Disclaimer, I do not own Gundam Seed or 00! They belong to their respective owners.
Wow I admit I didn't expect such positive reviews. I was bracing myself for scorn heh. Guess I should think more positively.
On to the next chapter then.
Ribbons chuckled at his new predicament. Here he was, fresh into a new world and within only a few hours does he find himself at the mercy of another. Mr. Yamato look quite adamant at shooting him, 'Now the question is...why?' Ribbons thought.
"What do you want with Kira?" Ribbons' captor said.
Ribbons raised an eyebrow at that, "Excuse me?"
"Don't move! I said why are you with our son!" The man repeated. Then it all clicked in Ribbons' head. "Of course! You must be one of those overprotective types!" Ribbons exclaimed, "You must think I'm some sort of sexual predator. Especially given of my lack of clothes!" If this was an anime, one would expect a sweat drop to suddenly form on Mr. Yamato's head.
"Uhh...no not like that!" "Oh, so then drugs maybe? Or perhaps you think of me as a thief? Some sort of delinquent?" Mr. Yamato was starting to look a little annoyed at the incoming inquires. Then Mrs. Yamato leaned out of the hallway and whispered to her husband. "Perhaps he is what Kira says dear, I don't think he's here for Kira." Eyes darting from his wife to the innovade, Mr. Yamato conceded. "All right, listen Mr. Almark. If you do anything to endanger our son, you'll be kicked out alright?"
'Something bigger must be going on, but what?' "I understand completely Mr. Yamato. As I said I don't really remember much, it was by pure chance I came across your son. And it was your son who invited me over to your humble abode in the first place so I suppose he is the one to blame for my presence." Sighing, Mr. Yamato put away his gun. "Alright alright, I'm sorry for being...hostile to you. It's just that...Kira is a very good natured child and a little naive. He's been a bit bullied here and there back when he was young. We...just don't want anything bad to happen to him."
"Don't worry Mr. and Mrs. Yamato, I promise that I am not here to do anything harmful to your household or your son." The green haired innovade replied with his hand out, "Truce then?"
"Truce." Haruma said, though a bit stiffly. "Well...goodnight Mr. Almark."
"Goodnight, I'm sure we'll all be on much better terms in the morning. Or at least the morning equivalent on this colony anyways. I'll need to get used to that." Kira's parents left the guestroom, leaving Ribbons alone to his thoughts. 'I know I must look suspicious, but to pull on a gun on me? Hmm what are they hiding.' Deciding to resign for the night, Ribbons walk over to the bed and got some of the best sleep he has ever had.
In just a few hours, Heliopolis was now in its day mode and bright light filtered through the window of Ribbons' room, waking him up. 'Mmm I must say it feels great to be alive again. You really don't appreciate life until you lose it.' Then the smell of breakfast crept up to his nostrils. 'Now I may have had the world's cuisine best back then, but I do have to admit this home cooked meal smells absolutely delicious.'
Walking down to the kitchen, Ribbons was greeted with the site of Caridad Yamato cooking up a basic western style meal of eggs, bacon, pancakes, and some assorted fresh fruits. Kira was sitting at a dining table, with a plate of food and a glass of grapefruit juice, browsing or working on something on a laptop. The brunette coordinator then looked up, "Oh good morning Mr. Almark!"
"Yes, it does seem like a good morning, good morning to you too Kira and Mrs. Yamato."
"Thank you Mr. Almark. You're welcomed to eat anything you want. My husband isn't here though at the moment, he had to fill in an early morning shift. Also feel free to use any of our amenities. There's TV and internet, we have some spare computers from Kira's prep school years that should be pretty functional," Caridad mentioned as she flipped another flapjack.
"Why thank you Mrs. Yamato, you are far too kind for a stranger like me."
"Oh it's fine. I hope our little...problem last night didn't disturb you."
Kira then piped up, "Problem?"
Ribbons sat down with his own stack of pancakes with butter, though for a beverage he opted for a cold glass of water. "Oh it's nothing Kira. Just a small disagreements about bringing strangers in. But don't worry, we worked it out." "Oh thank goodness. I didn't want you to be all outside, alone and without clothes," The coordinator replied, while comically typing on the laptop as fast as his multitasking abilities could allow.
"That's our Kira, always wanting the best for everyone else," Caridad replied as she sat down to eat.
Ribbons was savoring the fluffy buttermilk pancakes when he noticed Kira being mostly focused on his own work. "So Kira you must be a student right, I'm a bit curious on what you're doing."
