Author's Pre-Chapter Note: Hi there, and welcome to this small AU work! I do hope you enjoy it! If there are canon scenes that are not mentioned in the fic itself or the notes, you can safely assume that they play out as per the original animation; they just are not the focus of this fic.

Author's Pre-Chapter Note 2 (28/08/2022): Hello! I should have a one-shot set after this work published by the time you see this. This work also now has a TV Tropes page! Look for Fanfic/RenewingTrust to find it (direct link is unavailable, thanks ffn).

("Normal Dialogue" / "Thought" / "Ribbons Mental Projection")


Anew Returner had to admit, she never wanted to fight Lyle Dylandy.

He, in his Cherudim Gundam, had specifically engaged with her Gaddess when she joined her Innovator brethren in attacking the Ptolemaios II. All the while as they fought, he called out to her, outright ignoring her taunts and insults that increasingly tore her heart more than it seemed to affect him.

"He's such a foolish man. Doesn't he understand, we can't be together!"

And yet he persevered. Despite all that she threw at him - the Heat Saber, the beam guns on the Gaddess' wrists, the Fangs - he had powered through it all, using Trans-Am and the Shield Bits on his Cherudim to entrap her mobile suit in a web of beam fire and weave himself into a position to force her surrender, facing down 2 beam pistols and 7 beam guns from the deployed Bits.

Then Lyle threw away the pistols, to Anew's surprise and confusion. The freed hands of the Cherudim grabbed onto her Gaddess, and she felt the internal atmosphere of her cockpit escape in a rush as the Gundam - as Lyle tore off the top panels of the cockpit block, exposing her still rooted in her seat. She could only utter in shock, "Lyle…"

"I'm getting what I want. Even if you are an Innovator."

Anew could only look down at the central console of her Gaddess, as if it were a mirror reflecting her own image. "He… still wants me? After everything I've done, the hurt I've caused, he…" Tears escaped her eyes as she witnessed the Cherudim placing an open palm in front of her, and Lyle opened his cockpit hatch. "He still has that damned smile on his face…"

Anew could no longer deny herself the truth - that she still remained in love with Lyle Dylandy, that she wanted, no, desired to go back to him, to repent to him and the rest of the Ptolemaios II's crew for her actions as the Innovators' secret turncoat. "Oh, Lyle, I feel like I can… like I can…" She leaned forward and out of her seat, and was just about to vault out of her wrecked mobile suit, reaching for the embrace of the man she loved -

"I believe that is enough deviance from you, Anew Returner." Anew shuddered at the voice of her leader, her master, Ribbons Almark. Except her body didn't shake; it stayed still, floating, half in and half out of the cockpit, despite the Innovator woman willing her own body to move.

In the next instant, without time to comprehend, Anew felt like she was shunted to the back of her own mind, her eyes and body no longer her own, akin to merely watching a first person perspective scene from a movie…

… where Ribbons Almark was the director, producer and actor all at once.

She could hear him ask with worry whether she was alright, but she could not reply, nor could she warn him. She could only observe as Ribbons made her right arm move the control stick her hand was still gripping, translating into a kick from the Gaddess to the Cherudim.

"Stop this! Please, Ribbons, no!" Anew pleaded mentally as Ribbons, through her body, commanded what was left of the Gaddess to attack the Gundam right in front of it. Every slash made, every stab and thrust launched at the Cherudim, Anew felt the motion of the Heat Saber carve into the mental embodiment of herself. If she could weep, she would have cried streams of tears into the inner surface of her helmet. If she could speak, she would respond to Lyle calling her name with anguish.

But she could do neither, for Ribbons was the one in control of her body, not herself. Ribbons declared in Anew's voice, faking her persona while unleashing the remaining Fangs of the Gaddess, "Innovators... are meant to guide humanity. That's right, we are superior beings, absolute and perfect. I can't stand us being treated as though we were as lowly as humans. Let me show you the real difference in our powers." Continuing to attack, he also paid attention to the other persona in the space.

"Ribbons, please, no more!" Anew protested in vain as she attempted to resist Ribbons' control of her body.

"Be quiet, you tainted failure. You may have given me the data, but the double-powered suit is still with them." Ribbons retorted, without any sort of tonal inflection, over the quantum brainwave link he was remotely puppeting her with.

"But-"

"Silence. At least you have given me the opportunity to remove this Romeo with the hands of the Juliet he was so enamoured by. Savour this tragedy while you still exist."

Anew felt only fear and dread as the Gaddess raised its Heat Saber directly at the torso of the Cherudim, preparing to charge right into it - into Lyle. As the half-destroyed mobile suit began to accelerate forwards, despite the protestations and pleas of Lyle over the communications link, Anew snapped.

"NOOOOOOOOOO!"

