Author note: There may be more that one pairing in this story.


Anew Destination

Lagrange 4

In the middle of a multipurpose room within the Lagrange 4 sat a blackbox that belonged to the yellow mobile suit shot down and captured by Allelujah after it tried to assault the space station wit its counterparts. Its cover was pried open after Ian decided to apply violence, and was plugged to a series of wires that connected to a supercomputer he brought to help his investigation.

"What the heck is a loader?" Ian shouted to himself upon reading the complex programming of the blackbox. Thankfully it was written in English, but that didn't make his job easier at all, as Ian's usual duty was to replace broken parts of the Meisters' mobile suits, and leave the electronics to his wife. Unfortunately even after an hour of persuading, she still insisted on watching over Feldt's endless practicing.

He scrolled through the protocols but so far he hasn't found anything that interests him. That was until he came across some of the mobile suit's combat protocols and noticed a name 'Jack'.

Clearly not the name of this mobile suit.


Setsuna emerged from the station's gym as he put his white shirt over his chest. Normally he would've stayed in there working out and endlessly doing push ups until his stomach starts protesting. But after realising what keeping his distance from everyone would result in, he decided there was something that he should also attend to.

He floated his way to the mobile suit hangar, where the Harute II and the rest of its components lay just as he expected. Outside the Harute stood a woman in a white spacesuit, apparently monitoring the progress of the Meister candidate. As soon as Setsuna set foot on the platform a floor below him the cockpit hatch popped open with a white cloud quickly forming around it. Hopping out of the cockpit was no other that Feldt Grace, the person Setsuna's been dwelling on in the past few days.

"Before you get any ideas, you've been sitting in that cockpit for a whole night straight. Get at least six hours of sleep before you appear in here." She crossed her arms and glared at a weary Feldt, but as always, she didn't budge, and was ready to get back inside after she scanned her results. She broke her high score despite the presence of Aheads, but at the price of major armour damage, along with two lost limbs. "Not a chance." She murmured, but was stopped when Setsuna ambushed her with his arms.

She found herself wrapped by Setsuna's arms, and her eyelids suddenly felt like they weighted tons. "I figured I owe you a hug from that medical capsule." He whispered softly.

Before she knew it, she passed out in Setsuna's arms to the warmth of his body, with a slight smile planted on her face. "Never though I'd thank you for that. Now I can save all the hassle." Linda thanked as the young Meister carried his friend deeper into the space station and to Feldt's quarters. Setsuna carried her as if he was transporting an infant, and thanks to the space station's low gravity he was able to lift her without a hitch, until he ran into Milenia who just came out of Ian's office.

He instinctively shushed Milenia quietly as he drifted by, while keeping his fingers crossed that the romantic operator would leave him in peace for just a moment. Thankfully Milenia seemed to get his message, and simply whispered 'roger' as he went on to her room with nothing to note aside from a bed and a moveable TV screen. He could only go as far as taking off her standard space suit, and tucked her in her bed with her uniform still on.

To think it's seven in the morning...Feldt's going nuts.

And of course Setsuna could only fool the clairvoyant called Milenia for so long. He ended up running into her for the second time of the day in the mess hall after hurriedly filling his stomach. To make matters worse, she brought Lyle with her to subdue him before he could come up with an excuse to be elsewhere.

Lyle strangled his neck and forced him back onto a seat. Setsuna protested by swinging his arm towards whatever he could reach, but in the end all he could reach was Lyle and Milenia's iron grip. "How's your work?" Lyle asked slyly as Setsuna's rear end slammed onto the chair.

"You don't have to pin me like this to get me talking!" He resisted and tried to pry the older Meister's arm off his neck to keep his spine intact, but Lyle wasn't budging, and neither was Milenia who got held back when she first tried to question Setsuna.

"I'm fine with sharing a bit of my privacy if you want." That was probably the last thing any of them were expecting to hear from him. The Setsuna they used to know would never give in, even when his precious Gundam Exia was used as a hostage. "Lockon told me to change. That's what I'm doing. That's what I'm trying to do. In fact, so did you." He declared.

