Gundam Seed AU

Divergent Path

Disclaimer: Yzak Blasted it. Let's get on with it…

Chapter Two:

Its Name is Gundam

Natarle: Year 70 of the Cosmic Era. Tensions were mounting between Earth and the ZAFT organizations. Due to the Blood Valentine tragedy these tensions suddenly escalated into a full-scale war. It was a forgone conclusion that the Earth Forces, with its superior numbers would be victorious, but these initial assessments proved to be false. Almost eleven months have passed since the war began, with no end in sight.

As the ZAFT pilot moves off toward the other machine Murrue Ramius shoves the blond girl into the cockpit and calls to the brunet standing a few feet away to get in. She follows the first girl in and sits in the pilot's seat, a second later followed by the other girl who quickly gets to one side. 'These things really weren't made for passengers,' she thinks, unaware that her thoughts were mirrored by the girl on her right.

She looks around at the controls and begins start up. "At least we can save this one. Even I should be able to pilot it." The controls and outside monitors come online.

Kira looks out the vid-screen at the other machine and thinks of the face she saw. 'Athrun? No. That's not possible.' She looks down at the terminal.

WELCOME TO M.O.S.

MOBILE SUIT OPERATION SYSTEM

/VERSION NV8 - N099/

O.M.N.I.

Oppose Militancy & Neutralize Invasion Enfarcer

O.M.N.I. Enfarcer

General

Unilateral

Neuro - Link

Dispersive

Automatic

Maneuver

Synthsis System

'The hell… it's a G.U.N.D.A.M.?' Kira thinks. 'I didn't think the EAF or Orb had the capability to build something this sophisticated. Then again, Orb has been known to surprise even me on occasion. And if the ones involved are who I think, maybe I've underestimated them…'

Outside the Gundam's eyes light and it begins tearing out of its cradle, the power cables popping off. The Gundam, Strike, stands tall, even as the facility around it crumbles.

Out in the colony the colony-wide emergency system is active.

(A Level 8 evacuation has been issued for all of Heliopolis. Residents are to make their way to the closest shelters at once.)

Flay, Misha and Jessica run through the street trying to get back to Morgenroete and the Defender. They dodge panicked citizens as they pick their way back. Suddenly a missive explosion goes off in the distance and two machines come out of the smoke.

In his GINN Miguel Aiman looks over as the X-303 Aegis lands next to him. "Athrun!" he calls.

"Rusty failed," Athrun reported morosely. Miguel's mouth falls open as Athrun continues, "An Earth Forces officer has boarded the other machine."

The Strike lands awkwardly and stumbles across the ground. Murrue works the controls in an effort to not cause the Strike to fall down and brings up the tactical readout; the camera also picks up on a certain trio as they try to find somewhere to hide. Kira jerks forward when she sees.

"Flay!"

Miguel fires his rifle at the stumbling MS and only succeeds in knocking it to one side. Failing to hit it he pulls his sword and prepares to charge. Miguel looks back at Athrun, "All right, I'll capture this one. You get yours back to the ship."

Athrun hesitates a moment. 'Was that Kira? No couldn't be. But she did say her parents were moving to an Orb territory.' He gets into the OS and makes a few last minute adjustments to the system.

Miguel charges in while Strike walks slowly forward. Murrue sees him coming and manages to fly out of the way before the suit could get hit. The landing jarred Cagalli and she falls into Murrue's lap. "Stay back! You want to get killed!" she yells.

"Sorry!" Cagalli said and quickly moves herself. And just as she does the GINN leaps up and brings its sword up for a high over head strike that would cleave the Gundam in half if something wasn't done.

Murrue hits a button on the control panel and outside the armor changes color from mat-gray to blue and white with red and gray trim. She brings the arms up and blocks the GINN's sword, causing sparks to fly from the contact.

"What!" Miguel exclaims. He tries pressing harder, hoping to somehow cut through the mobile suit in front of him.

