Episode 12: The Broken World
A Strike-II Gundam breaks down from the clouds and flies over the coastline. The pilot examines multiple screens that pop up and disappear on the monitor displaying enhanced zoomed-in images of the terrain below. The pilot presses a button and all of the small screens disappear save one, which expands to a much greater size; on the coast of the Andaman Sea, no more than a dozen kilometers north of Phuket Island, lies the Minerva, dead in the water. Because of the loss of one of its wings, the Minerva lies at an slight angle, smoke lazily pouring out of the side of the hull and into the sky. The Strike II descends and circles the Minerva in a lazy oval; the pilot visually confirming its ZAFT registry. The Strike II makes one final fly-by of the Minerva, ascends, and returns to the Takemikazuchi.
Shinn Asuka is led into a small camp in the forest-no more than a haphazard collection of tents-and is thrown to the ground, bound and gagged. He tries to lift himself into a sitting position, but his legs are bound together as well and he falls back down. The men that brought Shinn to the camp laugh derisively and walk past the captive ZAFT pilot. Shinn groans, and tries to lift himself again. This time, a young girl (appearing to be roughly 10 or 11 years of age) approaches Shinn and helps him shift his weight. Shinn starts to thank her, but she runs away without saying a word. Shinn leans his back against a tree and has a short flashback of his fight with the Windams. Shinn quietly calls himself an idiot, and asks himself how he's going to escape.
Shinn observes the small camp: all of the men carry automatic weaponry, some guns in better condition than others, and most of them are scarred or bandaged or injured in some other way. Contrary to what he expected from a military camp, most of the people Shinn saw were either women or children. A thin man holding a slightly-rusted AK-47 automatic rifle stands a few meters away from Shinn, watching his every move. Shinn sighs, and closes his eyes. In the center of the camp, near a small cooking fire, a trio of large, older men converse. One of them thinks they should let Shinn go because they don't want any trouble with ZAFT, the other toys with the idea of holding Shinn hostage and using him to get weapons, food and medical supplies. The third and shortest man, speaking with an air of authority the other two lack, speaks up and says that they will keep Shinn in the camp until ZAFT comes for him, if they come, and what happens to him will depend on the situation. The other two men bow their heads slightly in acquiescence
An old Alliance model Strike-Dagger steps out of the jungle and onto a rocky outcropping. Three short beams lance out from within the dense forest and strike the Dagger in the torso, melting through the armor and killing the pilot. The Dagger falls to its knees and then collapses on the ground with a thundering crash. A single ZAKU-prototype mobile suit exits the forest and stands on the same rocky outcropping the Dagger had been, and rotates it's large pink mono-eye sensor back and forth to get a good survey of the area. Inside the cockpit, Heine Westenfluss wipes sweat from his forehead and sighs, complaining that the jungle is too humid. The ZAKU's foot kicks at the downed Dagger, and Heine wonders what the Alliance military is doing in the middle of the jungle. From his position above the tree-canopy, Heine spots a pair of Daggers, painted dark green-and-brown to match the terrain, move down the slope of the hill toward the coast. One of the Daggers spots the second ZAKU and opens fire. Before the ZAFT pilot can respond, the two Daggers fire off a half-dozen shots, cutting through the ZAKU's left shoulder, severing the arm, and incinerating several nearby trees.
Trying desperately to escape, the ZAKU boosts upward and tries to fly backward in the air, but is hit in the lower-chest region and crashes into the dense forest. The two Daggers approach the incapacitated ZAKU, but a pair of short beam-blasts destroy the head of the first Dagger, and a beam-tomahawk penetrates all the way through the second Dagger's torso from behind. Heine pulls his beam-tomahawk out from the Dagger and angles the barrel of his beam rifle at the cockpit hatch of the first Dagger just as the pilot emerges with his hands up. Rather than a traditional pilot-suit, the Dagger's pilot is clad in an archaic olive-drab uniform. Heine wonders what the Dagger pilots were thinking, to fight in such an unmanageable place, and looks up at the perpetually-gray sky above.
A tiny green light trailing smoke streaks up from a point east of Heine's position, igniting and expanding into a signal flare. Heine fires his beam rifle three times, destroying both of the Dagger's arms and one of its legs before shouting at the enemy pilot to leave. As the Dagger's pilot flees, Heine opens up his ZAKU's cockpit hatch and shouts at the allied pilot, now struggling to extricate his one-armed mobile suit from the dense foliage, ordering him to return to the Minerva and inform them to head to their current position to recover the Impulse Gundam and its pilot. Heine then helps the other ZAKU stand, and watches it fly back to the Minerva before leaping above the trees and making his way to the source of the signal-flare.
A long line of officers snap salutes and Cagalli Yula Atha as she leads Talia Gladys across the deck of ORB's flagship, the carrier Takemikazuchi. Captain Todaka orders a large company of engineers to help with repairs to the Minerva, and to provide the ZAFT vessel with any additional resources they need for repairs. Talia looks across the narrow gap of sea separating the Takemikazuchi from the Minerva and sighs, saying that for all the faith Durandel put in the Minerva, her first mission as a member of FAITH is off to a poor start. Cagalli tells her not to worry too much about it; the Minerva will be as good as new in no time. Talia laughs a bit at this, and reminds Cagalli that the Minerva is new.