"I'm in Morgenroete College, working on...well all sorts of things. Mainly computer and machine programing."
"Hmm college at your age? Seems quite advanced." Ribbons noted with Caridad coughing slightly at that. "Ah well Kira has always been gifted. Even as a coordinator he's always been a straight A's honors student."
"Yea I understand things like concepts and theories and do tests pretty well, but that also makes me a prime target for the professors to dump work on me and claim 'ooh its for experience'! I'm a coordinator, not superman! I'm pretty much doing the workload of 3 professors at the moment!"
Ribbons laughed at that, "Yes, I think making flying humans is still a bit of a sci fi thing. Anyways maybe I could be of some assistance? I'm a bit knowledgeable on engineering."
"Oh really! That would be swell. Most of this stuff is really tedious robotics stuff."
"Hmm like mobile suits?" Ribbons inquired. "Ahh well no...I don't think I'd be working on war machines! It's civilian and manufacturing stuff." Kira replied, "Plus I'm a bit of a pacifist you know? That's why I love living in Orb. The war hasn't reached us and hopefully never will."
'Neutrality is simply a facade Kira,' Ribbons darkly thought, 'Either a neutral nation is doomed to fall from an attack, is stalling for time, or is in fact a front for another country. Now I wonder what Orb is of the three.'
"Ah well that is a lovely thought I suppose," Ribbons then said aloud, "Anyways you could put some work on some portable memory device and I'll take a look. It's the least I can do for being a freeloader."
With breakfast wrapping up, Ribbons took the liberty of using one of the spare computers to really start his adventure in this strange new world. Utilizing the wonders of the internet (or the CE's equivalent), Ribbons started absorbing information like a sponge. Any little bit of data he could get would have its use, although he made sure to not delve too deep into certain topics. He didn't know if there were any sort of spies or monitors, so he wanted to establish an information database without arousing too much suspicion since he was using a basic personal computer and not something military grade.
Basic history, various factions (he noticed despite it being a two faction war, that the Earth Alliance was made up of several sub factions. Somewhat similar circumstances as his old world), companies, politicians, technology, and so on. All were fair game to the innovade.
If he was going to save humanity from self destruction, he would have to find some powerful allies to aid him. For one, Ribbons definitely needed powerful mobile suits. A gundam would be preferable but this world lacked GN technology, so he suppose gundams would be out of the picture. Plus so far only one nation regularly used mobile suits and that was ZAFT, so he assumed he would have to find some sort of inside man there. 'Or I wait for someone else to make mobile suits...' he thought, resting his hand on his chin. Curiosity took hold of his mind as the green haired man looked through Kira's work. 'Hmmm definitely for non combative uses...or is it?' Using his own knowledge on mobile suit technology, Ribbons clearly saw certain patterns in Kira's work. 'Whoever you're doing this for Kira, it is most certainly for combat mobile suits. It's just currently disguised as much more mundane work. Why would that be though?'
Ribbons knew that unaltered humans, or naturals, had a hard time controlling mobile suits in this universe, some type of problems with OS. So to have extremely smart engineering students to slave over such programs might be a way around, but it still smelled fishy to the innovade. 'Why not use military researchers? And why is this happening in an Orb colony? Surely Orb wants to defend itself, but I'd expect this to occur on Orb itself and not some civilian colony in space. Not to mention Orb is a nation that accepts both coordinators and naturals, so I would think that they would concentrate on establishing a base of coordinator pilots and then branch out to naturals. Instead this work seems specifically for naturals.'
Running through his collected data, Ribbons has found some...interesting revelations thanks to the knowledge he gained from Kira's workload. Orb may have been neutral, but they obviously still do business with the other nations. On the surface, it's mainly trade and financial transactions, nothing too noteworthy even for a war. It's not like they're trading weapons or military supplies. 'But the first thing to do in a war is to make things appear as normal as possible,' Ribbons thought. He didn't know the exact picture but he could imagine some businessmen from Orb granting some covert operations to the Earth Alliance. ZAFT would likely not suspect an Orb colony to be a research front for natural friendly mobile suits unless they were overly paranoid. Given that Orb always keeps shouting its neutral stance in the face of the warring nations, it did seem unlikely that ZAFT would be suspicious. Then again Orb is still a nation based on Earth, and if there were...radicals that lumped the entire earth together, it could be possible.
