You know if I had known that at the moment of my death that God would've given me the power to become any character I want, I admit that Gundam wouldn't have been the first choice that would've come into my mind. There were lots of other interesting people who I could've turned into, Darth Vader, Reinhard von Lohengramm, Jack Ryan, etc. Though I'm at least glad that I hadn't done something stupid such as wish for a ASIOAF or 40K ISOT. I would have never survived those universes. All in all my current situation wasn't at all bad though. Yes one day I will become the most hated name in all of the Earth Sphere, though judging from Sasro's alive status I have at least a full decade to change everything for the better for Zeon. Will I still fight the One Year War and liberate space from the vile federation? Hell Yeah! While it's true that Zeon may have been the one to fire the first shots after the infamous three-second warning, the war was honestly inevitable as the situation between both Earth and Zeon was going to lead to war sooner or later. Zeon just declared war first so that it could still win with the advantage of the mobile suits. While this went entirely against my conservative American principles, I would have to turn Zeon into a fascist state and become an autocrat in order to make sure that Zeon would be the victors this go around. The main difference with my future policies though is that I won't start any mass genocide and will transition Side 3 into an democracy after the war, hopefully with Garma as its head. Speaking of I now turn my attention back to my new family who is right in front of me with Garma in my lap. Even without the looming threat of an intersolar war dealing with the Zabi's was going to be a tough enough challenge. We were like a real life version of the Lannisters, though without the incest. 'At least Kycillia would never fall for any of us.' I then turn my face towards Degwin.
"Deg- Father, Do you know how I came to end up in the hospital like this?" This was something I was very curious about as my new memories of Gihren had the events of my accident being played in a rather hazy way. So really everything that I was now remembering was rather new to my knowledge. One thing that Gundam never really was successful at was establishing the backstories of their characters with the effort only being small expository scenes. Char and Sayla were the only two that came close with The Origins and even then we didn't know alot of information such as why the hell Char went batshit insane and decided to drop a colony on the Earth. 'That's right Char, hopefully I can keep the little turd in line before he kills half my family. Then again Kycillia is responsible for the other half. While I killed my father. What a lovely little family we are.'
"Really Gihren you don't remember what happened to you on New Years? How you got run over by a drunk after coming home from a party with Dozle?" 'Huh, it appears that it received the same fate in both worlds. At least Gihren survived this one.'
"Wait party? Why was I at a party?" That wasn't something that sounded very Gihren-esque.
Upon mentioning this Dozle broke out into what I would call manly tears and looked extremely guilty. "I'm so sorry about this Gihren. I forced you to come along with me to the party because I felt like you needed to socialize more and make new friends. We left earlier in the night because you were bored, after we got out the car came running towards you and I was too late to save you."
"We all thought you might die Gihren, I was so scared," said Garma who was now clutching me tightly.
"Hey everyone it's okay no need to be upset now. Dozle you couldn't have known this would happen and I would probably have felt the same way in your position. Besides I'm fine now really, after all i get a few days of sleep and get to have an all you can eat buffet of wonderful hospital food." When I said this everyone in the family looked back at me as if I had been replaced by an alien space bat, 'which I might've been, still don't know why I'm here really.' I guess they expected Gihren to go into a full rant or get all pissy at Dozle, not be calm and make some jokes.'Note to self, MUST improve family relations.'
"By the way, whatever happened to that drunk that tried to run me over?" "Oh you don't need to worry about that Gihren. Father asked me to handle the situation so you won't be seeing that man ever again", Kycillia said with a sadistic and prideful grin. Her saying that sent some goosebumps down my back, as from both my memories from Gihren and the show perfectly suggested that her "taking care of the problem" probably involved some hitmen and a dumpster somewhere in Side 3. Can't say I feel sad for the guy though. Another drunk killed my original body so I wasn't going to be light on the issue of alcohol when I became Prime Minister.
Speaking of politics I turn to Sasro, "Hey Sasro, did anything happen while I was in a coma. A colony blow up? Relations with the federation go down the toilet?"
"No nothing really that exciting has gone on in the news besides the spread of info about your hit and run. Things within the party are calm right now due to everyone on recesss for Christmas, and the Federation hasn't really made any moves yet." 'Good. So I can begin work in peacetime long before the idea of mobile suits even enters anyone's head.'
"By the way what date is it?" "January 4th, 0067." Interesting this meant that I had almost 12 years until the start of the One Year War. Twelve years to keep Zeon on the roughly right side of the moral compass, prepare them military and make sure the welfare of Side 3 was kept at very high standards when the eventual blockade happened. Several plans started forming in my head from several Zeonwanks I wrote in the past as well as some playthroughs of Gihren's Greed. This, this could work.
