Julia got up early the next morning and rushed to school so she could meet with Mrs. Kinley before class started. She walked up to the office and knocked on the door. "Who is it?" said a quiet voice inside.
"It's me, Julia," she called back.
"Come on in."
Julia slowly pushed open the door and peered inside. She'd never had a reason to go into this room before, but it was nice enough, if a little cramped. The desk and two chairs barely fit, and most of the desk was covered with neat stacks of paper. Mrs. Kinley was a short, red-haired woman with a thin face and a warm smile. She smiled at Julia as she came in and nodded towards the free chair as she swept several papers into a pile and then set those on top of another pile, giving her a little free space on the desk. "Just take a seat. How are you, Julia?"
"I'm fine," she replied automatically, sitting down. "How are you?"
"Busy, but I'm very excited about your proposed project. Have you given any thought as to how you want to approach it?"
"Yeah, actually, I had some ideas. I know that I'm going to research everything that's known about them, see if I can dig up something interesting."
"That's good, although you know there's very little information about them available," Mrs. Kinley said, nodding her head.
"Yeah, I know, but there wouldn't be much to the project if I didn't have something about them. But what I was really going to concentrate on is the situation around the pilots, the political situation that led to the situation that produced the Gundams. I mean, everyone knows that the wars had been going on for years before the Gundams showed up, I was going to look at why they escalated right when the Gundams showed up."
"Well, the obvious answer would be that the Gundams were responsible for the escalation," her teacher responded.
"Yeah, but that's what I want to look at. You don't usually see entire wars changing because of the actions of a few terrorists, no matter what they do. I want to see if they really were responsible for the escalation, or if they were just a part of it, or if they just had really bad timing," she grinned at the little joke. Mrs. Kinley did not. In fact, she seemed to be getting more and more tense as the conversation went on. Julia killed the smile and continued, "I was also thinking about trying to figure out what the hell the colonies were thinking, when they sent the Gundams."
"The colonies?"
"Well, yeah," Julia said, surprised at the question. "It takes a lot of money to make a Gundam, I think - I'm going to have to look into that as well - but just the supplies to build it cost a lot. I think that someone, well, a lot of people in the colonies must have known about it, even if it's just a little part of the process. So I was going to look at that, too, try to figure out why those people thought that they were making the right choice."
"The right choice?!" Mrs. Kinley exclaimed, her voice rising slightly in shock.
"Yeah, well, you don't usually do things because you think that you're doing something evil. I bet even the Gundam pilots thought that they were doing the right thing, somehow."
"Extremists don't always need a reason."
"Yeah, I guess that could be it," Julia said with a shrug. "But they did end up saving the planet, so they can't have been all bad."
"They were terrorists." That was delivered in a flat, unemotional voice, and Julia stared at her for a second before deciding that it would be absolutely completely rude to ask her what her problem was. Sure they were terrorists, that was a given, but even they had to have reasons for their actions, no matter how twisted they might seem to normal people. No one would ever give Gundams to people who were absolutely insane. On the other hand, she knew that one of them had completely destroyed several colonies, the same colonies they were supposed to protect. That wasn't sane by anyone's definition.
"I don't know, I guess I was just going to see what I could find out, and then see where it led me. I figure that if I don't have something in a few months, then we can try to figure out something else. Does that sound OK?"
"That sounds like it will be an excellent project. The one suggestion I have is that you might want to speak to some people with some firsthand experience, either ones who survived some of the later battles, or those who had friends and family who were killed by the Gundams," she said, her voice slightly bitter. "There are quite a few of them still around, the war wasn't that long ago."
Julia nodded, although she preferred to work with hard data, Mrs. Kinley had a good point - she could learn a lot about the times just from talking to people about them, especially if she could find a couple of soldiers who'd actually seen the Gundams.
"I'll do that." Julia scooped up her backpack just as the first bell rang. "Thanks, Mrs. Kinley. I'll talk to you later this week?"
"Yes, I'm here every morning, just stop by, although some advance notice would be nice."
"No problem. See you later."
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By the time that the end of the day rolled around, Julia (having devoted not only her free period but most of her lunch to research) had most of the basic well-known facts about the Gundams. She knew that once people hit middle school the number of reports written about the Gundams decreased significantly, and once you hit high-school they disappeared entirely. This drop-off wasn't because of a lack of interest, it was because you had to write longer papers in high-school, and there simply wasn't enough information available to substantiate a report of any length. Since she had some free time at the end of the day, she called up the information on her laptop and reviewed it.
On April 7, 195, exactly twenty years to the day after the pacifist Heero Yuy was assassinated, the first of the Gundams was sighted and shot down somewhere over East Asia. It was later discovered that the other four had also landed secretly at the same time. No record existed of what happened, but a week later that first Gundam, later code named 01, was held responsible for the destruction of a base several hundred miles from that point, so obviously both the Gundam and pilot survived being shot down. Unless, of course, that there had originally been six Gundams, two of them identical, so that when the first was destroyed, the second took it's place... no, that was an interesting idea, but there was no way that she'd ever find out if that was the truth or not, it was a better idea to stick with the official story and assume that both the Gundam and pilot had survived. It was more likely, anyway, than there being two identical Gundams, since none of the others looked alike.
At about the same time, the other four Gundams appeared, methodically destroying base after base, and almost never leaving any survivors. They had never been known to attack civilian facilities, concentrating entirely on Oz/Alliance bases. Here Julia paused and looked over her notes. The resources she'd consulted varied almost randomly, sometimes referring to the bases as 'Oz' bases, sometimes as 'Alliance' bases. She'd been under the impression that they were the same organization, but something about the way they talked about the groups made her question her assumption. She made a quick note that she had to go look that up later. Anyway, things continued like that for some time - the only major event in that period being when Gundam 01 killed all of the 'doves' of the Alliance, all of the generals who were looking for peace. Here Julia made another note, she couldn't remember exactly what it was or where she'd heard it before, but something about that didn't seem to fit. She'd hunt that down later.
