Disclaimer: Mobile Fighter G Gundam is owned by Bandai and Sunrise. I just write about it in my spare time.

Note: I'm using the dub names because that's what I'm most familiar with, and it's best to be consistent. I may occasionally slip, so if I do, let me know.

On the Dark Side
Chapter 1: Is It Over? What Are You So Afraid of?

It wasn't over, was it?

Rain Mikamura thought this as she idly stirred her tea while staring into space. Despite the weather being pretty warm, she had chills running up and down her spine.

She was sitting at the table on a small balcony of the temporary apartment she was currently sharing with Domon. It was just a place to stay until they figured out what they were going to do between now and the next Gundam Fight. It was located in a decent neighborhood near Kyoto..."decent" by Earth standards, anyway. Their building was in good shape, but it was impossible not to see crushed, ruined, or otherwise dilapidated buildings no matter where one looked.

But she paid no attention to the buildings, no matter what state of disrepair they were in. She was too busy fighting off a terrible feeling of dread that was nagging her since yesterday. Just last night, she made the mistake of watching a news report on the cleaning up of the remains of the Dark Colony that still choked Neo Japan. It had been a month since the horrible thing had been destroyed, and they had just managed to safely take apart its main body. At first, she was delighted to see that thing come down - she even laughed and threw a few snarky comments at the TV screen. But her schadenfreude was cut short when a sudden, sharp chill came over her, forcing her to stop and shiver. She found she could no longer stomach watching the report, so she turned it off. The chills, however, never went away.

She nervously sipped her lukewarm tea as she tried to tell herself the Dark Gundam was gone for good. She saw the core blow up with her own two eyes - in fact, she helped blow it up! She was there when the Dark Colony rotted into a scrap metal skeleton and dead nanotech. There was no way it could still be functional.

But...that's exactly what they thought before, wasn't it? They thought it was gone when Domon fried it in the Guyana Highlands. It wasn't. They thought it was gone when Domon was forced to put Kyoji out of his misery on Lantau Island. It wasn't - she experienced that last one first hand. It sure looked like they had destroyed the thing once and for all this time...but what if they didn't? What if some small part of it had survived somehow? What if this was one of those situations in sci-fi movies where it could return as long as a single DG Cell was intact? What if it was hiding somewhere deep within the bowels of Neo Japan, regenerating itself and waiting - just waiting - to bedevil them all once again?

She put her tea down and rubbed her eyes. She really needed to calm down...she was practically working herself into a panic right now. They completely obliterated the Dark Gundam; there was no way it could come back after what they did to it. If for some strange reason - by some bizarre outside chance it did return, she was sure that she, Domon, and all of their friends could just destroy it again.

...Unless it got wise to all of their tricks and built defenses up against them. And found a different human core unit that couldn't be reasoned with.

No, no, no! Stop thinking like that! Rain berated herself for being so pessimistic. She really needed to stop thinking about Dark Gundams and Dark Colonies...and Dark Anythings, really. She stared at her tea as she tried to think about something else, something better. Maybe think about what her and Domon were going to do. Get married? Yeah, that was something they were considering, but maybe after the dust settled a little bit. Go visit their new friends? They should definitely do that, but again, they ought to wait until everything's calmed down. Besides, they had to figure out where everybody went. Did they go back to their respective colonies, or come to Earth? And goodness only knows where Argo and his crew went off to.

Domon was wanting to perhaps start his own dojo and pass on the teachings of the School of the Undefeated of the East. And as for her, well, she wasn't quite sure. She had acquired a lot of different skills in a short amount of time. Open up her own medical practice, maybe? Everyone needed a doctor. She had quite a bit of mechanical knowledge, too. Maybe open a repair shop? Maybe both? Or would that be too much for one person? Maybe she should just see how things played out.

And maybe contemplate the mystery of the complete stranger sitting across the table from her!

She nearly jumped out of her skin, and definitely jumped out of her seat. The plastic chair clattered to the ground and her tea spilled all over the table. And there was nobody there. Must have just been a figment of her imagination.

She berated herself again for getting herself so worked up as she stepped back inside to grab some paper towels. After retrieving the towels and making her way back out to the balcony, she froze. The normally greenish tan of the tea she had spilled was now silver. It looked like there was mercury all over her table.

Silver. Like DG Cells. Like that horrible metal shell that the Dark Gundam coated her body with when it made her its core unit. That nasty slime that kept her ice cold and glued her eyes shut. She gritted her teeth as one of her eyelids twitched. She didn't like the color silver anymore.

Was she hallucinating? Yes, she probably was. She was already seeing people who weren't there, so it made sense to also see colors that weren't there. She was surprised her trauma (assuming trauma was indeed causing these delusions, and not something in her tea) was manifesting itself in waking hallucinations instead of something more traditional, like nightmares. She hadn't had one bad dream since the Gundam Fight. The closest thing that came to it was a short dream in which she was at the beach, and the ocean was as silver and metallic as the tea currently was. But that had been unsettling, not scary.