"This mobile suit…" Kira whispers. 'I can't believe they gave it Phase-Shift armor. Our intel never said anything about this.' Her eyes narrow, 'How much information are we missing?' she hears the lady next to her groan in pain and looks over to see she's sweating heavily and the mark on her arm has gotten slightly larger.

Aiman flies back a bit, cursing loudly. "What's with that armor? What the hell's going on?"

"They're all equipped with a system known as Phase-Shift armor," Athrun responds, "It renders them nearly invulnerable to conventional weapons." He then activates his own PS armor, coloring it red with black and gray trim. Missile trucks launched rockets at them and Athrun had no trouble picking them off with his CIWS. Another missile truck tares around a corner and it to is slagged.

"You've gotta get out of here now, Athrun!" Miguel says. "You can't stick around this place forever."

Athrun looks over at the Strike and sees Kira again in his mind's eye, his older sister in all but name. (a.n. they're actually five months and eleven days apart for those who don't know.) Athrun takes off and heads for an exit.

Miguel again takes off and charges at the Strike. Murrue tries to divert his attack using the CIWS, but the rounds do nothing to slow him. In fact the rounds miss him completely.

'The calibration's off!' Kira thinks.

The ZAFT pilot smirks, "Doesn't matter how good your armor is," he mutters, "if you can't defend yourself!" he slashes at the enemy mobile suit again, but misses as the Strike steps out of the way. He flies high again. Miguel descends and gives a violent slash across its front, causing it to stumble back hard. "Take this, Natural!" he slashes again and knocks the Strike into a building. Unfortunately it's the same building Flay and her friends were hiding behind with several other refugees. Kira catches them out of the corner of her eye and turns to watch them flee.

"Tryin' to pilot that mobile suit! You're in way over your head, Natural!" Miguel shouts. He moves in to stab the floundering MS and it tries to retreat backwards, right toward Kira's comrades and girlfriend. Things seem to slow down for Kira as she sees the GINN sword coming in and the worried looks on her three friend's faces. Without thinking she reaches over and hits a button on the panel, causing the suit to crouch, then grabs a manipulator and body-checks the GINN forcing it back to the ground.

Murrue looks over at the younger brunet. "How did you…?"

"There are still people around here," Kira says. She begins accessing the M.O.S. and gets into the main system. "If you're going to pilot something like this you should try making better use of it." She notes the GINN trying to get up and knows she doesn't have much time. She sighs when she sees the OS setup. "This is nuts. How do you expect to use a complex machine like this with your OS like this?"

"I-It hasn't reached the completion stage," Murrue stutters, "It can't be helped."

Kira looks at Cagalli, "is there enough room behind for you to get over here where I am?"

She looks, "I think so."

"Good, do it." She looks at Murrue, "Ma'am, could you please move over?"

Cagalli gets around the cockpit and Murrue moves over to where she'd been and Kira takes her place in the seat. Bringing sown the keyboard Kira access the programs. Actually Kira's quite impressed with the Naturals. They actually have built a halfway decent OS that a Natural pilot could almost use, but had no time to modify it further. So instead she makes a copy and stores it in a file of its own and begins reworking the current OS for a Coordinator to use.

Murrue looks over at the girl and wonders to herself if the girl she's taken on is a Coordinator. The GINN comes in again only to encounter stiff resistance from the CIWS of the Strike, causing it to stumble again. He corrects and tries to stab it again, but Kira levels a punch at the ZAFT suit knocking it back yet again and into a building. Kira continues her modifications of the OS. "Take the calibrations and reset the zero moment point and CPG. Then connect the control module to the quazi-cortrx molecular ion pump and reconstruct the neural linkage network. Update the meta-motor, reset feed forward controls, convey function. Adjust for Coriolis deviation. Online." The pilot of the other suit got back up and if his mobile suit's movements are any indication he's good and mad.