Suddenly the Doctor came into the room and looked very nervous from the appearance of every single member of the Zabis in the room, "Um Mr. Zabi, could you and your family please leave the room now that you got to speak with the patient? I need to do an evaluation right now and I can't exactly work with non-personnel in the room."
"Can't you see we're trying to have a family moment in here?!" yelled Dozle.
"I don't want to go! I want to stay with Gihren, it's the first time I've seen him in days and I can't leave his side." said Garma. I then smiled at my brothers comments. While we may be the worst portrait for your dream family at least you could always count on Garma and Dozle at the end of the day.
"It's alright guys. Doc needs to do his work and it wouldn't be best with you here watching everything. It's not like I'm going to leave any time soon so you can come back at a later time whenever you feel like it."
"Well you heard the doctor, Gihren's alright so no need to stay here. Time to go." 'Thanks Kycillia, your just a real charmer now aren't you.'
The Zabi's start to leave one by one with Garma and Dozle providing the longest goodbyes. Degwin is the last one out the door but before he leaves I ask him a request. "Father." "Yes Gihren? "Could you bring me some history books the next time you visit? Preferably on the Universal Century and the Cold War era."
"Why do you want books on that?" Degwin asks slightly puzzled. "I need something to stimulate my brain while I'm in the hospital, might as well get some more knowledge in the process." In truth I was dying to know what happened post 1979 in the UCverse. I love Tomino's work but once again he was absolutely lazy when it came to writing the lore besides the basics.
"Sure Gihren." With that final answer the future Sovereign of Zeon walks out the door.
January 11th, 0067
For the past week I've been in the hospital undergoing various therapy and treatment from the doctors. While something like this would've taken months in my time, the fact that we had advanced space medical technology accelerated the process quickly to the point where I only walked with a slight limp today and would be out of the hospital tomorrow. During that time I've had visits from friends, well mostly political allies, sadly Gihren never developed any true friendships in his life; and multiple visits from my family. Dozle and Garma where the ones who made the most visits daily where Dozle would come to escort Garma after school and they would both tell me of their days with Dozle's military exploits and Garma's lessons that day. Both Degwin and Sasro made less frequent visits but they still checked on my condition on a regular basis. Kycillia as expected, was the one who payed the least amount of attention as she stopped coming after the first day since in her opinion there was no need to come unless something drastic changed in my condition. Yeah making my new younger sister like me was definitely on top of my list. I had trouble with my real life sibling before in that she could be greatly annoying at times though we still had common interests and kept to ourselves. At least I didn't have to worry about her shooting me at the end of a war.
As of right now I was currently on my bed reading the history textbooks that Degwin kept his promise on. It turned out that history had largely diverged during and after the Reagan administration in a great many ways. Apparently the biggest change came with the successful completion of the Star Wars Program in the 80's. Something that was logistically impossible but could've happened according to anime logic. In the 90's there was apparently a Third World War as the end of the Soviet Union went something similar to "Crisis in the Kremlin" with China also falling apart due to the democracy movement. America was able to successfully come out of that one as Star Wars protected the west while it got to bring down nuclear hellfire on Asia, starting the environmental breakdown that became such a crisis in the OYW-era. But to be perfectly honest I don't see what the big fuss is about earth's environment. It looked fine in the anime and the reason it did is because of that exact reason, nothing too bad happened. In fact it really was modern day Earth with a slightly worse pollution setting that would've been one or two decades ahead in terms of pollution and other factors such as deforestation and desertification. Hell it's getting worse but not so bad that Char had to drop a fucking meteor and start a nuclear winter. But anyways I'm digressing, back to the real history. So in 1999 after the Third World War and basically the Second and Third world going to complete shit, the Earth Federation was formed from the United Nations to bring peace to the world and solve its problems. At first everything went well with peace and economic prosperity coming back to the planet while space colonization was beginning to start. But the problem was that the Earth Federation became too centralized and became a total one world government with the start of the Universal Century in 001 (2045). After that everything goes the same as the lore. Laplace's box still happens (don't worry, I intend to abuse that fully in the upcoming war), the forced immigration to the sides came about, Zeon Zum Deikun became Space Hippie Jesus and started his Contolist movement on side 3, the Republic of Munzo was founded and now we were at this current situation.
