."
"Your superior," he says, grinning wickedly, "has asked you a question."
"They're dead," he grits out. "But it's not going to happen again. Not to anyone."
"You're an idiot."
"You're blocking the view."
He watches the boy more – the way he moves, the way he talks, the way he comes to trust the people around him. It becomes abundantly clear that he is not from any place Michio has visited with the NUN. Their children are all terrified, their families all shattered. This boy isn't the ghost of a person that most of them are.
"What's paradise to you, boy?" he asks.
"What?"
"Paradise," he repeats, thinking, as always, about Tatsumiya. If he closes his eyes against the sunlight, the boy looks a fleeting bit like Yumiko: same dark tangles of hair, same sharp features. The only thing missing, he would say, is her customary splash of lipstick, but even then, the boy's eyes are as red and clear as any Michio's seen under the Assimilation Phenomenon.
"It's where people are," he says, "a warm and happy place. Idiot."
Michio shoves him lightly, but the boy catches his balance cat-quick and stands his ground.
When the boy fights, he is fighting for his family. It doesn't matter that they're dead: he fights for them by proxy, to keep someone else's parents alive, a small, bright candle flickering from Festum to Festum.
"How old are you, again, boy?"
"Sixteen," he says, tinkering with his Festum's controls, punching in numbers that match his speed on the battlefield.
Only two years older than the last class at home, Michio reflects. Just a little longer, and Alvis's pilots will fight like this – not for themselves, or just for their families, but for everyone.
For paradise.
"You can't!" screams the boy, as headquarters' newest battle orders are sent straight to the cockpits. "You can't let them into the town—"
"Do you have my back, kid?"
"You—"
Michio scrawls an angry crimson mark across the incoming formation data, transmits the message to all his pilots. "This had best be worth it," he says, firing out to sortie.
The transfer orders come unexpectedly: Michio is to depart for the British Isles, for old Ireland; his squad will remain on the continent. When he stalks down the halls for the boy, he finds an empty room, as clean as though no one has ever lived there, save for a uniform on the bed. It's obviously military, though Michio knows it's not Tatsumiya's or the NUN's. It's the boy's, he realizes – not just because it's cut for someone of about his build, but because of the color: one splash of red against the gray.