The ZAFT pilot put away his sword and got back out his rifle, firing several shots at the Strike and forcing it back a couple feet. Kira responds by activating her verniers and taking to the sky to get sway from her friends a bit. The GINN follows her, letting off several rounds of rifle fire.

Kira checks her readout again. "Weapons?" she accesses the proper folder and doesn't like what she comes up with. Other than its CIWS its only other weapons are, "Armor Schneider? That's all there is?" even with this protest she pulls them from their hip sheaths and lands. The GINN follows suit, firing all the way. Kira charges in avoiding incoming fire and again uses the verniers to jet quickly over. "Stop it!" she shouts and stabs one knife in its arm and the other in the neck. Watching this Cagalli, who'd been fairly quiet, is awed by the drama she's watching. She'd never seen anyone handle a mobile suit with such grace, not even another Coordinator. Sparks fly and the enemy MS goes limp. Seconds later they see the ZAFT pilot blow the hatch and fly away with a jet pack.

Seeing this Murrue panics a bit, figuring what's about to happen. "This doesn't look good. Quickly, get away from the GINN!" she warns. It's too little, too late though. A couple seconds later the mobile suit blows up in their faces.

In the central corridor Natarle Badgiruel is brought back to consciousness when she bounces against a hard surface and having something, or someone, land against her front. Opening her violet eyes she sees the one who hit her is a dead worker. Sadness wells up in her as they float to the floor but she forces it aside for now. There will be time to morn their deaths later. She looks around as her brain begins to shake off a bit. "The ship. Where's the Archangel?" she quickly heads back down the tunnel toward the control room.

Outside Mu La Flaga is having a hard time fighting off the ZAFT GINN that's been terrorizing them this whole time. "Can't we do something about the difference in battle strength!" he growls. He fires a shot from his linear cannon, and then launches his tethered gunbarrels. A shot of his cannon takes out his enemy's rifle and several consecutive shots from the gunbarrels removes an arm, forcing it to retreat. With a brief lull in the combat for now La Flaga continues CAP of the area.

Kira feels a jolt and smacks her head against the back of the pilot's seat rousing her awake, as well as giving her a lager headache than she already had. Looking up she sees a grapple tether pulling them from the firestorm generated from the destroyed GINN. That tether is connected to a steal-gray and off-white ship. Too disoriented to use her nano-comm yet she activates the comm. in the Strike, "It's about time you got here." She grumbles.

San smiles wanly. "Sorry, commander. You alright?"

Kira touches the back of her head and winces a bit, "Oh yeah, Badgiruel, I'm just peachy." She reaches over and wakes Murrue and then Cagalli. The two finally come too as the Strike is set down in a park.

"What is that?" Murrue asks.

Kira smiles, "You see now the mobile assault ship Defender. Built here in secret for the purpose of ending this war between ZAFT and the EAF. We took specs for both organizations ships and combined them into something that was greater than the sum of their parts."

"How did you build a ship like this? Where did you get the resources?" Cagalli asks.

"We have several contacts in the Junk Guild. And we also diverted a few resources here ourselves." She sighs, "We just want to end this insane war…"

"You're trying to end the war, all on your own?" Murrue again.

Kira laughs, "Oh goodness no! But we can discuss this later once your ship gets here." The girl reaches down and opens the hatch. Getting out she watches the Defender land a short distance away. Taking a deep breath she shakes off the remaining dizziness and once again activates her nano-comm.

:Flay, are you alright:

:I'm okay, Kira. So are Jess and Misha: she responds.

:Good. Can you see the ship from where you are:

:Yes, we've already been contacted and are on our way. See you soon, Kira:

:Yeah, you too:

They end communication and Kira uses the line to get down, soon followed by Murrue and Cagalli. Out of the ship comes a jeep, which comes up and stops a few yards from the Strike. Two people get out, one of them the captain of her ship, San Badgiruel, and the other San's XO Raine Mikamura. They stop before Kira and salute her in their modified form; bringing their right fists to the heart, then to the temple. Kira returns it before offering introductions.