Then, for no apparent reason, the Gundams ceased their attacks. There was no official reason given for it, and Julia didn't trust that. Now, she knew that the 'officials' weren't responsible for the actions of the Gundam pilots, but she was almost positive that they knew something about what had happened. Why? It was simple - there were no official theories put out as to why the Gundam attacks had ceased. She would have thought that there would be at least a few of them out there, but there weren't any. The only theories were coming from civilians and other organizations not connected with the military. What she took from that was that the military knew something, but was trying to conceal that knowledge, but they went too far in the other direction by pretending to know absolutely nothing. After all the hacking she'd done, she didn't believe that the military was ever really completely ignorant. She wasn't sure whether or not she'd be able to use this, even if she managed to find some evidence to prove her theory correct, chances were she'd get it from a place she couldn't site when she finished her project.
After that things were quiet for a month or so. Then the colonies suddenly cut the Gundam pilots loose, claiming that they no longer had any support in the colonies and declaring them criminals. As soon as that broadcast hit the air (and Julia was very proud of herself for picking up on this detail), the Gundam pilots attacked a couple of bases, stole transports, and headed for space. Julia couldn't even begin to imagine what had prompted those actions, but she'd been caught for a second by imagining the shock the pilots must have felt, how betrayed they must have felt, and rightly so. She immediately tried to throw off that idea, she was trying to stick to facts here, not her own imaginings.
This was when things started to get really interesting, and very vague, because it was all within the military. The one well-known fact was that Gundam 02 had been captured and then destroyed by one of Oz's up-and-coming stars. The pilot had been captured, too, but there was very little mention of him. Apparently at some point there'd been some posters of him up in the colony, but they were long since gone, and since she was on Earth, the chances of her finding someone who had actually seen one were slim. Which was really too bad, because it would have been really cool to find out what one of the Gundam pilots actually looked like. At any rate, he must have escaped at some point, because several weeks later, a second Gundam 02 (she decided, since there seemed to be at least two versions of every Gundam, she'd name them a, b, c, chronologically for as many different versions as she found), along with Gundam 05b (no mention of what happened to 05a), blew up most of a base on the moon and then disappeared into space. This raised a lot of interesting questions, like where had the second set of Gundams come from, how did they get to the moon, and what had the Gundam pilots been doing there? All of these were very important, and none of the answers were in any official explanation.
She was under the impression that several of the pilots had been captured during this time, but that information was lost with the major event of that time frame, the destruction of several colonies by Gundam 01b. This was completely inexplicable, given the previous actions by the Gundams. They'd never even attacked a civilian installation before, the closest they'd come had been attacking military academies, what would make one of them destroy a colony that contained thousands of innocent civilians, the same people who'd originally sent the Gundams to Earth. Given, they'd been betrayed by the colonies, but that didn't seem like enough of an explanation. The only real clue she had there was the knowledge that just before the colonies were destroyed, they'd announced that they would be arming themselves.
That Gundam was finally taken out by two Oz mobile suits. There was no record of the two pilots who flew those suits. None whatsoever. And that was suspicious enough on it's own, she would have thought that the pilots would be named heroes, at least. But no mention of them was ever made.
It was at that time that the moon base was destroyed, and it was a very long time before either Gundams 04 or 03 (either version) were seen. Actually, 03 appeared to have disappeared completely for several months. 04b (no note of what happened to 04a) and 01a were both next seen at the battle in the Sank kingdom where Sank surrendered to the Oz forces (Julia noticed that the books used Oz almost all the time now). The ruler of the Sank kingdom, Relena Peacecraft, was taken into custody by Oz and some other group that she couldn't find the name of (that led to another note, this wasn't quite as straightforward as she'd thought it would be), and subsequently named Queen of the World. Julia wasn't entirely clear on how that had happened, either, although her acceptance had seemed to be universal. The Gundams disappeared, aside from a few attacks in space.
That was when White Fang showed up. Julia wasn't quite sure what they were supposed to be, but they appeared to be a terrorist organization that had a ton of mobile suits (called mobile dolls) that supposedly represented the colonies and demanded their independence from Oz, their demand culminating with an attack from a huge spaceship that somehow ended up in their hands. The attack was against Earth itself, and they declared themselves willing to destroy the entire Earth, if that was what it took.
There was one other fact that she'd made note of, not because of any significance to her project, but because of personal interest. In most of the books she'd looked at, there was at least a passing reference about the death of the head of Winner, Inc., and then another short note saying that the son had suddenly appeared to take over the family business. The Winner son that they were talking about was her uncle Quatre, and some quick math told her that he'd have been her age when he took over the company. She couldn't imagine how horrible it had been for him to lose his father, and to be thrust into responsibility like that. She reminded herself to give her fathers an extra hug when she got home.
After that, nothing was very clear. There was a huge battle in outer space involving White Fang, the Gundams, and the forces of the World Nation. Somehow, in all the destruction, one particular battle between Gundam 01b and some other special suit that she didn't recognize ended up getting broadcast to the entire world, with a woman's voice telling people to look at the futility of war. (She'd actually gotten a copy of the transmission and had already watched it several times. The sheer power contained in those machines was both amazing and horrible.) Then that transmission got cut off, and the huge battleship was seen plummeting towards Earth, where it would almost certainly destroy everything. Then it exploded. There was no explanation given, it just exploded. Then Gundam 01b made an amazing dive and managed to get in front of one of the largest pieces that was heading for Earth, and blew it apart with an energy gun.
Because they'd fought White Fang and probably saved the world, the Gundam pilots were allowed to disappear, and no official mention was made of an attempt to locate them. They reappeared only once, during the Mariemaia incident (most of which was also classified, this time by the Preventers), and then disappeared again.
Julia sat back and stared. It was a lot of information, but the number of holes in the story was staggering, and by the number of notes that she'd made, Julia knew she had a lot of background research to do before she could even hope to understand what had happened back then.
-----------
When she got home, she and Daddy finished hooking up the engine, then turned it on. It ran remarkably smoothly, considering how old it was, and a low whine could be heard throughout the house. Daddy informed her that when stress was placed on the engine, the way most really good mobile suit pilots did, that low whine would rise to a screech that almost hurt the ears. The power in the thing was absolutely incredible, and if she hadn't been so interested in her new project, Julia probably would have asked if she could run some tests on it before they started to dismantle it. As it was, Daddy sent her to go find some schematics on the thing so that she'd know what they were doing when they started taking it apart tomorrow.
