A Side M

The boy clung to the rubble as the water swept past him. He cried, but his mother didn't answer. No one did. The land buckled and fell, entire buildings collapsing into the gaping sea. The boy felt himself slip and the water began to sweep him away.

A hand grabbed him and pulled.

"Come on!" the boy shouted. Blood ran down the side of his face, closing one eye shut. He wrapped himself around a rod of metal, clinging to Mikazuki's wrist and hauling him from the water. "Get up and run!"

Mikazuki scrambled as he was lifted out of the water. The ground shook and shifted, but they were already going up the ramp onto the highway. He looked back, but he didn't see her anywhere. He didn't see anyone through the curtain of rain crashing around him, like thousands of little teeth.

The movie theater crashed and exploded, rocks collapsing into the water as it went under behind them.

"So that's the deal," Orga concluded. He lowered his head, hands folded together.

Mikazuki rarely saw him resigned.

The older boys all sat together at the table. Shino at the opposite head, with Akihiro, Aston, and Beral to Orga's right. To his left was an empty seat for Biscuit, in case he ever came back, and then Katz and Mikazuki. They were the oldest in Tekkadan, and Orga always talked about things with them first.

"I'm staying here to help Newtype," Orga finished. "From here on out, it's going to be bad. Anyone who wants out should do so now."

"I mean…" Beral glanced around the room at the others. "You're basically saying this is it, right?"

Orga frowned. "I'm saying this is where I'm staying."

"Then it's where we're staying," Shino replied. "That's what it's all been about, since we ditched the slums."

"Why?" Akihiro asked. He seemed honestly curious about the answer. Mikazuki agreed. "Why is this it?"

"Because of Newtype," Katz guessed. "She's different from other capes. She won't ditch us when it gets hard."

"She won't," Orga agreed, "but that's not—"

"Makes sense to me," Shino declared. "I like it here." He raised his hands and slapped them onto the surface before him. "We have a table and everything!"

"We have work," Aston agreed. "We're not hungry anymore."

"We can clothe all the younger kids," Katz added. "And when there is trouble, we have capes who will back us up."

"I'm telling you guys you don't have to stay here," Orga insisted. "It's a miracle none of us got hurt. If Chariot hadn't had that suit hidden away—"

Shino laughed. "We'd have gone down fighting like badasses!"

Orga snarled.

"Where else would we go?" Katz asked. "Turbines? We mostly have work visas now. We could get jobs but—"

"Don't want to go anywhere else," Akihiro decided. "Tekkadan is the first place we've been that's felt like home since…"

"Home?" Beral asked. "Yeah. And Biscuit's still around." He nodded to the empty chair. "He and Ms. Alice might need help too. We can't just abandon them and Newtype might need all the help she can get."

"There are going to be guns," Orga warned. "And capes. When this starts, it's not going to be like before."

"But we'll figure it out like before," Aston replied. "You always find a way."

"It's the way it is." Shino nodded. "All this Blue Cosmos stuff is getting serious, though. We've never needed to care about them before. They're getting pretty crazy."

"I saw about Germany on the news." Katz glanced at Akihiro. "Lafter's from there, right?"

Mikazuki hadn't. Whatever happened in Germany was Germany's business and it was far away. Though, Biscuit always said it was important to know more. He'd usually taken care of that while he was around.

"Guess so," the big guy answered. "Not sure she knows about it though. She's busy with Newtype 'round here."

"Reminds me of how things were after Kyushu." Shino's face got a little more serious. "Things got bad real fast."

Thunder.

He hit the ground hard.

Grimacing in pain, he sat up quickly.

Orga stood, hand clutching his shoulder. Blood pooled at his feet, flowing from the body of the man that had tried to grab him. Shino sat against the wall with a knife in his shoulder and Akihiro straddled the second man. His big hands struck the face of their attacker over and over again.

Mikazuki didn't see the woman. After luring them into the alley, she ran.

The gun was still in his hands. Mikazuki turned it, looking over the worn weapon. He'd grabbed it from the man's belt when he grabbed Orga. He hadn't meant to fire.

"What now?" Shino asked. He yanked the knife from his shoulder and started kicking the ground. "Ow."

Akihiro rose up, fists blooded. "There's no food, is there? What—"

"We're going," Orga declared. He hung his head, teeth visibly pressed together. "There's nothing left here."