Well, whatever the color the tea was, it still needed to be cleaned up. Rain tried to ignore that her mind was playing tricks on her as she went to place a few towels over it.

That is, until the silver liquid reared up from the table and lunged at her.

She instinctively jumped backwards, slamming into the sliding door behind her and making it rattle. When she looked again, the spilled tea went back to being light brown - and thankfully immobile.

She placed a towel on it from arm's length before going back inside and locking the door behind her. She then sat on the couch on the other side of the room and shivered while staring into space. She was very thankful that Domon wasn't home at the moment to watch her steady descent into madness.

She kept trying to blame her current predicament on some sort of post-traumatic stress, but a little voice kept correcting her. This dread wasn't due to any sort of paranoia. She felt it because deep down, she knew. She just knew.

She knew it wasn't over.

It was never going to be over.

There was no such THING AS OVER.


High above the world on the space colony Neo Japan, massive cleanup crews were hard at work everywhere taking apart the remains of the Dark Colony. They had made some major headway yesterday when they managed to take the head and rib cage down to ground level. Now came the more difficult task of picking these enormous structures apart - especially the head, as many feared there may still be live DG Cells hiding somewhere inside.

Special crews dressed in Hazmat suits were assigned to go inside the gigantic metal skull and scout around. They were instructed to immediately notify their supervisors if they found anything that looked remotely salvageable. A few of them were given acid sprayers, EMP grenades, and plasma rifles in the off chance that something in there still functioned. A few Busshi and Nobusshi were stationed outside the largest entrance just in case the scouts found something functional and too big for them to handle.

The scouting mission was rather uneventful at first. Lots of burnt, twisted metal, rotting cybernetic cables, and not much else. But then they reached the room that had once housed the colony's main generator - here they found the remains of the Grand Master Gundam. The good news was that the behemoth wasn't operational. It had been completely ripped limb from limb, even melted down in places. The bad news was that the main power generator wasn't operational either thanks to this thing. The colony would have to keep chugging along on backup generators for a little while longer until a new one could be made.

The scouts quickly called for backup. As reinforcements arrived, they immediately began clearing out the wreckage. A few mobile suits had to be called in to drag the heaviest pieces out. There were also live wires everywhere. The electrical crew quickly went about fixing them or cutting off their power if it looked like they couldn't be repaired. One of the wires seemed to "fix" itself - it snagged on something, and for whatever reason stopped sparking. Not that anyone was complaining; less work for them! They were already way too busy. Maybe a bit too busy, as no one noticed the sandy, metallic substance that began to pile up around the wire...

On the other side of the head, a separate scouting team was preparing to enter through the gaping mouth. It was rumored that the "throat" led directly to what would have been this thing's core. They made absolutely sure their suits were airtight and armed themselves heavily; if there was any place live DG Cells may still exist, it would probably be the core.

The scouts entered the grotesque maw of the dead giant monster and walked down its gullet. It looked like a dark tunnel full of huge, rotten green cables. After a short walk, they came out to a huge, empty room full of cracked or broken metallic pillars. And an enormous heap of metal that looked like it had once been a gigantic Gundam.

Even though they were all currently exploring the ruins of a massive, mutant Gundam, and even though they were well aware that there would be more freakish mobile suits around besides the one down below, it was still a shock to see it. It resembled the main body of the Dark Colony, with a Gundam's upper body poking out of a larger Gundam's face. Instead of a faceplate, it had a wide mouth filled with giant, yellow fangs. Maybe this was the unit that was protecting the Dark Colony's core?

Whatever it was, its torso had been blown wide open by some unknown force, completely gutting it. They also spied some severed extra arms with long claws behind it. Other than that, it had been strangely well-preserved. Its legs and gruesome head had some cracks in it, but not much damage to them overall.

But just as one of the scouts was about to radio for backup to lug the ugly thing out of here, the team leader stopped him. The leader then stepped forward with a lantern to take a closer look at some of the damage dealt to the giant Gundam. The rest of the crew cautiously followed suit, shining their flashlights all over it. They were rather disturbed by what they found. All over the thing were small "veins" of a silvery color. Upon further inspection, these veins had actually been cracks in the giant's armor that had been recently patched up. The larger cracks, meanwhile, were filled with a viscous, silvery substance that almost resembled mercury. The massive hole in the chest was also dripping with the silver fluid. Seeing as how the foul Gundam had a month to cool down, it was a safe bet that the liquid was not molten metal.

Now wonder it looked in better shape than its buddy downstairs - this thing was regenerating!

The crew quickly backed away from the carcass, as if it was going to get up and chase them at any minute. Some of them futilely readied their weapons just in case it did.

"Should we call the boss about this?" the crew member with the radio asked, trying not to shake.

"Yeah. Call the boss," the team leader, who actually was shaking, replied.