Since it was her night to cook, Julia threw together a casserole and then put it in the oven to cook. She'd just finished that when Tousan got home early. She missed him coming in the door, and instead went to the 'workout' room. It was one room in the house that they'd basically left empty, except for a couple of mirrors and putting down a mat on the floor. She sank to her knees and sat on her heels with her eyes closed, waiting. She'd taken this position on purpose - there was a slight draft coming into the room from the hall, and here she could feel it on her face.
When the breeze on her face disappeared for several seconds, she opened her eyes and raised her hands just in time to block the kick that Tousan was aiming at her face. By now she knew better than to try to absorb the full force of his kick with her arms, and instead allowed him to knock her backwards. She rolled over her shoulder and came up to her feet, hands held in front of her, eyes on her father. He was dressed in his normal green tank-top, but instead of jeans he was wearing a light pair of loose pants, similar to her gi. The first time they practiced together, he'd worn spandex shorts, of all things, and she'd nearly had a fit. She still hadn't managed to explain to him exactly what was wrong with him wearing spandex, but she'd convinced him that it really wasn't worth the trouble she'd cause when he wore it. Parents were not supposed to wear spandex, no matter if they had the bodies for it or not. She was not going to see her father in spandex.
Without a word, he came after her again. His fists were clenched, and she could see the tension in his arms extending up into his shoulders. She knew from experience that trying to punch him was more like trying to punch a brick wall than an actual human being, and that she was better off trying to kick him or throw him. She ducked under his first punch and kicked him in the stomach, then moved on past him, trying to take advantage of her smaller size and better speed. She was dimly aware of Daddy watching from the doorway, but she didn't have the time to think about that now.
She caught his hand as he tried to grab her, ducked under it, keeping a tight grip so that she twisted the joint, and applied enough pressure so that he'd have to fall or risk an injury. He did take the fall, but he latched onto her wrist as he did so and yanked, using his own momentum to send her flying. She automatically rolled when she hit the ground, but when she came to her feet, she was in the corner, which was exactly the spot that she'd been trying to avoid.
About five seconds later she was lying on her stomach with her right arm twisted up behind her in a rather uncomfortable position. A second after that she slapped the mat. "All right, you got me."
"You need to plant yourself, I never would have been able to do that if you had been pulling from your center," Tousan told her, extending a hand and pulling her to her feet. Tousan was the strongest person that Julia knew, and she wasn't exaggerating in the slightest. She was well aware of the fact that he pulled his punches when they practiced, and it was a good thing, too. She'd have been black and blue all over otherwise, and that would be a little difficult to explain at school. Oh, what, the bruises? Oh, that's no problem, my dad hit me, but I asked him to do it. Yeah, that was a good idea, if she really wanted to get both of her parents arrested.
"Hai, I know, sorry."
"You're the one who got thrown," he pointed out.
"Yeah, I was actually aware of that one. Well, I lasted a little longer this time." The first time they'd practiced he'd rushed her just like he did tonight, and she'd been so surprised that she hadn't even moved to defend herself. After a while she got used to his rough-and-tumble method of teaching, and the first time he'd tried to sneak up on her while she still had her eyes closed, she hadn't been very surprised. Caught off guard, yes, surprised, no. Since then she'd devised several dozen ways of knowing when he was coming. There was a stair that squeaked, for one thing, and then there was the air... when the door was closed she put a piece of paper in it, or a piece of tape, and the tape ripping gave her warning.
"How did you know I was coming?" he asked, staring at her.
Julia blinked. Every other time she'd managed to catch him before he got to her, he'd known all the ploys that she used, and had even managed to counteract them a couple of times, much to her chagrin. It was very irritating to spend all that time preparing, only to have him already know what she was doing and how to make it all useless. "You don't know?" she asked.
"No."
Julia glanced over his shoulder at Duo-daddy, who gave her a big grin and a covert thumbs-up. "There's a breeze from the hallway," she explained. "When you came in you interrupted it for a couple seconds. Since I was on my knees, I figured you'd go for my head, so I moved to block there as soon as I felt the air stop."
Tousan nodded shortly, and she could practically see the information being filed away. He'd been this way as long as she'd known him, anything that she knew that he didn't was quickly stored in his brain to be used against her in future matches. It was somewhat frustrating that a move that would take her hours or days to learn he could pick up after seeing it only once, but it wasn't as if he was doing it to irritate her. At least, she didn't think he was doing it to irritate her, he had a strange sense of humor sometimes. "Good job."
Julia beamed at him. He didn't give many compliments, so any that she received meant that she really had done something very well. "That just made my day, Tousan!" she told him, and gave him a quick hug before backing away so that he couldn't use the lack of distance to catch her off-guard.
"See, Hee-chan!" Daddy asked. "I told you, girls love to hear compliments!"
Tousan flicked a quick glare at Daddy, then raised his fists again.
-----------
Julia got so involved in the practice that she almost forgot dinner. She wasn't sure who was more surprised when she suddenly turned tail and ran to the kitchen, Tousan, who she ran from, or Daddy, who she almost ran over in her hurry to get to the kitchen before the casserole burned. She managed to save most of it, though, with only a little bit burned around the edges of the pan, and five minutes later, announced that dinner was served.
After she'd heard about their days, and had told them that school was fine, she decided that she might as well ask them some questions. Sure, they might have been teenagers when it happened, but they might know something about the Gundams and the war. At the very least they'd probably be able to explain all of these different political groups to her. "Ah, can I ask some questions?"
"Julie, remember, we told you, you can always ask us questions," Daddy told her, exchanging a glance with Tousan.
"OK, yeah, I remember. I started doing some research for my Gundam project, and I had some questions about some of the political groups. They're all kinda complicated, but I thought that since you actually lived through those times, you might have a better idea."
"Sure, honey, go ahead. What were you wondering about?" Julia didn't miss the look that her parents exchanged, but decided not to ask them what was going on. She was getting the idea that the Gundams, or the war, was just a sensitive subject with people that were a certain age. Namely, anyone who had lived through the war.
She momentarily debated going for her notes, then decided it wasn't worth it. She really didn't need to write things down to remember them, she just liked to have them in front of her. She closed her eyes momentarily, then asked, "When I was looking through the records, they said that the Gundams only attacked Alliance and Oz facilities. I thought that they were the same organization, or that Oz was some sort of subset of the Alliance, but it didn't sound that way. Do you know anything about that?"