'Though it's not like mobile suits would actually be built here, that'd be pretty stupid,' Ribbons sighed, rubbing his forehead, 'You'd have to somehow disguise all sorts of materials, then build them, and then somehow sneak them out given how much ZAFT would be watching the space lanes. Unless the EA is as good as Celestial Being, which I highly doubt, I can't see them consider this option lest they would want to get an Orb colony obliterated and create a political fuckup. In any case I'll keep this to myself. I wouldn't want to shatter Kira's hopes now would I.'
Ribbons decided to postpone his research and headed outside to explore, using some borrowed shoes and some sunglasses along with his attire from the previous night. 'Amazing that everything here appears so carefree and normal, when needless destruction of titanic proportions is occurring only a few thousand miles away,' He noted as he watched people go about their daily business in the city. Children were playing in a playground, construction workers were installing some new light fixtures, a cafe was bristling with activity to meet the morning demand of coffee and breakfast items.
Lost in thought, Ribbons didn't particularly see where he was going and bumped into someone. It wasn't a hard collision, but it definitely pushed him and the other person back a bit. "Oof!" a mature, feminine voice rang out.
As he collected himself, Ribbons started to apologize, "Oh sorry about that, guess I wasn't looking to where I was going...miss?" He looked at the person, more specifically the woman, in front of him. The women was of medium height and build, probably early to mid twenties. She had a youthful, but stern face with short black hair and violet eyes. "Oh well, no worries sir..." the mysterious woman said, though a bit of a stiff attitude. 'Given her body language, she doesn't seem to like me too much...'
"Ribbons Almark," he suddenly said.
"Uhh...Badiguel, Natarle Badiguel," Natarle replied, "If you could excuse me Mr. Almark, I really need to get somewhere."
"By all means," he replied, steeping to the side to let he through. Natarle muttered some sort of acknowledgment and went off. 'Hmm despite looking like any normal person, she seems to have a highly disciplined posture. A soldier or security woman perhaps? Plus despite never seeing me before nor having a particularly painful collision, she appeared to be on edge. Does she not like coordinators? Bit odd then to live in Orb.'
Seeing a free internet cafe, Ribbons decided to do some impromptu investigation. 'If she is a part of the police, it would certainly show up on the database.' He mused typing in Badiguel into the search engine (CE's equivalent to google). What he got however, seemingly confirmed his suspicions. 'The Badiguels are a prominent Earth military family. Natarle would most certainly be a part of the earth forces then and something tells me she isn't in Heliopolis for a vacation. This also explains the hostility to me, she probably doesn't have a high opinion of coordinators given many of them are her enemies. This coupled with my morning research creates a high probability that my mobile suit programing theory is correct. She could be here to monitor the progress. It is a shame I won't be able to monitor her activity however. I don't even exist in this universe so I have no form of ID, nor could I hack into camera systems without alerting cyber security.'
Ribbons left the cafe in defeat and went back to the Yamato residence, and as he walked in he found Kira working heavily on his computer. Birdy was flying around, being...well Birdy. "Oh hello Mr. Almark, had a nice walk?" The coordinator said looking up. "You know Kira, you don't need to call me mister. Makes me feel...old. Ribbons is just fine for me. And yes, I had a nice walk. Quite refreshing despite the artificial air. Pretty close to the real thing."
"Ah ok then mist- err Ribbons."
"Anyways, I think I got some ideas to help you with your work." The innovade said with a smile.
Ribbons and Kira were metaphorically shoveling though the masses of work the coordinator had, when Ribbons had a random thought come to him.
"Hey Kira, you said Birdy was made by a friend. Who was he? Birdy might not look like much but he is certainly a significant feat of robotics."
Kira blissfully looked as his green robotic pet, "Oh it was made by my best friend, Arthun Zala."
This certainly piqued Ribbons' interest. "Zala? Sounds familiar. Oh isn't that the name of a prominent family in the PLANTs and ZAFT?"
"Mmmhmm," Kira nodded. "We were pretty close when we were attending school on the moon. He was always protective of me and gave me Birdy as a farewell gift when his family moved."
"So...what is he doing now?"
Kira looked confused at Ribbons' question. "Umm...what do you mean?"
"If Athrun is indeed your best friend, you certainly should know what he'll be doing right? Plus his father, Patrick Zala, from what I gather is a pretty prominent politician. Surely Athrun must have been telling you what's been going on in his life."
Suddenly Kira looked quite depressed. "Oh...I uh...after he left to the PLANTs...we...we never really got in touch again. He really wanted me to go with him but may parents being naturals...decided that it would be better to live in Orb. I actually haven't spoke to him in...years." Suddenly Kira started to tear up. "Oh god...I never even called him once, not even when his mother died!" He choked out.
