Well hello all!!! Welcome to my beautiful little story: D heh. Well, as you can see, this is a 08th MS Team (that's a Gundam saga) FF, and I'm very proud of it, thank you very much!! There might be some odd pairing, but I'm still trying to work it all out! It actually started as a Gundam Wing FF, but I didn't like the way it was going, and I don't really know the characters as well as other people, so I converted it into MS Team, the characters I know much better anyways! Well, enjoy, and please review!!!
Ya ya ya, I don't own Gundam 08th MS Team, so please no sue. (I hate doing that.)
Prologue: Black SlabThey stood in front of the black stone slab, soft grass at their feet and endless blue sky about their heads, broken only by the scattering of fluffy white clouds and reaching branches of trees. A little girl with light blue hair was holding a handful of different colored, flashy reds, yellows and radiant whites that stood out from the black stone like snow on mud. She wriggled her hand free of her mother's grasp and set the flowers gently on the grass in front of the stone, arranging them along the base of the rock in a colorful line. She looked up at her mother, whose hair was a blonde so bright it looked almost soft green. The little girl wondered why her mother was so quiet as she looked back at the arrangement of flowers and back to her mother's staring face.
"Mummy?"
The woman stared at the stone, her mouth in a tight line.
"Mummy, why are you so sad?"
Her mother's face held for a moment before turning to the girl. She stayed silent nonetheless.
"Mummy, is this death?"
Her mother licked her lips, preparing an answer that wouldn't frighten or hurt her daughter. She bowed her head slightly and took the small hand into her own again, "Who told you that?"
The girl bit down on her lip, clenching her mother's hand. Her mother knelt down beside her.
"This is where we bury those who Death had come for."
The girl traced her fingers along the carved name, "This is a person?"
"Only the body, but the soul is free."
"Are you sad because you know this person?"
The mother nodded.
"Who is he?" The girl asked, looking up from the carved stone. "Do I know him?"
Her mother smiled at her daughter's misuse of past thence. "You met him once, when you were a baby."
"But I'm not a baby anymore," there was a note of what could have been triumph and pride in the young girl's voice. "But who was he?"
"He…" she hesitated for a moment. "He…. he was a good friend…"
The little girl ran her finger through the carved stone again.
* * *
Chapter 1: Painful Shadow"I'm sorry, gentlemen, but because of the rules of war, the possibility of you getting your property back is almost non-existent. You'll have to take it up with someone of higher authority if you want to peruse the problem more, but I don't suggest you do." Ginias Sakhalin stood at the head of a large table surrounded by men in black suits. They all listened to him attentively. A large man with a hooked nose stood, sweat clearly visible on his shining bald head.
"Alright, Ginias. We'll take it up with… higher authority, as you said. We need our land back at any costs." With a bow, the man turned and left, followed in suit by his crowd.
Ginias sunk back into his chair at the head of the table as they left. A pale hand appeared on his arm and gave it a gentle squeeze of support.
"It's fine, brother. They won't talk to anyone else. I know they won't." Aina smiled at her big brother and squeezed his arm again. Ginias smiled at his supportive sister and leaned over to give her cheek a kiss.
"Thank you, Aina." He smiled and got up. "I will met you back home for dinner, I have some more things to take care of before I leave."
Aina stood and hugged him, then he turned and walked out the door.
Outside in the sun, a lanky man in a dark green suit watched from the steps as Aina came out of the large building and walked down to her limo. The man hopped from the steps, and around the building where he stopped and leaned against the wall. Another man came around from behind the trees and leaned next to him.
"I couldn't hear anything, Shiro. I tell you, this machine is a piece of shit."
"I'm going to follow her."
"But, Commander, it's not her we need anything from, it's Ginias, remember? Sanders and Michael aren't hiding in the bushes for nothing."
"Eledore, I want to see if I can get anything out of her. Won't take long, promise," with a wink, Shiro run around the bushes and jumped into the small buggy and raced down the back roads. Eledore sighed and ran back to the trees to signal Sanders and Michael.
Shiro drove down the dirt road quietly behind the shiny limo, the wind making his wild hair blow in all directions. He picked up a pair of binoculars from the ground and looked threw the back window of the limo.