"You're right," Daddy said after a couple of seconds. "Both ways. They were two separate organizations, although Oz was supposed to be part of the Alliance. Technically, they were the Alliance's special forces unit, which meant that the best and the brightest went to them, while everyone else got stuck in the regular forces. But Oz decided that it didn't want to work for the Alliance any more, so one day they just rebelled and took over everything."
"But weren't they outnumbered?"
"Not by much - they'd been building up their numbers for years - and you have to remember, they caught the Alliance totally by surprise, and they had all of the most talented people on their side. It was a pretty well planned takeover."
"Oh," Julia said, quickly assimilating the information. That, at least, explained why Daddy seemed to have so much knowledge about the two groups, if there was some sort of coup involved, it would quickly become public knowledge. "So for the rest of the war, Oz was in charge?"
"Basically," Daddy hesitated, then looked at Tousan, who took over.
"There were remnants of the Alliance scattered all over the globe and colonies, and most of those became rebels, fighting against Oz however they could. They weren't very effective."
"Anything else, honey?" Daddy asked, staring at her soberly. This was the quietest that Julia could ever remember him being.
"Um, nah, let me do some more looking on my own." Julia had been going to ask them about why she thought that it didn't make any sense for the Gundams to kill the Alliance 'doves,' as they were always referred to, but thought better of it. First of all, she didn't think they'd have the answer - she wasn't entirely sure where that thought had come from. Second, even though they were both making valiant efforts at not letting her know how much this topic bothered them, she knew it did, and she didn't want to upset them any more. "Ah, Daddy, do we have to keep going with class tonight?" she asked with a slight pout, as if she didn't want to have lessons with her father.
As intended, her question lightened the mood. Daddy leaned forward and gave one of her pigtails a light yank. "Yessirree, you definitely have to have class tonight. Don't want your brain to atrophy, do we?"
"Can your brain atrophy?" she asked curiously as she took another bite of her dinner.
"You betcha! It happens more often then you'd think," Daddy told her. "You think that a person's got a brain, but it turns out that they haven't actually used it in twenty, maybe thirty years. I could name some people like that," he muttered under his breath.
"Daddy, you're supposed to be a good influence for me," Julia told him.
"Says who? Besides, I am a good influence, aren't I, Hee-chan?"
Tousan gave him a doubtful stare. Finally he said, "Yes. For a gaijin."
"See, I told you... for a what?!"
Tousan smiled slightly, and Julia giggled again. "You asked," she pointed out oh-so-helpfully.
Daddy gave her a cross-eyed look. "Where'd you get such a smart mouth?" he asked.
"You, of course. I got my respectful mouth from my otousan." Julia spoke both English and Japanese fluently, in addition to a handful of other languages, but her family mostly spoke English at home, because they lived in a region where English was the primary language.
"Hey, I can be respectful with the best of them. Really," he added when his family gave him some doubtful glances.
"Uh-hu, well, I'm going to go finish my homework before you come on up. Can you get the dishes?" she asked, standing up and putting her empty plate in the sink.
"Sure, no problem, Julie."
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"So what were we up to?" Daddy asked a half-hour later, after she'd finished her homework.
"Well, you said that you'd teach me some more about metal alloys after we looked at the damage to that engine."
"That's right, I did. Anything interest you in particular, or do you want me to pick something?"
"Actually, I was wondering about Gundanium alloy."
He nearly flinched again, and she wondered why he was so sensitive to the topic. "Still thinking about your project, huh?"
"Uh-hu. I was wondering... that damage we saw on the engine block, if it had been made out of Gundanium, would we have seen the same damage?"
"Not a chance."
"Really? Even after all the exposure?"
"Gundanium's the strongest metal known to man," he told her. "It's incredibly difficult to work with, by the way, so you'd never actually see an engine made out of Gundanium. Mostly it's used for shields and things like that."
"Like the Gundam's armor. Why is it so tough to work with?"
"Well, it's incredibly resistant to heat and cold. Normally you shape metal by heating it until it melts and then shaping it, right?"
"Hai."
"Well, for Gundanium, you actually have to use a combination of heat, pressure, and subsonics to get it to soften enough to shape."
"How do you know this?" she asked curiously.
"It's basic knowledge about Gundanium," he said with a shrug. "Now do you want to see the molecular structure? It's incredibly well-organized, based off of some crystalline elements on Earth - that's why it's so strong - but Gundanium doesn't occur naturally anywhere."
"Sure!"
-------------
Duo very carefully closed the door to Julia's room. His daughter had finally fallen asleep, nearly an hour after she went to bed. The first time he'd checked on her she'd feigned sleep, but he was an expert at those kinds of tricks. This time, her breathing had actually slowed, and she didn't tense up when he opened the door. He shut off the light in the hallway in front of her room and then went down to the kitchen, where Heero was sitting.
"So what are we gonna do?" he asked rhetorically as he sat down next to his husband, reaching out to grasp one of Heero's hands.
He didn't get a response, not that he was expecting one, so he continued, "Do you think she suspects?" His fingers started tracing the tiny scar on Heero's arm that was all that remained from the time he'd shot his future husband.
"Iie."
"She will soon enough, you know how smart she is."
Heero finally turned to look at him, then pulled him in for a hug. "We always said that if she asked us, we would tell her the truth."
"Yeah, I know, I just wish that she'd waited a little longer."
"She isn't a child."
"Well, we're hardly the ones to judge that, are we?" Duo's voice held a hint of wry humor in it. "I don't think comparing her against our own experiences is the wisest course of action." He raised his head from where it had been resting against Heero's shoulder. "Heero, if she finds out about us, eventually we're going to have to tell her about herself."
"Hn."
"I know that I should try not to worry about it, but... that's a hell of a thing to spring on a person. She may never trust us again."
Heero had no response for that, and after several minutes of silence, Duo sighed. "Oh well, I guess we'll have to make it up as we go along. We were always pretty good at that... or was it terrible? Things worked out ok, didn't they?"
Heero tilted his head to the side slightly, studying Duo's face. "I have you, and I have Julia," he stated.
Duo had to smile at that. "Yeah, we do have her, don't we? I guess things turned out pretty well."
Well, sorry for taking so long going over all of that information, but I wanted to make it clear what she was working with. I'm sort of guessing and picking out what I think would have become part of public record, as opposed to what would be considered confidential. As you can see, there are quite a few chunks missing, which she will hopefully start piecing together as time passes. I got most of the timeline information from gundamofficial.com and gundamxl.com.