Speak of the devil, as I'm currently reading a book on Lunar development, a knock is on my door and when I look up to see who enters it's nothing more than the founder of Zeon himself, Zeon Zum Deikun. Now many people may wonder what my personal opinion of Deikun was. Well in my old life I had never thought much of the man as he was hardly mentioned beyond flashbacks of Char and Sayla's lives. From what I did read or watch from viewpoints of the other characters was that he was an idealistic man who would've been unprepared to lead Zeon into its necessary steps for the One Year War. With Gihren's memories however, I had a personal perspective of the man. Personally, I now thought of him as a simple fool who got lucky in his life. With all of Gihren's memories I now learned fully of the contents of Contolism, and frankly it was a bullshit philosophy that was nothing but hippie nonsense about how we would all reach enlightenment in space and that humanities true home was in the colonies, even though Earth is our homeworld and there are literally millions of other planets that we can settle upon. If it weren't for the development of Newtypes that was proved later on in the show then he would've been nothing but a lunatic. It wasn't exactly helpful that the man would act irrationally in times of stress as the opening of the first episode of Origins proved. Honestly if it weren't for his charisma and apparent cult of personality my father would've taken charge decades ago and make the Principality of Degwin. Still at least his character is not a asshole so I could respect his efforts for peace somewhat. Also since I currently had a job in the government as Secretary of Colonial Development (yeah I might be young but Sasro is already in charge of Party Propaganda at the age of 20, and Kycillia is in charge of State Security at the age of 12!), I couldn't exactly be rude to the guy.
"Prime Minister! What an unexpected surprise. I would've thought that you would be too busy at work to visit me." "
Oh nonsense Gihren, what type of friend to your father would I be if I didn't visit his injured son and one of my best workers in the hospital?" 'I wouldn't exactly call us the best of friends Deikun. Either I or Degwin may or may not have caused your death in the future.' "I'm sorry I couldn't come earlier but the Federation has been causing a mess as Prime Minister Jorge Marcenas earlier announced that the colonies would not receive any form of colonial autonomy. Since then I've been trying to deal with worried Side 3 politicians on one side and greedy Earthnoid representatives on the other."
"Those Terran bastards. We're practically the lifeblood of the Federation so they should at least give us some form of self rule."
"Terran, Gihren? You mean like the old Latin word?"
"Yeah why not? No offense Mr. Deikun but I'm not exactly a big fan of the whole Spacenoid and Earthnoid terms. They don't really sound too serious to me and I like the usage of Terran and Spacer better."
"Hmm interesting. I'm sticking with Spacenoid but I think I'll be using the word Terran in my future speeches. Sound more alien and creates a better divide." 'Well at least we got that dumb part of the original series out of the way. Oh look. I've already caused my first divergence, Drunkrobot would be proud.' "Anyways how have you been doing Gihren?"
"Fine relatively speaking sir. I'm all healed up so I should be heading back home tomorrow. I wished to get payback to the bastard who did this but apparently he was later found dead from an apparent overdose."
"I'm glad that your alright Gihren. Don't tell your father this but I've always bragged about how you're such a fine leader and how you'll one day become the Prime Minister of our great nation." Wait did Zeon Zum Deikun just compliment me, Gihren Zabi? Well someone break out the champagne because one of the craziest things in the universe happened.
"Sir, that's way too much of you, I simply do what I'm needed and what Zeon asks of me, both you and the country of course."
Deikun then laughs at that little remark, "No Gihren you underestimate yourself. I've seen you work patiently at everything you do and you write great speeches at every one of your events. I'm not going to last forever in this world sadly and Zeon could use men like you to lead us further into the wonders of space." Wow, never before had I heard something so heartfelt yet weirdly prophetic at the same time considering what would happen next year.
Getting uncomfortable with the current subject I then bring up a new topic that was close to Zeon, "Excuse my asking sir, but how are lady Astraia and the kids doing?"
"They're doing very well thanks for asking. I'm sorry they couldn't be here but I didn't want Casval or Artesia catching a sickness so they're at home with their mother watching them. As of right now Casval is receiving the top scores in his class while Artesia is loving everyday at Kindergarten. I am curious though of why you would ask of their condition."
"Well sir you see I've been wanting Garma to find a close friend for a while. He's very social with all his classmates but he's also lonely since they don't really interact with him too much due to him being my father's son. I was hoping that maybe him and Casval could hang out together since they're both the same age and would probably get along."
"That's a great idea actually. I have to admit Casval is a bit of a recluse these days, I'm sure that Garma would be more than enough to get him to interact with kids his own age." 'Good, phase one complete.' While most people may have thought I was simply helping my baby brother's social life, in reality I was trying to prevent his assassination from the future Char. OTL Char himself said that Garma was a great friend and that the only reason he had to kill him was because of his status as a Zabi, which he later regretted very much. If I get the two now-kids to form a close friendship then there is a higher chance that Char will stay loyal to Zeon and I won't have to make a grand propaganda speech for my dead brother. It may not have been much right now but baby steps could later form large leaps in progress. For the next half hour we have a rather pleasant talk about the current state of affairs in Side 3 and the job I'll need to do when I get back to work. Deikun then proceeds to leave with a promise to see me when I go back to work Monday morning. Turns out the man wasn't bad as a person. However, I had a bad feeling that he would still die the same way even with my current presence in the Universal Century.