She put everything into stopping the Gaddess, her desperation and desire indistinguishable. Anew willed her body to pull back, to command the mobile suit anywhere but at the severely damaged Cherudim.

"I WILL NOT HURT HIM ANYMORE!"

And her arms finally moved-


Setsuna F. Seiei always fought to ensure survival. His own, and his comrades'.

Initiating Trans-Am as soon as 00 Raiser was combined, Setsuna first shot at the two Innovator mobile suits heading for the Ptolemaios II using his GN Sword IIs in rifle mode, for they were the closest threat. He did not even bother to let the 00 Raiser's targeting systems lock on for him, running on instinct and dead reckoning as he brought his mobile suit out from the underside of Ptolemy.

The sight of Tieria, Allelujah and Soma ensnared in electrified wires from a new mobile armor model got his immediate attention. "Looks like an improved model from the one I destroyed at the Africa Tower." Burning through and severing the wires with another salvo from his sword-rifles, he evaded a series of surprisingly curving particle beam shots and closed in for more shots on the enemy, only to be countered by an intense GN field from the mobile armor. Setsuna immediately switched one of his GN Sword IIs to its namesake form and threw it like a stiletto, then shooting it with the other Sword (which had been kept in rifle mode) as the blade punctured half its length through the field. The resulting explosion damaged the enemy to the point where its GN field dissipated and the mobile armor looked to be combat ineffective.

"Where is Lockon? Did he-" The sight of Cherudim in the distance being torn up by yet another unknown mobile suit, albeit one already damaged and missing limbs, resolved that hanging thought for him. The pleas of Cherudim's pilot over the communication channel, with a very specific name on his lips, confirmed to Setsuna the scenario he had exactly warned the second Lockon Stratos of.

"Anew Returner is in that mobile suit. I have to eliminate her if Lyle Dylandy is to live."

Closing in from below the plane of combat, Setsuna brought up the sword-rifle in the 00 Raiser's hand. As soon as the lead indicator on his cockpit display was over the torso of Anew's mobile suit, which was charging at Cherudim sword-first, he pulled the trigger, firing a short burst of beam energy to intercept and destroy the suit before it could harm Lyle and the Cherudim any further.

A small part of him wondered, as he released the trigger, if it was truly Anew in control. The movement of the mobile suit, as damaged as it was, did not seem - did not feel - like that was his former comrade in that cockpit; it was not something he concluded, he just… knew. "Something isn't right… That is her, yet... isn't really her. Nonetheless, she still has to be stopped." Setsuna resolved, his eyes beginning to take on a dull golden glow unbeknownst to everyone, including himself, as he tracked his beam shot.

The pink beam travelled the distance between the 00 Raiser and the mobile suit controlled by Anew… which suddenly decelerated with its drawn sword still metres from the cockpit of the Cherudim. As the mobile suit's remaining leg swung forward from the residual momentum, Setsuna's beam shot, still flying straight and true, grazed the shin armor before melting the outstretched sword arm at the elbow. The resulting explosion tore off the lower arm, which careened and bounced off the Cherudim at a harmless oblique angle.

"Anew neutralised. But that movement at the last moment…" Setsuna, slightly confused, flew past the wreckage of the Cherudim and Anew's mobile suit, which had collided and now lay together, to avoid a collision of his own. The sheer GN Particle output of the 00 Raiser in Trans-Am filled the void of space surrounding the two heavily damaged mobile suits, and brought the pilots of the suits, unfortunate lovers drawn apart and made to fight each other by their conflicting missions, into the ethereal realm of the quanta.


Lyle Dylandy - the second Lockon Stratos after his twin brother - regained his senses floating in a void of white.

"Wait, I was just… Anew!" He panicked for the briefest of moments, until he looked down - and nestled on his bare torso, her lavender locks floating in an apparent lack of gravity, and her arms embracing him tightly, was the lover he missed so, so much.

"Lyle…" He heard her utter, with a weird echo in the seemingly endless space. "You know, I'm glad that I was an Innovator."

"W-why is that?" He asked in surprise as she pulled back slightly. Placing her hands on his chest, she replied looking up at his light blue eyes, "If I wasn't an Innovator, then I never would have met you."

As Anew looked down and broke her gaze on him, Lyle could only briefly close his own eyes in sorrow. "We would've never had a chance to know each other in this world." She continued, breaking down into Lyle's chest with him only able to look on.

"Anew… you…" Lyle's heart felt like it was being cut in two. He took hold of her shoulders, trying to look into her vibrant crimson eyes. In an attempt to reassure her, he mentioned, "But that would be alright. If it meant you could continue to live."

"But without you, that life wouldn't have been worth living." Anew countered, her hands hovering just beyond Lyle's cheeks, as if she wished to touch him but had no courage to close that last distance. She felt a jolt, as if something crossed her mind, and she asked, with the kind and gentle smile Lyle wanted her to always have on her beautiful face:

"Hey. We understood each other, didn't we?"