Marika
"It's me, Julia," she called back.
"Come on in."
Julia slowly pushed open the door and peered inside. She'd never had a reason to go into this room before, but it was nice enough, if a little cramped. The desk and two chairs barely fit, and most of the desk was covered with neat stacks of paper. Mrs. Kinley was a short, red-haired woman with a thin face and a warm smile. She smiled at Julia as she came in and nodded towards the free chair as she swept several papers into a pile and then set those on top of another pile, giving her a little free space on the desk. "Just take a seat. How are you, Julia?"
"I'm fine," she replied automatically, sitting down. "How are you?"
"Busy, but I'm very excited about your proposed project. Have you given any thought as to how you want to approach it?"
"Yeah, actually, I had some ideas. I know that I'm going to research everything that's known about them, see if I can dig up something interesting."
"That's good, although you know there's very little information about them available," Mrs. Kinley said, nodding her head.
"Yeah, I know, but there wouldn't be much to the project if I didn't have something about them. But what I was really going to concentrate on is the situation around the pilots, the political situation that led to the situation that produced the Gundams. I mean, everyone knows that the wars had been going on for years before the Gundams showed up, I was going to look at why they escalated right when the Gundams showed up."
"Well, the obvious answer would be that the Gundams were responsible for the escalation," her teacher responded.
"Yeah, but that's what I want to look at. You don't usually see entire wars changing because of the actions of a few terrorists, no matter what they do. I want to see if they really were responsible for the escalation, or if they were just a part of it, or if they just had really bad timing," she grinned at the little joke. Mrs. Kinley did not. In fact, she seemed to be getting more and more tense as the conversation went on. Julia killed the smile and continued, "I was also thinking about trying to figure out what the hell the colonies were thinking, when they sent the Gundams."
"The colonies?"
"Well, yeah," Julia said, surprised at the question. "It takes a lot of money to make a Gundam, I think - I'm going to have to look into that as well - but just the supplies to build it cost a lot. I think that someone, well, a lot of people in the colonies must have known about it, even if it's just a little part of the process. So I was going to look at that, too, try to figure out why those people thought that they were making the right choice."
"The right choice?!" Mrs. Kinley exclaimed, her voice rising slightly in shock.
"Yeah, well, you don't usually do things because you think that you're doing something evil. I bet even the Gundam pilots thought that they were doing the right thing, somehow."
"Extremists don't always need a reason."
"Yeah, I guess that could be it," Julia said with a shrug. "But they did end up saving the planet, so they can't have been all bad."
"They were terrorists." That was delivered in a flat, unemotional voice, and Julia stared at her for a second before deciding that it would be absolutely completely rude to ask her what her problem was. Sure they were terrorists, that was a given, but even they had to have reasons for their actions, no matter how twisted they might seem to normal people. No one would ever give Gundams to people who were absolutely insane. On the other hand, she knew that one of them had completely destroyed several colonies, the same colonies they were supposed to protect. That wasn't sane by anyone's definition.
"I don't know, I guess I was just going to see what I could find out, and then see where it led me. I figure that if I don't have something in a few months, then we can try to figure out something else. Does that sound OK?"
"That sounds like it will be an excellent project. The one suggestion I have is that you might want to speak to some people with some firsthand experience, either ones who survived some of the later battles, or those who had friends and family who were killed by the Gundams," she said, her voice slightly bitter. "There are quite a few of them still around, the war wasn't that long ago."
Julia nodded, although she preferred to work with hard data, Mrs. Kinley had a good point - she could learn a lot about the times just from talking to people about them, especially if she could find a couple of soldiers who'd actually seen the Gundams.
"I'll do that." Julia scooped up her backpack just as the first bell rang. "Thanks, Mrs. Kinley. I'll talk to you later this week?"
"Yes, I'm here every morning, just stop by, although some advance notice would be nice."
"No problem. See you later."
------------
By the time that the end of the day rolled around, Julia (having devoted not only her free period but most of her lunch to research) had most of the basic well-known facts about the Gundams. She knew that once people hit middle school the number of reports written about the Gundams decreased significantly, and once you hit high-school they disappeared entirely. This drop-off wasn't because of a lack of interest, it was because you had to write longer papers in high-school, and there simply wasn't enough information available to substantiate a report of any length. Since she had some free time at the end of the day, she called up the information on her laptop and reviewed it.
On April 7, 195, exactly twenty years to the day after the pacifist Heero Yuy was assassinated, the first of the Gundams was sighted and shot down somewhere over East Asia. It was later discovered that the other four had also landed secretly at the same time. No record existed of what happened, but a week later that first Gundam, later code named 01, was held responsible for the destruction of a base several hundred miles from that point, so obviously both the Gundam and pilot survived being shot down. Unless, of course, that there had originally been six Gundams, two of them identical, so that when the first was destroyed, the second took it's place... no, that was an interesting idea, but there was no way that she'd ever find out if that was the truth or not, it was a better idea to stick with the official story and assume that both the Gundam and pilot had survived. It was more likely, anyway, than there being two identical Gundams, since none of the others looked alike.
At about the same time, the other four Gundams appeared, methodically destroying base after base, and almost never leaving any survivors. They had never been known to attack civilian facilities, concentrating entirely on Oz/Alliance bases. Here Julia paused and looked over her notes. The resources she'd consulted varied almost randomly, sometimes referring to the bases as 'Oz' bases, sometimes as 'Alliance' bases. She'd been under the impression that they were the same organization, but something about the way they talked about the groups made her question her assumption. She made a quick note that she had to go look that up later. Anyway, things continued like that for some time - the only major event in that period being when Gundam 01 killed all of the 'doves' of the Alliance, all of the generals who were looking for peace. Here Julia made another note, she couldn't remember exactly what it was or where she'd heard it before, but something about that didn't seem to fit. She'd hunt that down later.
Then, for no apparent reason, the Gundams ceased their attacks. There was no official reason given for it, and Julia didn't trust that. Now, she knew that the 'officials' weren't responsible for the actions of the Gundam pilots, but she was almost positive that they knew something about what had happened. Why? It was simple - there were no official theories put out as to why the Gundam attacks had ceased. She would have thought that there would be at least a few of them out there, but there weren't any. The only theories were coming from civilians and other organizations not connected with the military. What she took from that was that the military knew something, but was trying to conceal that knowledge, but they went too far in the other direction by pretending to know absolutely nothing. After all the hacking she'd done, she didn't believe that the military was ever really completely ignorant. She wasn't sure whether or not she'd be able to use this, even if she managed to find some evidence to prove her theory correct, chances were she'd get it from a place she couldn't site when she finished her project.