Inside of a meeting room on the port-side of the Takemikazuchi's bridge-tower, Talia and Arthur sit down at the table. Cagalli looks out across the Andaman sea through one of the wide floor-to-ceiling windows for a moment before joining them, her finger softly running across a small pearl-ring on her left hand. Sitting down opposite Talia, Cagalli motions for the captain to look outside. Cagalli comments that in the half-month since the impact the skies have been cloudy. The sun has not been seen anywhere on the Earth since the asteroid fell. The trees will die soon, and much of the planet's farmland is completely unusable-it's only a matter of time before famine and disease claim more lives than the impact Cagalli frowns and continues her description of the planet's status, informing Talia that the political situation might be just as bad.
Electromagnetic interference has utterly disabled all forms of long-range communication; even radio waves can scarcely cover more than a few kilometers Because of the perpetual cloud cover no one can establish a direct laser-link with any of the communications satellites, and it doesn't look like any real form of mass-communication will be present on Earth until long after everyone is dead. Cagalli's frown worsens as she continues; the Earth Alliance is all but destroyed. Shortly after the impact the Eurasian Confederation seceded and the Atlantic Federation simply ceased communication with anyone. There are reports of various inter and multi-national wars throughout Europe and Africa, and given that most of the undamaged food supplies and agricultural centers in eastern Asia (controlled by the Eurasian Confederation and the Democratic Republic of China, respectively) escaped direct harm, that area will become a battleground soon. The Chinese government is holding its people together fairly well, but the story is different in the surrounding nations.
Cagalli motions at the window again, this time directing Talia's gaze to the coast. As Cagalli speaks, fleeting images of camouflaged soldiers creeping through the jungle appear. Cagalli says that many South-east Asian countries have fallen into a state of civil war: the nations have severely limited resources that the government wishes to keep for itself to the detriment of the common man. This oppression has forced many civilians to take up arms against the government in order to survive. Cagalli grimaces at this point, commenting that the civil war in the Thai peninsula has been getting increasingly violent. It's almost enough, she says, to long for the days when people fought each other over petty ideals of humanity, rather than food.
As the sun sets behind the trees, Shinn sits cross-legged in the dirt. The girl that had helped him earlier approaches him again, bringing him some soup. Shinn thanks her from before and asks for her name; she introduces herself as Sumalee Narong. Shinn asks her if she knows what's going to happen to him, and she says she doesn't know. Shinn doesn't say anything else, but Sumalee simply stands staring at him for a long period of time. Sumalee eventually musters the courage to ask Shinn if he's really from space, and Shinn laughs, asking her if "that's all it is." Shinn smiles and starts telling her about life in the colonies. When it gets dark, a woman calls Sumalee over to her to help her carry water to the camp from a nearby stream. The little girl leaps up and turns to smile at Shinn, saying that he's now her friend and calling him a "space-man". Shinn shrugs and makes a non-committal response as Sumalee runs off towards her mother.
At the site of the crashed Impulse Gundam, Heine helps a group of ORB engineers lift the fallen mobile suit up from the ground and load it onto a large skiff. A ZAKU pilot runs up to Heine and tells him that there's still no sign of the pilot. Heine groans and stares at the Gundam, commenting that the pilot sure is troublesome; it's appropriate that such an impulsive pilot would be given the Impulse Gundam. Heine sighs and tells the ORB workers to hurry up; they will have to wait to continue their search for the missing pilot until the morning.
Shinn watches absently as the little girl's mother returns to the outskirts of the camp carrying the water from the nearby stream; Sumalee, also carrying water runs past her mother to the center of the camp. The Woman stops for a moment at the edge of the forest and sets the bucket of water down, sighing; Shinn stares in shock as a brown hand seems to appear from out of nowhere, reaching out through the trees with a sharp knife and cutting through the woman's throat. With a soft choking sound the woman's head falls backward, spraying a fountain of blood forward at a group of small children that had been playing on the ground nearby. Before anyone has time to scream, a company of soldiers rapidly emerge from the forest shooting a hailstorm of bullets around the camp. Tents fall to the ground as the wooden poles supporting them are shredded into a cloud of splinters.
The guerrillas rush toward the attacking soldiers, attacking them with bullets, knives and their bare hands as the woman and children flee the camp. Shinn ducks and tries to crawl away. Shinn manages to find a stray knife and cut his bonds, but before he can run away a small figure rushes past him. Turning, Shinn sees Sumalee running into the fray crying, shouting "mother" over and over again. Sumalee makes it to her mother's body and presses her head against her mothers (which was cut through with such force that it was nearly completely severed from the neck) and drenching herself in her mother's blood. As the guerrillas chase off the attacking government forces, a lone soldier approaches Sumalee with a knife in hand-preoccupied with the other attackers, none of the defending guerrillas notice.
Shinn shouts a warning and runs at Sumalee, pushing her out of the way just as the soldier thrusts his knife forward, burying the blade deep in the soft flesh in the center of Shinn's elbow. Shinn screams in pain and punches the soldier in the face, and a defending guerrilla-the old man that seemed to be the leader of the group-fires his pistol at the back of the soldier's head splattering blood across Shinn's face. Shocked by the carnage, Shinn takes a step back. Shinn trips and falls down; his hands hit the ground in an effort to support his weight and land in a warm, sticky material. Shinn's eyes dilate and his body freezes. Slowly, he looks down to find his hands resting inside the hollowed remains of a massacred child. The child's chest has been completely torn out; Shinn's eyes rest on his pale, lifeless eyes and Shinn screams in horror.
Episode 12 - END
Next Episode: Shinn's Sorrow