Aina was sitting in the backseat. He couldn't see anyone or anything else in the car with her but the driver. He let the binoculars fall into his lap and flipped through a pile of papers sitting in the seat next to him.
The Federation had sent him a report which suspected Ginias, as close to the leader of the Zeons as anyone, to be plotting the building of a huge nuclear weapon. The mountain they had established base was an old mine, and a perfect place for the Zeons to build their weapon in secret. Shiro closed the folder and turned back to the road.
He closely followed the limo for about twenty minutes, everything was perfectly quiet and he suspected nothing unusual. The sky was clear and bright, no sign of rain, and the sun shone hotly down on him, warming his face and fingers that hugged the grips of the steering wheel. He listened to the birds chirp in the trees and blocked out the roar of the buggy's engine. The limo continued straight ahead.
Suddenly, out of the forest, a mobile suit jumped from the brush, covering the sky with a dark shadow, and into the road between him and the limo. Shiro swerved into a ditch and let go of the wheel to grab his gun in the backseat.
The limo driver swerved to the left as the suit come down towards them, the front wheels getting stuck in the ditch. The driver struggled to unbuckle himself and unholster his gun at the same time, but Aina threw open the door and run up the side of the ditch into the road. She ran into the middle of the street and leaned her head back, shading her eyes with a hand, looking up at the giant blocking the sun. She gasped and stumbled backwards into the driver, who had managed to get out of the car. She turned around to him.
"Call Ginias!" She screamed and dropped to her knees, covering her head as a gust of wind blew into her, a product of one of the suit's gigantic feet slamming down on the ground next to her.
Shiro ran up to the side of the ditch on the right side of the road, a rocket launcher propped up on his shoulder. He squinted through the aim. The suit was an old patched up GM Ground Type, and only two of the original guns remained on the unit. The original cockpit had been replaced with that of a Zeon's, and the ugly purple clashed badly with the tan paint on the body. He snickered, clicking off the safety, and ran his tongue across his lips.
Aina swung around, her pale green dress billowing in the wind. Her pink sweater, draped across her shoulders, was loosened in the wind and flew across the road, landing on Shiro's launcher just before his finger pushed down the trigger.
He nearly fell back as the sweater blew against the gun, and as his finger squeezed, the pink exploded in a bullet of white smoke and yellow fire as the missile sailed off course through the air and past the suit, blowing up a small patch of trees across and down the road a ways from where he knelt. He dropped the weapon as a high shriek sounded from the middle of the road, and he turned his head, finally noticing Aina and the driver out in the open. Aina stood again, but as the missile exploded near her, she shrieked again and dropped to her now scrapped and bleeding knees, covering her head.
"Damn it!" Shiro shouted, and sprinted across the blacktop. He caught Aina around the waist with one arm as another foot came crashing down in front of them. The air pressure blew the limo driver back to hit the side of Shiro's buggy on the other side of the road, and sent him and Aina tumbling with the airflow to roll in the dirt in the ditch next to the limo. Aina scrambled to wipe dirt from her eyes, and sat up. Her eyes widened as she saw Shiro, struggling to unbury his leg from under a rather large log. She crawled over to him and helped him drag it off just as another foot crashed down, sending them flying back even further into the woodland.
They rolled in the leafy ground of the woods, limbs hitting trees and causing nasty bruises. Finally, they stopped, one hundred yards from the road. Shiro sat up, nursing a twisted ankle. Leaning against a tree, he finally managed to stand. Aina had rolled further ahead of him, but her flight abruptly came to a stop as her back slammed into a tree trunk, and her body slid limply down. She screamed in pain and fell forward.
Hearing her painful call, Shiro turned and looked back. He face was bloody with cuts and scratches from passing trees and shrubbery, and with his twisted ankle, his left arm hung limply at his side, dislocated at the shoulder. He started forward to help the battered Aina when again the sky darkened and there was a rush of air as the foot smashed down on top of the trees.
Aina flew backwards again against the tree, but Shiro disappeared within the shadows. There was a scream from within the dark. With another gush of pressured air, the foot lifted, the air sucking downwards and putting immense pressure on the things below. Aina, still screaming, sat up and watched, tears running clean rivulets down her bloodied and dirtied cheeks, as the mobile suit marched away.