After that things were quiet for a month or so. Then the colonies suddenly cut the Gundam pilots loose, claiming that they no longer had any support in the colonies and declaring them criminals. As soon as that broadcast hit the air (and Julia was very proud of herself for picking up on this detail), the Gundam pilots attacked a couple of bases, stole transports, and headed for space. Julia couldn't even begin to imagine what had prompted those actions, but she'd been caught for a second by imagining the shock the pilots must have felt, how betrayed they must have felt, and rightly so. She immediately tried to throw off that idea, she was trying to stick to facts here, not her own imaginings.
This was when things started to get really interesting, and very vague, because it was all within the military. The one well-known fact was that Gundam 02 had been captured and then destroyed by one of Oz's up-and-coming stars. The pilot had been captured, too, but there was very little mention of him. Apparently at some point there'd been some posters of him up in the colony, but they were long since gone, and since she was on Earth, the chances of her finding someone who had actually seen one were slim. Which was really too bad, because it would have been really cool to find out what one of the Gundam pilots actually looked like. At any rate, he must have escaped at some point, because several weeks later, a second Gundam 02 (she decided, since there seemed to be at least two versions of every Gundam, she'd name them a, b, c, chronologically for as many different versions as she found), along with Gundam 05b (no mention of what happened to 05a), blew up most of a base on the moon and then disappeared into space. This raised a lot of interesting questions, like where had the second set of Gundams come from, how did they get to the moon, and what had the Gundam pilots been doing there? All of these were very important, and none of the answers were in any official explanation.
She was under the impression that several of the pilots had been captured during this time, but that information was lost with the major event of that time frame, the destruction of several colonies by Gundam 01b. This was completely inexplicable, given the previous actions by the Gundams. They'd never even attacked a civilian installation before, the closest they'd come had been attacking military academies, what would make one of them destroy a colony that contained thousands of innocent civilians, the same people who'd originally sent the Gundams to Earth. Given, they'd been betrayed by the colonies, but that didn't seem like enough of an explanation. The only real clue she had there was the knowledge that just before the colonies were destroyed, they'd announced that they would be arming themselves.
That Gundam was finally taken out by two Oz mobile suits. There was no record of the two pilots who flew those suits. None whatsoever. And that was suspicious enough on it's own, she would have thought that the pilots would be named heroes, at least. But no mention of them was ever made.
It was at that time that the moon base was destroyed, and it was a very long time before either Gundams 04 or 03 (either version) were seen. Actually, 03 appeared to have disappeared completely for several months. 04b (no note of what happened to 04a) and 01a were both next seen at the battle in the Sank kingdom where Sank surrendered to the Oz forces (Julia noticed that the books used Oz almost all the time now). The ruler of the Sank kingdom, Relena Peacecraft, was taken into custody by Oz and some other group that she couldn't find the name of (that led to another note, this wasn't quite as straightforward as she'd thought it would be), and subsequently named Queen of the World. Julia wasn't entirely clear on how that had happened, either, although her acceptance had seemed to be universal. The Gundams disappeared, aside from a few attacks in space.
That was when White Fang showed up. Julia wasn't quite sure what they were supposed to be, but they appeared to be a terrorist organization that had a ton of mobile suits (called mobile dolls) that supposedly represented the colonies and demanded their independence from Oz, their demand culminating with an attack from a huge spaceship that somehow ended up in their hands. The attack was against Earth itself, and they declared themselves willing to destroy the entire Earth, if that was what it took.
There was one other fact that she'd made note of, not because of any significance to her project, but because of personal interest. In most of the books she'd looked at, there was at least a passing reference about the death of the head of Winner, Inc., and then another short note saying that the son had suddenly appeared to take over the family business. The Winner son that they were talking about was her uncle Quatre, and some quick math told her that he'd have been her age when he took over the company. She couldn't imagine how horrible it had been for him to lose his father, and to be thrust into responsibility like that. She reminded herself to give her fathers an extra hug when she got home.
After that, nothing was very clear. There was a huge battle in outer space involving White Fang, the Gundams, and the forces of the World Nation. Somehow, in all the destruction, one particular battle between Gundam 01b and some other special suit that she didn't recognize ended up getting broadcast to the entire world, with a woman's voice telling people to look at the futility of war. (She'd actually gotten a copy of the transmission and had already watched it several times. The sheer power contained in those machines was both amazing and horrible.) Then that transmission got cut off, and the huge battleship was seen plummeting towards Earth, where it would almost certainly destroy everything. Then it exploded. There was no explanation given, it just exploded. Then Gundam 01b made an amazing dive and managed to get in front of one of the largest pieces that was heading for Earth, and blew it apart with an energy gun.
Because they'd fought White Fang and probably saved the world, the Gundam pilots were allowed to disappear, and no official mention was made of an attempt to locate them. They reappeared only once, during the Mariemaia incident (most of which was also classified, this time by the Preventers), and then disappeared again.
Julia sat back and stared. It was a lot of information, but the number of holes in the story was staggering, and by the number of notes that she'd made, Julia knew she had a lot of background research to do before she could even hope to understand what had happened back then.
-----------
When she got home, she and Daddy finished hooking up the engine, then turned it on. It ran remarkably smoothly, considering how old it was, and a low whine could be heard throughout the house. Daddy informed her that when stress was placed on the engine, the way most really good mobile suit pilots did, that low whine would rise to a screech that almost hurt the ears. The power in the thing was absolutely incredible, and if she hadn't been so interested in her new project, Julia probably would have asked if she could run some tests on it before they started to dismantle it. As it was, Daddy sent her to go find some schematics on the thing so that she'd know what they were doing when they started taking it apart tomorrow.
Since it was her night to cook, Julia threw together a casserole and then put it in the oven to cook. She'd just finished that when Tousan got home early. She missed him coming in the door, and instead went to the 'workout' room. It was one room in the house that they'd basically left empty, except for a couple of mirrors and putting down a mat on the floor. She sank to her knees and sat on her heels with her eyes closed, waiting. She'd taken this position on purpose - there was a slight draft coming into the room from the hall, and here she could feel it on her face.