"I'd like to introduce the command crew of my ship. These are Captain San Badgiruel and her XO Raine Mikamura."

"Excuse me, but did you say Badgiruel?" San nods. "Are you related to Natarle Badgiruel?"

"I'm her younger sister," the black haired girl replies. "And I happen to know that she's assigned to the Archangel."

"Yes. I'm lieutenant Murrue Ramius. I'm a staff officer on the Archangel in charge of…"

"The G-Weapon project, right?" Kira finishes.

Murrue sighs. "Seems you know about that too, huh?"

The other girl shrugs, "Not entirely. All we knew was mobile suits were being built here. We didn't know they were G.U.N.D.A.M.s." She turns back to her two officers, "See about getting a recharge for this suit and if there are any equipment trucks left related to this unit bring them."

"Yes, ma'am." Natarle says.

Back to Murrue she says, "If you'd provide information for my crew to locate the trucks they'll retrieve your equipment for you."

"Very well," she says.

A call brings her around and she sees Flay and the others running toward her. When she arrives flay throws herself into Kira's waiting arms, who spins her around and then kisses her quite fiercely. Keeping her arm around Flay's waist she again introduces them, "Lt. Ramius, I'd like to introduce Misha Yamano, Jessica Simmons, and finally my girlfriend Flay Allster. Girls, this is Lieutenant Murrue Ramius of the Atlantic Federation."

"Flay Allster? Daughter of…"

"Atlantic Federation minister George Allster?" Flay answers, "Yep." Her expression turns a bit darker, "I don't share my father's view on Coordinators."

Kira squeezes her one more time before releasing her. "Would you three mind keeping Miss Ramius company while I go work on something?"

She nods, "Sure, but what are you going to be doing?"

"I'm going to go upgrade the OS on the Strike," Kira says. "They actually had an almost working one for a natural, I'm just going to go tweak it a bit so a natural can make the best possible use of it. I'm expecting their pilot's gonna want to use it once their ship gets here to pick up their unit and crewman." So she meanders on back over to the Strike and gets in to work a bit on the operating system.

Natarle finally makes it back to the central station where the Archangel had been calling to anyone who could hear her. She receives no response. A floating object crosses her path and upon closer inspection she sees it's the captain's hat. Tears once again begin to well up in her eyes at the loss of life. Again she tries calling out in the hopes that someone survived.

"Are there any survivors? Hello! Can anyone hear me?"

Silence is all she gets. Just as she is about to give up hope of finding anyone alive in the wreckage she hears a sound to her right. She looks over and a door suddenly comes flying off its moorings. A person comes through and a light shines in her face for a moment before moving away again.

"Ensign Badgiruel! I'm glad to see you're okay," comes the voice of Arnold Neumann, "Please, ma'am come this way."

Natarle nods and follows Neumann through the door.

Outside Mu feels something amiss. An unsettling feeling in the pit of his stomach that often denoted either danger, or worse, his enemy Le Creuset was near. He keeps his eyes and sensors pealed for any sign of danger and continues his patrol.

In the park of Heliopolis Flay and the girls discuss with Murrue some of the things they had to do in order to keep the existence of the Defender a secret, while still getting equipment so they could build it in time. Having launched a bit ahead of schedual had put a bit of a crimp on some of the things that need to be completed.

"I must admit," Murrue says some pride in her voice, "you young people are quite resourceful." She looks at their ship, "And at the same time I'm slightly concerned with how easily you broke into the Atlantic Federation database and acquired this data. I'm beginning to wonder just how badly compromised our system really is."

"Not as badly as you might think," Misha says offhanded. "While we were in there we only found a couple other instances of other intruders in the system. Must have been some seriously high end hackers to get in there. Other than that any information must have been leaked though some inside source."