Lyle himself jolted, and admitted, "Yeah, of course we did."

"Then… I'm glad…" Anew closed her eyes, seemingly making her final peace, and began to drift away from Lyle.

But Lyle didn't want her to leave him. He wanted to hold her in his arms, whisper sweet nothings in her ear to calm her down.

Lyle Dylandy wanted to continue giving his love to Anew Returner, his woman. And if she had to repent and repay for her actions as an Innovator, then he wanted nothing more than to bear that burden and suffering with her, for as long as he could.

So he reached out for her-


"Detecting runaway Tau drive reactions! Lockon, you need to get away from Anew now!" Feldt exclaimed over the communications channel the Cherudim had with the Ptolemaios II.

"Not yet! Just a bit more…" Lyle exclaimed, jamming the Cherudim's already damaged hands into the torso of Anew's wrecked mobile suit. E-Carbon snapped and cables frayed as Lyle worked his damaged Gundam for the sole purpose of extricating Anew, who was slumped in her partially crumpled cockpit.

Metallic straining turned into breakage as the last structural connections keeping the cockpit attached to the rest of the mobile suit's torso gave way. Lyle immediately took hold of the cockpit with the palms of Cherudim and pulled it full backwards, rotating to shield the defenceless woman using the bulk of the Gundam's torso as the mobile suit Anew rode into battle exploded in a catastrophic fireball.

"Ptolemy! I have Anew! She's hurt! I need the regeneration pod ready!" Lyle reported back to the Ptolemaios II as he turned the damaged Cherudim around and made a straight course for the ship's hangar. He tuned out the replies and requests for updates that he was now getting from Feldt, only able to stare at Anew, her visor glazed and pilot suit charred from flash melting due to the arm's explosion earlier on. He knew who had made that shot that took Anew out of the fight - there was only one person who would be so callous.

"Setsuna, if you killed Anew… Her blood is on your hands."


The sudden cessation of the quantum brainwave link he had been using to commandeer Anew Returner's body confounded Ribbons Almark. "What… What happened?" He wondered aloud as he sat in the lounge of an A-LAWS cruiser, attempting to re-activate the link but to no avail.

At the seemingly permanent loss, Ribbons rapidly shifted his attention to consider the recent events. Anew Returner had overpowered him - for half a second, at most - but she had defied her creator's unquestionable command of her body. Then she was eliminated, it seemed, by Setsuna F. Seiei in the double-powered mobile suit, the object of his ambition and the pièce de résistance of his plan for a conflict-free world - if it were to fall into his possession.

The fact it was not in his possession currently was the fault of the aforementioned Anew Returner, who had, in his view, been tainted by the human emotions that the crew of the Ptolemaios II, in particular the man named Lyle Dylandy, had infected her with, leading to significant errors of judgement and execution.

Ribbons relaxed again as Hiling Care and Revive Revival reported to him via quantum brainwave that they had to retreat yet again in their respective escape pods, with the loss of their mobile suits and damage to the Regnant of Louise Halvey. "Count yourselves lucky you are still alive and useful to me," he replied smoothly but tersely to both his subordinate Innovators, blocking any further waves from the two.

Back to being alone except for his own thoughts, Ribbons felt free to muse.

"Anew Returner. It is a shame you did not live up to your potential. It is a shame you were corrupted by the humans you interacted with. It is a shame that you considered returning to their commune, being but Lyle Dylandy's chattel, instead of taking your rightful place with me and the other Innovators in the highest circle of virtue."

Ribbons paused to connect to Veda, bringing up the stash of data that Anew pilfered from the Ptolemaios II when she revealed her true colours.

"Yet, I suppose, you were still valuable."

Documents pertaining to the 00 Raiser's most unique subsystems, in particular the Twin Drive System, were isolated and read, the information flowing into Ribbon's brain as if he was reading and memorising said documents in person. Ribbons smirked, his glowing eyes pulsating in his joy.

"If the rogue, inferior humans wish to cling onto the Gundam with twin original drives and deny me the honour... no, the privilege of giving them peace and salvation…"

He accessed another part of Veda remotely, beginning to re-analyse and modify schematics of a humanoid mobile suit, integrating the Twin Drive System into the structure of his design.

"... then I shall overcome and subjugate them with a twin-drive Gundam of my own creation."


Author's Post-Chapter Note: Renewing Trust came from seeing other fics focussing on Lyle and Anew, then wondering, "What if Anew still gets controlled by Ribbons, but manages to get free just for a moment?" Of course, living past one's (canon) supposed death has its consequences, but those will come in subsequent chapters, which will come when they're ready and I'm comfortable with them out in the open.