When the breeze on her face disappeared for several seconds, she opened her eyes and raised her hands just in time to block the kick that Tousan was aiming at her face. By now she knew better than to try to absorb the full force of his kick with her arms, and instead allowed him to knock her backwards. She rolled over her shoulder and came up to her feet, hands held in front of her, eyes on her father. He was dressed in his normal green tank-top, but instead of jeans he was wearing a light pair of loose pants, similar to her gi. The first time they practiced together, he'd worn spandex shorts, of all things, and she'd nearly had a fit. She still hadn't managed to explain to him exactly what was wrong with him wearing spandex, but she'd convinced him that it really wasn't worth the trouble she'd cause when he wore it. Parents were not supposed to wear spandex, no matter if they had the bodies for it or not. She was not going to see her father in spandex.
Without a word, he came after her again. His fists were clenched, and she could see the tension in his arms extending up into his shoulders. She knew from experience that trying to punch him was more like trying to punch a brick wall than an actual human being, and that she was better off trying to kick him or throw him. She ducked under his first punch and kicked him in the stomach, then moved on past him, trying to take advantage of her smaller size and better speed. She was dimly aware of Daddy watching from the doorway, but she didn't have the time to think about that now.
She caught his hand as he tried to grab her, ducked under it, keeping a tight grip so that she twisted the joint, and applied enough pressure so that he'd have to fall or risk an injury. He did take the fall, but he latched onto her wrist as he did so and yanked, using his own momentum to send her flying. She automatically rolled when she hit the ground, but when she came to her feet, she was in the corner, which was exactly the spot that she'd been trying to avoid.
About five seconds later she was lying on her stomach with her right arm twisted up behind her in a rather uncomfortable position. A second after that she slapped the mat. "All right, you got me."
"You need to plant yourself, I never would have been able to do that if you had been pulling from your center," Tousan told her, extending a hand and pulling her to her feet. Tousan was the strongest person that Julia knew, and she wasn't exaggerating in the slightest. She was well aware of the fact that he pulled his punches when they practiced, and it was a good thing, too. She'd have been black and blue all over otherwise, and that would be a little difficult to explain at school. Oh, what, the bruises? Oh, that's no problem, my dad hit me, but I asked him to do it. Yeah, that was a good idea, if she really wanted to get both of her parents arrested.
"Hai, I know, sorry."
"You're the one who got thrown," he pointed out.
"Yeah, I was actually aware of that one. Well, I lasted a little longer this time." The first time they'd practiced he'd rushed her just like he did tonight, and she'd been so surprised that she hadn't even moved to defend herself. After a while she got used to his rough-and-tumble method of teaching, and the first time he'd tried to sneak up on her while she still had her eyes closed, she hadn't been very surprised. Caught off guard, yes, surprised, no. Since then she'd devised several dozen ways of knowing when he was coming. There was a stair that squeaked, for one thing, and then there was the air... when the door was closed she put a piece of paper in it, or a piece of tape, and the tape ripping gave her warning.
"How did you know I was coming?" he asked, staring at her.
Julia blinked. Every other time she'd managed to catch him before he got to her, he'd known all the ploys that she used, and had even managed to counteract them a couple of times, much to her chagrin. It was very irritating to spend all that time preparing, only to have him already know what she was doing and how to make it all useless. "You don't know?" she asked.
"No."
Julia glanced over his shoulder at Duo-daddy, who gave her a big grin and a covert thumbs-up. "There's a breeze from the hallway," she explained. "When you came in you interrupted it for a couple seconds. Since I was on my knees, I figured you'd go for my head, so I moved to block there as soon as I felt the air stop."
Tousan nodded shortly, and she could practically see the information being filed away. He'd been this way as long as she'd known him, anything that she knew that he didn't was quickly stored in his brain to be used against her in future matches. It was somewhat frustrating that a move that would take her hours or days to learn he could pick up after seeing it only once, but it wasn't as if he was doing it to irritate her. At least, she didn't think he was doing it to irritate her, he had a strange sense of humor sometimes. "Good job."
Julia beamed at him. He didn't give many compliments, so any that she received meant that she really had done something very well. "That just made my day, Tousan!" she told him, and gave him a quick hug before backing away so that he couldn't use the lack of distance to catch her off-guard.
"See, Hee-chan!" Daddy asked. "I told you, girls love to hear compliments!"
Tousan flicked a quick glare at Daddy, then raised his fists again.
-----------
Julia got so involved in the practice that she almost forgot dinner. She wasn't sure who was more surprised when she suddenly turned tail and ran to the kitchen, Tousan, who she ran from, or Daddy, who she almost ran over in her hurry to get to the kitchen before the casserole burned. She managed to save most of it, though, with only a little bit burned around the edges of the pan, and five minutes later, announced that dinner was served.
After she'd heard about their days, and had told them that school was fine, she decided that she might as well ask them some questions. Sure, they might have been teenagers when it happened, but they might know something about the Gundams and the war. At the very least they'd probably be able to explain all of these different political groups to her. "Ah, can I ask some questions?"
"Julie, remember, we told you, you can always ask us questions," Daddy told her, exchanging a glance with Tousan.
"OK, yeah, I remember. I started doing some research for my Gundam project, and I had some questions about some of the political groups. They're all kinda complicated, but I thought that since you actually lived through those times, you might have a better idea."
"Sure, honey, go ahead. What were you wondering about?" Julia didn't miss the look that her parents exchanged, but decided not to ask them what was going on. She was getting the idea that the Gundams, or the war, was just a sensitive subject with people that were a certain age. Namely, anyone who had lived through the war.
She momentarily debated going for her notes, then decided it wasn't worth it. She really didn't need to write things down to remember them, she just liked to have them in front of her. She closed her eyes momentarily, then asked, "When I was looking through the records, they said that the Gundams only attacked Alliance and Oz facilities. I thought that they were the same organization, or that Oz was some sort of subset of the Alliance, but it didn't sound that way. Do you know anything about that?"
"You're right," Daddy said after a couple of seconds. "Both ways. They were two separate organizations, although Oz was supposed to be part of the Alliance. Technically, they were the Alliance's special forces unit, which meant that the best and the brightest went to them, while everyone else got stuck in the regular forces. But Oz decided that it didn't want to work for the Alliance any more, so one day they just rebelled and took over everything."