Mikazuki pulled his eyes away from the gun. "Where do we go, Orga?"

"Somewhere else," he snapped. He lifted his head, glaring forward at the wall. "Somewhere anywhere but here! Somewhere we belong!"

The others left to gather the younger kids for dinner and Orga sat with his forehead against his knuckles.

"You staying too, Mika?"

Mikazuki turned his head. "You're staying."

"You don't have to keep doing things just because I'm doing them."

"I know."

"Mika—"

"No one's gonna leave, Orga." Mikazuki rose from his seat. He'd figure it out. "We're all here because you brought us here, and we're not going to leave if you're staying."

He turned toward the door and reached into his pocket. It was one of those moments where it was best to leave Orga alone to think.

"We've come too far," he mumbled as he left.

Three of the Haros were downstairs when he arrived. They'd never had a TV so big, or any games for the kids to play. They seemed to be having fun with it now and the robots were playing along and letting them win.

"Mikazuki!" one of the boys called. "Wanna play?"

"I have to work," Mikazuki answered. "Another time."

"You're always working," another boy pointed out.

Mikazuki stuffed the chocolate into his mouth and nodded. "Mhm."

Because he worked, the others didn't have to worry so much and the kids could be kids.

The protesters were still outside. Akihiro was checking with his brother and the others they'd left on 'watch' duty. They weren't as old as those at the table, but they were older than the boys playing games inside. They stuck to the alleys and the roadsides—never the corners—and watched.

So far, the protesters were just angry, not violent.

Mikazuki knew the difference. The air was different. The things people said were different. The way they looked around was different. They were more afraid than anything. They got angry to hide from fear.

If someone wanted to be violent though, a crowd of a hundred angry people was a good place to hide. That might be a bit harder to deal with than some cocky capes. People knew about Newtype's shield now. Next time they'd be better prepared.

Especially since Tekkadan only had one gun left.

"I'll go."

Mikazuki rose and Orga grabbed his wrist.

"Mika," he hissed.

"I have a gun." Mikazuki lifted the weapon, the same one he'd carried ever since that day in the slums. He'd learned how to clean it and what size bullets to use. "I'll do it."

Orga stared. "Mika…"

"It's okay." He took the weapon in his hand and pulled it from his belt. "It's what we have to do, to find our way there, right?"

Behind him, he heard Orga speak a silent word. It wasn't the right one. They couldn't get there like that. It had to be the right word.

"Yes," Orga said. "But Mika—"

"I'll do it. If the cops come, then turn me in. I'll find my way back." He hefted the gun and pulled back on the top. The weapon snapped. "I'll kill him and then we'll keep going."

The door was open and he could hear voices inside.

Ahead, the old Merchants—they weren't so bad without guns—were working with some of Mr. Hebert's guys to load another shipment of Newtype's robots into boxes. That place in Europe had ordered a bunch of them. No truck came to pick them up. StarGazer had said they wouldn't need one.

Sanc, that was the place.

No need to worry about any thieves with no trucks.

There was nothing for him to do.

That was new.

He'd always gone first, there were problems that only he could solve. He accepted that. It wasn't the place he belonged but the place he was needed. At the front, clearing the way.

Approaching, he wedged the door open just slightly.

"Sure you're okay with that?" Charlotte asked. She sat on a stool by the wall, knees pulled up and pointing out. "You said you hated the idea of fighting."

Chariot worked at the table beside her, tools flashing and sending little bolts of light into the air.

"I do," he told her. "But it's going to happen with or without me, and I don't think I'll feel very good about myself if all I do is stand on a soap box complaining about how wrong it is."

The girl frowned. "There's nothing wrong with not wanting to fight."

Mikazuki stepped forward.

The eyes stared down at him.

The letters were there, just like on Newtype's suits.

Gundam.

Chariot had painted it since the fight. It was a pearl color now, not quite fully pink but not white. Mikazuki didn't really like it but it wasn't his machine. It felt familiar though. Distant but similar to something he'd seen before.

A cape from Kyushu maybe?

He wasn't sure. There was no image in his head to compare, only a vague sense that it was something he'd seen before. That feeling from seeing something twice in a row.