That makes Ramius think. If information had been leaked by a ZAFT sympathizer, or worse Blue Cosmos, there's no telling what might happen. Looking back at the Strike and the young Coordinator currently working on it she seriously hopes that this war can be ended soon so they can all go back to living their lives.

Mu continues patrol of the surrounding space of Heliopolis, the feeling in his gut increasing. Something out of the corner of his eye, a flash of white, and he suddenly jinks his Moebius Zero out of the way of several shots from a ZGMF-515 CGUE. Only one person he knew around here owned one of those.

"Bastard! Is that you, Rau Le Creuset?" he snarls. He launches two of his gunbarrels and fires a couple rounds from his linear cannon as he dodges too and fro through rifle fire.

"You always seem to get in my way, Mu La Flaga!" comes Rau's voice over his comm., "Though I imagine you say the same thing about me."

Rau turns and flies into the colony interior. After a moment La Flaga follows.

"X-105 Strike to Earth Forces, please respond. Repeat, X-105 Strike here, Earth Forces, please respond." Kira is taking a short break from reconstructing the Strike's OS and Murrue had asked her to try contacting any EA vessels in the vicinity. She looks up, "Sorry, Miss Ramius, I'm afraid I can't get through."

The older woman smiles gently at Kira, "That's alright. I wasn't expecting you to get through, but felt to give it a try anyway."

A wry smile tugs at Kira's lips, "If you guys used nanotech like we do you wouldn't have to worry about this." She sees a light seem to come on over Murrue's head, but waves to cut off the idea she knows is forming, "No I can't tap in on you communication frequency. It doesn't work that way. Yet…" she adds.

"So eventually you'll be able to use it to access other communications units?" Ramius asks.

"Not just that," Kira says, "But eventually we'll be able to control our equipment with just our thoughts." She stiffens a bit and then her eyes take on a far away look that tells Ramius she's probably talking with someone. She comes back a few moments later.

"What is it?" she asks.

"Sensors have detected fighting in the colony core. I.D. reads a ZAFT ZGMF-515 CGUE and a TS-MA2mod.00 Moebius Zero. Our best guess is Le Creuset and Le Flaga are having it out."

The sound of truck engines are heard and the two get out to look. Two trucks come to a stop near the Strike and several people get out, along with Sai Argyle. He comes up to them, "Trailer numbers three and five survived the battle."

"What's in them?" Kira asks.

"Readouts indicate four is called the AQM/E-X03 Launcher Striker and consists of an "Agni" 320mm hyper impulse cannon and a combo 120mm anti-ship Vulcan gun and two 350mm gun launchers. The other is called the AQM/E-X01 Aile Striker, consisting of a high speed flight pack, two beam sabers, an anti-beam shield and a 57mm beam rifle." Sai reports.

Kira looks thoughtful a moment as she weighs her options. Cagalli, who had been quiet until now seated at the base of the Strike looks at her and wonders what she's thinking and determines to ask for one of those nano-systems for herself.

"Alright, I want you to position the number three trailer and fit the Aile Striker. The less chance to damage Heliopolis the batter," Kira says.

"Roger," Sai confirms.

"Are you expecting to have to fight?" Cagalli asks.

Kira turns back to the Strike and motions the slightly shorter blond to follow. "Yeah, I am. And there's no time to prep the Wing, so I'll just have to fight with Strike again."

Cagalli nods then grabs Kira's arm to stop her. As Kira turns Cagalli hugs her. "Be careful out there, 'k." For some reason Cagalli feels very comfortable around Kira; like a sister or cousin that she'd never knew. (Oh if she only knew, huh? Author)

Kira nods and returns it. "I'll try. Now get to the Defender, you'll be safe there."

"Right," the other girl nods and runs to the waiting jeep.

In the colony core Mu and Rau fight furiously in an attempt to destroy each other. The only difference in tactics is that Mu was trying to take great care to cause as little damage as possible.