"So you're changing...by looking for love. That's an interesting way." Lyle tried to interpret, and purposely stressed the word 'love' to further irritate Setsuna.

"What's wrong with that?" He protested to their tone, only to receive a reply from Marie who overheard the commotion from outside.

"You can interrogate him later. Ian-san wants you all in his office, ASAP." Milenia sighed and had Lyle let him loose. Setsuna rubbed his neck to check for any injuries the care free Lyle might've caused him, and followed the rest to Ian's office around the corner.


"Look at it.'' Ian pointed at the stripped black box of the yellow mobile suit. "Whatever this thing belongs to, it's not a mobile suit. Or at least not called one." He started to explain as the rest of the crew gathered around chatted, mostly discussing the origin of such an old but foreign device. A black box certainly wasn't any new technology, but a type like the one they're staring at was different.

"It's called a loader, and apparently this one's programmed for long-range exploration." The engineer continued, and so did the chattering.

"So why did it attack us?" Allelujah couldn't help asking, as he was the one that got shot like crazy thanks to the 'loaders'. It was only natural for him to be curious about his attackers, and the same goes to his girlfriend Marie.

"From what I read it's likely because of the Gundams and their heat signatures. They look like a life form, and the mobile suits are programmed to kill anything it sees. Of course that's all just a wild guess of mine." Ian admitted. "But anyhow, we're going to do something about it."

That got their attention. As he finished his statement everyone was shooting death glares at him, demanding a means to deal with their current situation. "Well, we can finish the new Gundams faster." Allelujah suggested.

"If you all agree I say we try to find where this thing is from. In other words, we might be going out of the Solar System." He suggested boldly, shocking everyone present, even Setsuna himself. But before any of them could respond by telling the potential risk and the unknown variables of such an unplanned journey, the siren of the base rang for the second time of the week, and apparently this time it wasn't just an exploration party.

Lyle hastily wore his pilot suit in green that matched the colour of his mobile suit, the Gundam Dynames. It wasn't his original machine, but with it under maintenance and still missing a limb, he was forced to roll with his reserve suit. On the other hand, Setsuna's 00 QanT was quite unharmed and an hour of tuning was all it need to get it into perfect condition. The Innovator got dressed in the cockpit of his machine, while the Dynames marched onto the launch catapult first with a sniper rifle holstered on its right shoulder.

"Dynames and Lockon Stratos, targeted and firing!" The Meister did his best to replicate his brother's tone and bolted out the hangar with his mobile suit. Setsuna followed close behind with the QanT, and accelerated into space moments later.

"Lockon, you don't have to worry about the particle supply. We've refitted Zabanya's GN drive to the Dynames, so you, may use Trans-am if you need to." Lasse stated while monitoring the hostile squadron in the control room, clearly the same as before, only that one of them seemed to be larger than the rest surrounding it. "And be careful. There's a new model among the enemy. Engage at your discretion." He warned as Lyle and Setsuna halted their machines between a pair of asteroids.

"It looks like a red mobile suit, with really big guns." Lyle warned and drew the GN rifle from the Dynames' shoulder, while Setsuna typed on the switches on either side of him to release the sword bits. "You up front, and I'll watch your back!"

"They aren't stopping." Soon enough the leading pair of yellow mobile suits transformed and revealed their weapon. "Setsuna F. Seiei, eliminating the target!"


One of the enemy mobile suits, or loaders as Ian called, somehow managed to latch onto Setsuna's machine, but was sniped down by Lyle from afar. He instantly moved onto his next target as Setsuna kicked the doomed drone away. "Gotcha!" Lyle cried as another yellow spot got into his way, and was pierced by the compressed GN particles fired to it.

Setsuna moved the sword bits to cut down the red mobile suit, only to be ambushed by its vulcan cannons as it transformed and repelled all of QanT's bits. He managed to dodge the projectiles flying at him in a deadly speed, but that also meant getting in close with a CQC machine like the QanT would be as hard as trying to shake Milenia and Lyle and some other curious crew members off his back.