'His mother? Wait, I think I've read that one of the casualties from the nuking of Junius 7 was Patrick Zala's wife. Hmm that could certainly be problematic for such a prominent political family. That could easily sway Patrick to certain...tendencies and could influence what Athrun would do as a young man.'
"Well that certainly is pretty bad for a best friend. How about this, lets try contacting him now! I'm sure he'd love to hear you again. Shouldn't be too hard to at least get a hold of their residence." Ribbons, without even waiting for Kira's response, then started rummaging through public data on the PLANTs (like a phone directory). "Ah here we are! You have long distance right?" Ribbons joked, though Kira was still bewildered by his previous realization.
After dialing the Zala household number, he handed the phone over to Kira.
"Hello? This is Stanley, the Zala Household Secretary. How may I help you?"
"Oh umm sorry this is Kira, Kira Yamato? I was a childhood friend of Athrun Zala, I was wondering if you could get me in contact with him," Kira said, shaking a bit.
"Hmm we get that a lot, Athrun is certainly a popular boy with the girls...though you sound male so I'll give the benefit of the doubt...hmm hold on a minute...ah I'm sorry. Athrun isn't in right now, probably not for a long while."
Kira's eyes widened "O-oh really? Uhh...and why is that? School?"
"Hmmm no. He's on military duties right now. Although I can leave a message for you when he gets off."
Ribbons noticed Kira paling a bit from that. "Mi-mi-military? But Athrun hates war just as much as me! Why is he in the military?"
"Hmm I don't know his personal reason sir, I'm just a secretary. Maybe it has to do with the death of his mother, or the increasing threat of war. You'll have to ask him yourself I'm afraid." Stanley replied n a factual tone.
'I know Athrun's types. Young, impulsive, emotional teenagers. Doesn't take much to nudge him into the military despite Kira's knowledge on him.' Ribbons thought silently.
"Well...god I hope he doesn't do anything too dangerous...well ok then," Kira said, really shaking now, "Umm just tell him to contact me as soon as possible, here's some contact information..."
After Kira gave a way to communicate back, he hung up and slumped in his chair. "The military...Athrun why would you do such a dangerous thing!"
"I'm sure he'll explain it perfectly to you in time Kira, that is what friends are for right?" The innovade said, patting Kira on the shoulder.
Kira mumbled a bit, but then nodded. "Yea...I'm sure he has a good reason. Athrun always loved playing hero when we were kids. I'm sure he's doing it to make sure another Junius 7 is prevented." Kira then looked at Ribbons, finally smiling. "Ah, thank you Ribbons for suddenly bringing this up to me. It means a lot to finally get a hold, if only a small message, to my friend."
"It is no problem Kira Yamato," Ribbons replied, giving a genuine smile, "It's best to keep up with your friends. Never know what could happen. One day you're all together...the next...who knows."
Kira then excused himself as he needed to get some documents from one of his college buddies, leaving the innovade alone in solitude. 'I wonder why I did all of that,' Ribbons said in his head, 'I've...never really known anything about friendship. Oh sure all the things I said were some pretty generic friendship speech type stuff. But...what gave me any right to say any of that.' To Ribbons, friendship was something he never had, or desired. Yes there were the innovades but that was more of a family than friends, and in truth he didn't mind throwing them away as disposable pawns. He could and did sentence them to death without batting an eye, even killing one of them personally. Though to be fair, Regene shot first. The closet thing Ribbons had to a companion was Alejandro, but in the end he was just another stepping stone in Ribbons' conquest. 'And that's how the gundam meisters beat me,' he mused, looking out of the window, 'companionship and bravery, not ruthlessness and ambition.'
Taking a deep breath, Ribbons started to laugh. "Well then world, I hope you have prepared yourself for your savior. All I need is time and resources, and I will usher in a new age for humanity. Coordinators are interesting, but not the final step given their current limitations. Perhaps this world can also create Innovators...or perhaps some other...new type of human."
A few notes
I don't know if EA people who be here by now (or the archangel and gundams), it is a few weeks before the actual start of Seed. But I'd imagine it wouldn't be too far off for a few personal to be there. Feel free to correct me! Plus I don't know if they would have used fake IDs or something, so I went with no on that.
The final part in the chapter is basically me commenting on something I've always wondered. If there was an actual reason for Kira and Athrun to have no idea what each other was doing, then let me know! I find it utterly bizarre they were pretty ignorant of each other for several years despite being BFFs.
Reviews/feedback would be appreciated!