"Dammit! Why in this place?" he fires several more blasts of his linear cannon, but the CGUE manages to avoid them.

"Mu I'd actually be pleased if you vanished right about now!" Rau yells and comes from behind a support structure and puts several holes in the top gunbarrel, causing it to explode. The shrapnel from that catches the side two and destroyed them. Mu ejects the lower one to regain stability.

"Launch the ship?" Neumann asks, "But that's impossible with the number of people we have aboard, even with half the bridge crew present. There's too many systems that need monitoring." He and the other bridge members stand around looking at Ensign Badgiruel like she's grown another head.

"The time you're spending arguing about it is time you could be using to make it possible. Morgenroete could still be under attack for all we know! We have to get out." Natarle reclines back in the captain's seat and massages a temple. 'Man have I got a headache.' She looks back at Chief Petty Officer Neumann, "So what you're saying is that we should remain confined in here and ignore what's happening elsewhere?"

"No, ma'am," he sighs, and takes his place at helm.

"Then take you positions!" she orders, "And follow the computer's instructions! After all, this ship was designed to be operated by a skeleton crew. There's enough of us that we should be able to pull this off." Everyone takes their positions. "Begin launch sequence! Due to the emergency, we'll omit C-30 to L-21 from the process! Main power online!"

All around them the greatest ship the EAF has ever constructed, the Archangel, begins to come to life.

In the core the two exchange fire in a dangerous dance, neither truly able to hit the other. But Mu knows that it's only a matter of time before either one scores a hit. Mu's last gunbarrel is destroyed when Rau brings his mobile suit crashing down on it, leaving Mu with only his cannon to rely on.

The equipment truck containing the Aile Striker parts is positioned behind Strike, its bay doors open revealing the flight gear.

: Hurry up, Kira: says Raine. : They've almost made it this far:

: We're going, we're going: She responds.

Just as the Aile pack is being attached an explosion is heard above and out shoot the CGUE and Moebius Zero.

La Creuset gets a look at it. "So that's it, huh." He zooms in on the Defender. "And what have we here? I don't remember reports of a second ship."

Mu also catches sight of it. 'What's that?'

His comm. squawks, "This is the mobile battle ship Defender to Mu Le Flaga. This is the captain speaking. Our ship is friendly, repeat our ship is friendly."

Hearing that he ignores the ship and dives after La Creuset, who's dive-bombing the Strike. Mu manages to distract him by coming in low and firing a round, causing Rau to pull up and by time for the others to mount the equipment. The blond Coordinator finally gets the upper hand on Mu and slices off the barrel of the linear cannon. Again he dive-bombs, but too late. The Aile unit mounts to it hard points and Kira activated the PS armor. Boosting off she takes to the air and fires off several rounds of her beam rifle at the annoying CGUE. Suddenly they become distracted as the ground near the remains of Morgenroete explodes in a fiery conflagration. Taking this moment Kira fires her rifle again and destroys Rau's right arm. Another shot almost hits his cockpit, but he moves in time so it only takes his left leg.

As he watches the warship Archangel fly from the fire like a phoenix reborn he turns and makes his way out. 'This isn't over!' he thinks.

End Chapter Two

Natarle: Kira and the others have no choice but to team up with the Archangel in order to survive against the ZAFT. Badgiruel discovers family and finds out just what's been happening these past months. They are now prisoners on Heliopolis, a land now consumed by the war. ZAFT forces launch another brutal attack that could endanger the entire colony. But the rogue ship, the Defender reveals the fire power at its disposal in the form of the Gundam known as Heavyarms. Two young friends also meet again, this time in combat.

Next on Mobile Suit Gundam Seed: "Collapsing Land".

Shoot down the approaching menace, Gundam!

Did I do well? As I said I'm trying to remain faithful to the story ark, mostly. Feedback and suggestions appreciated!