Desperate to defeat the new mobile suit he combined all his bits into a buster rifle, and piped it out of the asteroid to take down the red mobile suit. Unfortunately the red one wasn't only well-armed, but also quite fast, as it dodged Setsuna's shot upon seeing it emerge from behind the asteroid. Even though a quarter of the intruders were taken down by the combined efforts of Lyle and Setsuna, the considerably bigger red one was still a huge pain in the butt for both of them.

"I can't do any more than putting a few scratches on it!" Lyle complained.

"Well how about this. Activating Trans-am!" Setsuna shouted and punched the main display in front of him. Almost instantly his machine glowed in crimson that could be seen all the way back in their base, and half the QanT's GN particle storage was drained to saturate its muscles and allow it to close in without getting hit. Setsuna drew the QanT's sword and penetrated its back, but despite being able to disable the machine, he was immediately targeted by the remaining loaders and took a few hits before he could move out of the way.

The QanT was dented on the back and above its rear end, forcing Setsuna to hover behind an asteroid to recover himself, leaving Lyle to deal with the rest of the horde alone. He eventually got rammed by a yellow mobile suit as well, but was saved when the QanT's sword bits sliced its chassis as if it was butter. The QanT then proceeded to divide the last three of the mobile suits, only to miss his attack when they received a retreat order from a space station in a system far away.

"Are you okay, Setsuna?"

"A bit scratched up." Setsuna followed Lyle's winged machine, and retrieved the wreckage of the red mobile suit as Ian requested once he got word the fighting was over. Both suits landed safely in the space station, and were welcomed by both Vashtis as they left their cockpits.

"How long is this gonna take?" Asked Setsuna.

"Maybe till night at best." Ian had the Karels take the upper torso of the red mobile suit away, Setsuna half expected Lyle to team up with Milenia and start pounding his ears again, but to his surprise he left for the observation deck, without even muttering a word. And since there wasn't anything interesting to do until Ian could decrypt whatever's in the red mobile suit, he decided to tail him and see what he's up to. Or if Ian's lazy enough to hand it over to Veda, there might be a result by midday.

"You did well out there. Is something concerning you?" Sutsuna piped up from nowhere, startling the daydreaming Lyle Dylandy and nearly giving him a nasty heart attack.

"Huh? Oh nothing. It's just...things haunting me." He answered in a particularly dodgy manner.

"Okay." Said Setsuna. "But you can always talk to Tieria if you need to." He suggested.

"That computer freak? I'd rather ask you for advice." Lyle rejected sarcastically.

"He did tell me that the other day. And I think he means it."

Lyle finally decided not to express his opinion on Tieria's reliability when it comes to stress relief, and carried on staring aimlessly at the infinite star systems they're about to travel to.


"I've finally found it!" Ian cheered. "I've finally found the hornet's nest!"

At this point all that's left in Ian's office were the official Meisters themselves and a handful of curious station staffs who were on their breaks. The rest were either still on high alert for another wave of attackers in the control tower or busy restoring the Gundams that were meant to be the pioneers of their forces. "Go on." Setsuna demanded simply.

"It's a long story. 164 years ago, where the three superpowers were newly established. Led by the Human Reform League, the three launched a project named 'Pandora'. Its objective, to maroon every criminal with serious offences into deep space. A one way trip to hell, I'd call." Ian explained. "But looks like those smart asses didn't take reproduction into account when they came up with this idea. And now, my hypothesis is that they're pissed off, and they're sending mobile suits like the one you caught everywhere in a conquest to return to their long lost home."

Marie couldn't help by sigh in defeat at the rear of the line of people as she heard the very name of her homeland. First a super soldier project that made monsters like me and Allelujah, now this? How foolish can they get?

"So we're really going out of the solar system." Lyle suggested.

"That's right. Even Veda's in. Now we just have to wait for his speculations on the journey and prepare ourselves."