"I know," Chariot whispered. "All the same, I'm going to fight. When it all starts, the other side won't care that it's not what I want." He set the tools down and lifted a long spear-like weapon in both hands. "They might come after me at school, or my mom at work. Taylor's dad. Maybe even you, since you're her friend."

"I'll be okay. And I'm your friend too."

"And I'll feel really stupid if you're hurt." He set the spear back down. "So I'm going to fight until it ends and we have the chance to do things some other way. A better way." He sighed and lowered his head. "Sometimes I think Taylor's just a thousand steps ahead. She realized this ages ago."

Charlotte averted her eyes from him, her cheeks turning red. "That's, um, still really brave, Trevor." She leaped from the chair and straightened her hair suddenly. "Mikazuki?!"

Chariot turned around. "Oh, sorry. I didn't see you come—"

The words came easily to him. "Will you make one of these for me?"

Chariot tensed.

Charlotte glanced between them and with red cheeks she shuffled toward the door. "I'll let you two talk about that."

As she left, Mikazuki wondered why he always seemed to notice before others. First Bakuda and Biscuit, now Chariot and Charlotte. Maybe people with the same first letter for names just got along really well? Well, no there was Akihiro and Lafter too. Though that one was more recent.

"Mikazuki?" Chariot sat down in the seat Charlotte vacated. He looked at the Gundam, and then back to the shorter boy. "I—"

Lifting a hand, Mikazuki looked at his fingers. The blood was long washed away, but he still felt it on his skin.

"Orga found where he belongs," he murmured quietly. "He says we should think about whether we want to stay, but I don't want to go. This…" He flexed the fingers and closed them into a fist. The blood didn't matter. "This is the only way I know how to live."

Raising his head once more, he met the machine's eyes and felt that same sense from the first night. The sense that there was something in that face that was right. Righter even.

He understood that face.

"I can't use Newtype's machines," he admitted. "I don't understand them. I understand this. I can feel how it moves. Build me one."

Chariot rose from his seat and crossed the workshop.

"That's what you want?" the tinker asked. "That's your choice?"

Mikazuki let his hand drop to his side. It wasn't just blood.

Mika grit his teeth grabbed at her, trying to pull her back behind the barrel.

The bullets bounced against stone, and her body constricted as she fell. She scrambled despite the blood, pushing with her feet. Hauling her into his lap, Mikazuki leaned around the corner and fired.

The gunfire lulled, but Mika kept the sights on the far end of the alley.

"We were close, Mika." She heaved, blood spilling from her lips.

He gripped the gun in one hand, and squeezed hers with the other. "Yeah."

"I wonder what it's like."

"Yeah."

Rain pattered around them and washed the blood away.

Yue's head fell to the ground. "I wish I could see…"

Mika squeezed her hand one last time. "Yeah..."

Yue came to mind, but she wasn't the only one. Mikazuki didn't remember most of their names anymore. There were too many.

Their blood was on his hands too.

It was a promise, for the ones who didn't make it this far. To make it all count for something. To keep those that died behind them from dying for nothing. To keep going. To survive, and live.

"If not for Orga, I'd have drowned. I was dead until he saved me."

To find that place, the place he belonged.

"I don't want to be helpless. We've come too far to lose now." They couldn't keep asking others to protect them. It was good to have friends to stand up for them, but what good were they if they couldn't stand as well? "I don't want to be swept away without doing anything to fight back."

He thought back to Orga falling down the elevator and taking the tinker with him. All Mikazuki had was a pistol. Even if he'd managed to get down there, how much could he have really done? If not for the Haros taking Newtype's other machines...

Mikazuki turned, realizing, "The place Orga needed me was always at the front. Now, they need me behind them to protect the place we've made for ourselves."

Chariot looked down at Mikazuki, lips set in a line. His eyes narrowed, then closed. When they opened again, he looked different.

Chariot always seemed too timid to fight. Like Biscuit maybe, but even Biscuit fought when they had to. Seeing him fight those capes and the troopers, and then the machines that came. Trevor could fight. The machine was just another kind of gun. It didn't give him the resolve.

He found the resolve on his own, just like they had all those years ago.

"You're sure?" Chariot asked.

Mikazuki smiled and met his eyes. "It's where I belong."

Chariot's hands balled into fists at his side. "Alright."