"But weren't they outnumbered?"
"Not by much - they'd been building up their numbers for years - and you have to remember, they caught the Alliance totally by surprise, and they had all of the most talented people on their side. It was a pretty well planned takeover."
"Oh," Julia said, quickly assimilating the information. That, at least, explained why Daddy seemed to have so much knowledge about the two groups, if there was some sort of coup involved, it would quickly become public knowledge. "So for the rest of the war, Oz was in charge?"
"Basically," Daddy hesitated, then looked at Tousan, who took over.
"There were remnants of the Alliance scattered all over the globe and colonies, and most of those became rebels, fighting against Oz however they could. They weren't very effective."
"Anything else, honey?" Daddy asked, staring at her soberly. This was the quietest that Julia could ever remember him being.
"Um, nah, let me do some more looking on my own." Julia had been going to ask them about why she thought that it didn't make any sense for the Gundams to kill the Alliance 'doves,' as they were always referred to, but thought better of it. First of all, she didn't think they'd have the answer - she wasn't entirely sure where that thought had come from. Second, even though they were both making valiant efforts at not letting her know how much this topic bothered them, she knew it did, and she didn't want to upset them any more. "Ah, Daddy, do we have to keep going with class tonight?" she asked with a slight pout, as if she didn't want to have lessons with her father.
As intended, her question lightened the mood. Daddy leaned forward and gave one of her pigtails a light yank. "Yessirree, you definitely have to have class tonight. Don't want your brain to atrophy, do we?"
"Can your brain atrophy?" she asked curiously as she took another bite of her dinner.
"You betcha! It happens more often then you'd think," Daddy told her. "You think that a person's got a brain, but it turns out that they haven't actually used it in twenty, maybe thirty years. I could name some people like that," he muttered under his breath.
"Daddy, you're supposed to be a good influence for me," Julia told him.
"Says who? Besides, I am a good influence, aren't I, Hee-chan?"
Tousan gave him a doubtful stare. Finally he said, "Yes. For a gaijin."
"See, I told you... for a what?!"
Tousan smiled slightly, and Julia giggled again. "You asked," she pointed out oh-so-helpfully.
Daddy gave her a cross-eyed look. "Where'd you get such a smart mouth?" he asked.
"You, of course. I got my respectful mouth from my otousan." Julia spoke both English and Japanese fluently, in addition to a handful of other languages, but her family mostly spoke English at home, because they lived in a region where English was the primary language.
"Hey, I can be respectful with the best of them. Really," he added when his family gave him some doubtful glances.
"Uh-hu, well, I'm going to go finish my homework before you come on up. Can you get the dishes?" she asked, standing up and putting her empty plate in the sink.
"Sure, no problem, Julie."
------------
"So what were we up to?" Daddy asked a half-hour later, after she'd finished her homework.
"Well, you said that you'd teach me some more about metal alloys after we looked at the damage to that engine."
"That's right, I did. Anything interest you in particular, or do you want me to pick something?"
"Actually, I was wondering about Gundanium alloy."
He nearly flinched again, and she wondered why he was so sensitive to the topic. "Still thinking about your project, huh?"
"Uh-hu. I was wondering... that damage we saw on the engine block, if it had been made out of Gundanium, would we have seen the same damage?"
"Not a chance."
"Really? Even after all the exposure?"
"Gundanium's the strongest metal known to man," he told her. "It's incredibly difficult to work with, by the way, so you'd never actually see an engine made out of Gundanium. Mostly it's used for shields and things like that."
"Like the Gundam's armor. Why is it so tough to work with?"
"Well, it's incredibly resistant to heat and cold. Normally you shape metal by heating it until it melts and then shaping it, right?"
"Hai."
"Well, for Gundanium, you actually have to use a combination of heat, pressure, and subsonics to get it to soften enough to shape."
"How do you know this?" she asked curiously.
"It's basic knowledge about Gundanium," he said with a shrug. "Now do you want to see the molecular structure? It's incredibly well-organized, based off of some crystalline elements on Earth - that's why it's so strong - but Gundanium doesn't occur naturally anywhere."
"Sure!"
-------------
Duo very carefully closed the door to Julia's room. His daughter had finally fallen asleep, nearly an hour after she went to bed. The first time he'd checked on her she'd feigned sleep, but he was an expert at those kinds of tricks. This time, her breathing had actually slowed, and she didn't tense up when he opened the door. He shut off the light in the hallway in front of her room and then went down to the kitchen, where Heero was sitting.
"So what are we gonna do?" he asked rhetorically as he sat down next to his husband, reaching out to grasp one of Heero's hands.
He didn't get a response, not that he was expecting one, so he continued, "Do you think she suspects?" His fingers started tracing the tiny scar on Heero's arm that was all that remained from the time he'd shot his future husband.
"Iie."
"She will soon enough, you know how smart she is."
Heero finally turned to look at him, then pulled him in for a hug. "We always said that if she asked us, we would tell her the truth."
"Yeah, I know, I just wish that she'd waited a little longer."
"She isn't a child."
"Well, we're hardly the ones to judge that, are we?" Duo's voice held a hint of wry humor in it. "I don't think comparing her against our own experiences is the wisest course of action." He raised his head from where it had been resting against Heero's shoulder. "Heero, if she finds out about us, eventually we're going to have to tell her about herself."
"Hn."
"I know that I should try not to worry about it, but... that's a hell of a thing to spring on a person. She may never trust us again."
Heero had no response for that, and after several minutes of silence, Duo sighed. "Oh well, I guess we'll have to make it up as we go along. We were always pretty good at that... or was it terrible? Things worked out ok, didn't they?"
Heero tilted his head to the side slightly, studying Duo's face. "I have you, and I have Julia," he stated.
Duo had to smile at that. "Yeah, we do have her, don't we? I guess things turned out pretty well."
Well, sorry for taking so long going over all of that information, but I wanted to make it clear what she was working with. I'm sort of guessing and picking out what I think would have become part of public record, as opposed to what would be considered confidential. As you can see, there are quite a few chunks missing, which she will hopefully start piecing together as time passes. I got most of the timeline information from gundamofficial.com and gundamxl.com.
Marika